Oh. Oh, oh, oh my. This is not good.
Cavemen, which, oddly, was not sponsored by GEICO, premiered Tuesday. I really, really, wish I’d had a chance to write it. The writers did what I was terrified they’d do: they started with the gag—Cavemen in modern America—and wrote from the gag, making the show all about the gag.
The thing that made The Flintstones funny was that it had almost nothing to do with the fact Fred and Barney were cavemen. It was The Honeymooners, blatantly ripped off. It was a domestic sitcom about a loudmouthed know-it-all under-achiever doing his best for his family while always dreaming of more. Having set up that substantial framework, the producers dressed it with, “Oh, yeah, and they’re cavemen.”
Here, it’s all in-your-face cavemen. And, worse, it’s not funny. What made the initial GEICO commercials (and the better latter-day ones) funny was the subtlety. The commercials weren’t *about* these guys being cavemen, it was about these guys being a discriminated underclass. The cavemen were more or less effete tight-asses a la Frazier and Niles, intellectual high-brow (if not big-brow) snobs who were simply better than us and knew more than we did.
The whole point of the gag, to me, was the restaurant commercial where one caveman expertly orders a high-end dish while the other tells the waiter he’s lost his appetite. I wish the writers of the series had bothered to watch it.
The show completely misses the point of what made these guys popular, and squanders the wealth of that potential. Unless they figure it out quick, I’m reasonably sure Cavemen will be among the first shows to go—which was probably the idea all along. It doesn’t seem like anybody put much energy into this show; like they knew it was a toss-off for GEICO, intended to be thrown out there and quickly cancelled.
Which is a shame: the cave-actors are quite good, as they were in the commercials. But the writing simply isn’t there. The terrible, annoying, relentless and stupid music doesn’t help, either.
Caveman Producers: in case you’re reading this: The Flintstones was The Honeymooners. Cavemen should be Frazier. You really missed the whole point of this.
Man, this is depressing. I *so* looked forward to this.
8 Comments
I made it half way through before jumping ship because I too was looking forward to it. Maybe it was just a bad pilot?
scrawled by Jason | October 4, 2007 12:29 PM
anything you are watching you like? tv is plenty devoid of much worth watching...
scrawled by circ | October 4, 2007 12:41 PM
IIRC, the actors in the Cavemen show aren't the same actors from the GEICO commercials.
I know that the pilot has been retooled a bunch of times to address allegations of racism. As my mother said, "maybe if they left the racist stuff in, it would have been funny."
I agree with Priest, this show is not long for this world unless it gets both some subtlety and a backbone.
And personally, I like the O'Reilly-parody commercial.
scrawled by Herb | October 4, 2007 2:12 PM
I am enjoying Reaper greatly, but I worry it could fall into the 'freak of the week' rut. The nbc show where the guy Quantum Leaps from past to ppresent is interesting too.
scrawled by Jason | October 5, 2007 4:52 PM
It's interesting to me to see the allegations of racism, because I was saying that early on about the commercials here on this very blog. Some people felt it was parodying gay people, but it seemed to me the core of it (stereotyping them as having low intelligence) was about black people, and was ridiculing them for "oversensitivity" to derogatory comments.
That said, as soon as I read the reports of major last-minute retooling, I knew the show was doomed. If you're gonna put the show on, you might as well go with what got it through most of the development process.
scrawled by Matt Adler | October 6, 2007 7:05 AM
Matt: Yes. If they’d had the guts to go full All In The Family (or, perhaps more accurately, The Jeffersons), this thing would be hilarious. GEICO, however, might have choked, forcing them to re-tool, and the main GEICO caveman actor probably read the script and passed.
Oh, and the sexual content was *way* over the top for its time slot, and for the fact kids love cavemen and are surely watching. This is just bad.
Herb: I thought one of them—a caveman who makes a brief appearance at a bar or party—in a blue blazer—was a GEICO caveman. Was THE GEICO caveman, in fact, the snooty one who’d lost his appetite. I was really glad to see him, and real puzzled why they recast the parts for the TV show, when it was this actor’s ability to communicate a character in 20 seconds that made the show viable in the first place.
scrawled by priest | October 8, 2007 2:41 PM
Week 2: oh my. The humor is all Saturday morning cartoon-level, and the racism class-action suit... oh, man this is bad. It's *really* bad.
The Carpoolers, presumably based on the very funny Avis carpooler ad, is even worse, if that's possible. I can't imagine what Faith Ford is doing stuck in that show. And, like the Cavemen show, the Carpoolers show misses, by a country mile, what made the Avis ad funny. The Avis ad, btw, dances on the razor's edge of being racist. Which is what makes it funny--that it's just a short cab ride from being incredibly un-PC.
It amazes me how they round the edges off these things when the networks get their hands on them.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KbgA7Lwk9mo
scrawled by priest | October 9, 2007 8:05 PM
Priest,
They actually made the Cavemen from the commercial audition for parts on the show. They then passed on them. John Lehr, the main Caveman from the commercials, didn't bother as he was already obligated to "10 Items of Less" on TBS.
scrawled by G. Edward Jones | October 17, 2007 12:00 PM