Cavemen: Leave Them to Geico

I don't know if anyone really bothered to watch this new show Cavemen on ABC, but I had my doubts about whether it would even be worth the time and effort of even remembering when it was on - and so I didn't risk wasting that time and effort! But, as luck [and procrastination] would have it, I caught it, nonetheless, and so here's a review of the show:

Basically, the new ABC show is straight-up bland comedy. But let's back it up a bit..

Who says major TV networks aren't responsive to allegations of racial insensitivity? Critics had hammered the archetype for Cavemen [the series that's based on those hilarious Geico ads .. how could this go wrong, right? Riiight..], and the show made its prime-time debut - but not before drastically cutting down the previous form's metaphorical themes. Thus, it has become an extremely bland activity - a derelict buddies comedy with a very complex make-up budget [since the protagonists do happen to be cavemen]. Using a similar rope-a-dope tactic that CBS used in keeping Kid Nation on the down-low, ABC [possibly correctly] realized that curiosity about this commercial-that's-become-a-sitcom would be reduced if reviews identify it as the show truly stands - at the bottom-most rung of the comedy genre's evolutionary ladder.

Obviously, there was some re-thinking that was put into dealing with the "hot potato" of the summer for the network. Originally, the setting for the pilot episode was Atlanta, but as you can imagine, this only amplified the uncomfortable feeling that the here-and-there slights that were directed towards cavemen [who, "coincidentally", actually referred to themselves as "maggers"] awkwardly reflected stereotypes of black/African-American people, ranging from their mythical sexual expertise to the idea of them as being less-than-us by snobby Southerner folk.

The revised premiere changed the show's location to San Diego and backed-off the themes in question, if to only refer to them more lightly. However, this does not mean that the humor cuts it as being understated, and the softened edges definitely do not improve the show. In fact, the only thing that these things do do is raise questions regarding the freshness element beginning to erode even by the time we break for the second set of commercials.

Here's the actual plot/basis of the show [if you still really want to know at this point]:

Joel (Bill English) is a hard-working caveman who lives with his roommate Nick (Nick Kroll), a slacker, and his brother Andy (Sam Huntington), a whimperer, who is obsessively depressed [to the level of being annoying] about his ex-girlfriend, who has dumped him.

Meanwhile, Joel's got a secret of his own that he's hiding - a sizzling affair with a cute blonde Kate (Kaitlin Doubleday), who is a [cue dramatic music] Homo sapien!!!!! This is in direct violation to Nick's more aggressive advice against going out with a "sape" as well as to "keep your penis in your genus".

Eventually, Nick's insistence takes its toll on Joel, and he begins to wonder if Kate hides him from her friends - a pretty lifeless plot, to be honest. Then we have the supporting players, mainly Julie White (Grace Under Fire), who's now cast as the Realtor for the apartment building the guys live in; her role seems to comprise of asking the cavemen to minimize their "primal grunting" when she shows places to potential customers.

ABC has shown a soft spot for big comedic concepts, seemingly seeing them as a sort of "shock treatment" to try to jar comedy out of its ratings distress. The major predicament Cavemen faces is that nobody appears to have really thought through the idea much further than that - beginning with how to revamp an idea released in incremental 30-second sight gags to a justifiable TV show with real plots and actual characters.

ABC definitely has done its best in order to have people take notice of the show. Still, if TV comedy and all those associated with it have reason for some soul-searching, the most logical place to begin would be being funny [like CBS's new The Big Bang Theory], rather than simply relying on the slim chance that a Stone Age basis [unsatisfactorily carried out, at that] will be all it takes to forge a path for the the sitcom into the future.

You can catch the show [in the hopes that somehow it gets better, I guess?] on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern/Pacific Time on Tuesdays.

~h