'Cavemen' try to leave Stone Age
By Corinne Minard, Staff Writer
October 2, 2007 | 4:18 p.m.
In an attempt to bring in a male audience, ABC has taken the GEICO cavemen commercials and made them into a show titled “Cavemen,” a series that may not be as stupid as it looks. The series premieres at 8 p.m. tonight.
A commercial can be either 30 seconds of product bliss or 30 seconds of advertising hell. While most people have a favorite and a least favorite commercial, who could have imagined that a network would have the audacity to take a short segment meant to sell car insurance and transform it into a half-hour comedy?
The answer: ABC, of course. In an attempt to bring in a male audience to a network dominated by “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC has taken the GEICO cavemen commercials and created “Cavemen.”
In case you’ve been incapacitated and stuck on a deserted island for the last few years, "Cavemen" is based a series of ads for GEICO car insurance that show cavemen as intelligent people who still living today. The cavemen are offended by the GEICO's implying they are stupid.
The show does not stray far from this concept. Instead, it fleshes it out to a story about three modern-day cavemen who have moved to San Diego in hopes of making a new life. Joel (Bill English) has a nice job, a beautiful Homo sapien girlfriend and a life that resembles that of the rest of America. His brother, Andy (Sam Huntington), simply wants to explore the rest of the human world, while Joel’s best friend, Nick (Nick Kroll), points out all the caveman discrimination that exists (or doesn’t). The series simply takes the basic, everyday plot of a responsible man with crazy friends and turns them into cavemen. Simple, yet semi-original.
The show is part of ABC’s attempt to get more male viewers. The network is even referring to Tuesdays as “Man Date” Tuesdays because of “Cavemen” and its follower, “Carpoolers.” Both shows are more focused on men and their relationships.
"Cavemen" exemplifies what all male comedies seem to be about -- funny, not-so-handsome men winning over gorgeous women. There seems to be little attempt to draw women in at all.
This is not to say that the series is doomed. Two of the show’s developers and executive producers are Josh Gordon and Will Speck, the directors of “Blades of Glory.” If anyone could make the material funny, it’s these two men. What do add potential to the show are not the moments that could happen in any sitcom, but the ones that are similar to the commercials. When Nick gets outraged over the discrimination of cavemen from Homo sapiens, something entirely new (and entirely funny) is created. Instead of simply being about the car insurance, though, all possible situations that could offend the cavemen are available. It’s these moments -- not the buddy comedy ones -- that give “Cavemen” the potential to be more than stupid.
Maybe “Cavemen” won’t be either a 30-minute ad or another typical male comedy. Actual humor that teaches something about our culture and political correctness could be mined from the show, but only if it keeps itself from picking up easy sitcom plots. It premieres Tuesday, October 2 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
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“Cavemen”
Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC (Channel 9 for on-campus students)
Genre: Sitcom
Watch all the GEICO cavemen commercials at YouTube.