(S01E01) There have been a few monumentally bad attempts to entertain in the history of show business. Star Trek 5, Howard the Duck, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Flops are fascinating once you consider the enormous amount of effort that goes into creating a piece of entertainment. From the writers and actors all the way to the gaffers and the caterers, it's stunning to think of the thousands of man-hours spent working on something that you have trouble spending 30 minutes watching.There's been a considerable amount of morbid curiosity surrounding Cavemen. Would it transcend its bad buzz and go on to be a seven-season television institution? Or would it wind up on the flop-heap of history? The answer after the jump...
The short answer, for those of you only interested in that sort of thing:
It's a flop. A major flop. The kind of flop that makes Steven Bochco feel okay about Cop Rock again.
The most serious charge leveled against Cavemen prior to its premiere was that it was essentially a collection of poorly conceived black jokes masquerading as "cavemen" jokes. You'll be happy to know that the revamped pilot has completely fixed that problem. Well, that is, of course, unless the following stereotypes made about cavemen in the series are also commonly made about African Americans:
-- White racist southerners think they look alike.
-- Dating a white blond woman is seen by many in the community as a "betrayal of the race."
-- Cavemen are considered by some to be "sexually superior" and it's thought that the women who date them do so because cavemen satisfy them in a way that their own race cannot. It's almost as if, once you go <word associated with cavemen>, you never go <word that rhymes with cavemen>.
As a liberal progressive brought up in the northeast, I'm unaware of whether or not these are racial stereotypes. I can't imagine, though, that ABC would allow a show on their airwaves -- no matter how popular the string of commercials that led to the genesis of this show might have been -- that would offend so many of their thinking viewers.
Just for the sake of argument, if the show did indulge in such blatant cavemen-for-black offensiveness, you might be wondering how racially insensitive it is. To that end, I've constructed a "Racial Insensitivity" chart, from 1.0 to 7.0 (note that the "Racial Insensitivity" chart is, much like the warp scale, confusing and poorly thought out).
1.0 -- "White People Do This/Black People Do That" jokes on BET''s Comic View.
2.0 -- Anything that precedes the phrase "that's just the facts about affirmative action, folks" on a conservative radio program.
3.0 -- The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.
3.5 -- Nute Gunray.
4.0 -- Any movie produced prior to 1960 that has not been released from the Disney Vault.
5.0 -- Don Imus.
6.0 -- Bill O'Reilly.
7.0 -- Michael Richards.
If (and that's a big IF), the studio, the actors, the writers, the directors, the producers, and the network were dumb enough to let these brainless stereotypes double as "jokes" with no satirical purpose behind them, then I would say Cavemen would rank about a 4.2 on my scale. But come on, how could something as stupid as that happen in modern America?
Okay, I've got my tongue a little in my cheek here. In all honesty, the racial considerations are probably the least of this show's problems. Just to name a few:
1) I hate it when reviewers say "it wasn't funny", because funny is so much a personal taste that it almost renders the criticism meaningless. With that in mind, let me say this about Cavemen: it wasn't funny. At all.
(And believe me, I feel lame saying that, but there's no way I can justify a recurring joke about the outlandishly named products at IKEA. Not in 2007.)
2) Nick, the "thinking man's caveman", is tremendously annoying. He steals money from his friends and makes them feel bad about their romantic choices all while "working" on a dissertation that he'll never finish. I guess he's supposed to be the show's amoral Barney-type caveman. Maybe on paper he came off as a likeable rapscallion. In practice? I imagine an afternoon watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be less annoying.
3) The central joke of the commercial -- seeing tech and pop-culture savvy cavemen navigate our world -- just doesn't manage to stretch to a half hour. While you'll forgive a predictable and easy joke in a commercial because it's only 15-30 seconds of your time, this show is asking you to give it 30 valuable minutes a week. In return we get jokes as hard to see coming as The Rock's acceptance of his daughter at the end of The Gameplan. Even if the jokes were funny this would be asking a lot.
4) Just how ugly the character design is. I know they're sticking to the look of the commercials, but really, if I wanted to spend my time with four stomach-churningly ugly humanoids, I'd watch <editors note: "The View" joke that was originally written for this space was omitted. Please feel free to insert your own group of four ugly people here.>
What are the plusses?
1) It's only 22 minutes. They could have made it an hour long dramedy set at a whacky lawfirm. Actually, now that I think about it, a show about an Unfrozen Cavemen Lawyer might be a lot funnier than this one.
2) If you were an aspiring television comedy writer but were worried that it was too hard and required too much talent, this show might provide inspiration for you.
Maybe I'm being too hard on this show. Maybe all you can expect from a sitcom based on a series of commercials is a few weak and predictable laughs. Maybe. As always, I'm open to different thoughts -- did you laugh uproariously throughout the episode? Did you see no racial overtones at all? Did you watch the show without wishing for some sort of disease that rendered you blind and deaf for thirty minutes every Tuesday night at 8 PM? If so, tell me in the comments and explain to me why I'm getting this all wrong.
All I can say is that I can't wait until Thursday. I need some Office sorbet to get this taste out of my mouth.
Giveaways reminder: Office, Eli Stone, Supernatural, South Park
Giveaway Thursday: Tickets to the New York Television Festival ... all of it!
I miss the media-friendly John McCain - VIDEOS
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
10-02-2007 @ 11:49PM
Sparky said...
My wife and I went searching on TV Squad searching for the blog to say how ridiculous this show is. It was a great concept, but terrible writing. Would've been a lot better if they had actually written funny material. It's a waste. I'd like to take back my pick of Journeyman being the first show to be cancelled, cause this is terrible!!!
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10-02-2007 @ 11:54PM
Awperator said...
lol
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10-02-2007 @ 11:55PM
bruce said...
It absolutely amazes me that this got a greenlight and fully produced. Imagine the roundtable meetings.
"We have an idea - people seem to like those Geiko Insurance caveman commercials, so let's - ready for this! - turn it into a sitcom!"
"Wow, brilliant, here is $4 million to make 12 episodes."
Seriously, how does that happen? How is that even possible?
I hope Geiko Insurance is earning a portion of the ad revenue of this just so the network makes as little money from this idiotic, possibly racist flop as possible.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:01AM
Keith McDuffee said...
Want to know the incredible thing? This was better than the original pilot!
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10-03-2007 @ 12:16AM
steve said...
like other commenters have said, how the hell did this get the green light?! you're telling me ABC said no to mitch hurwitz's pilot but yes to this crap ! ugh. plain awful.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:27AM
Jose said...
I don't think the writers had any clue what made the Geico commercials so funny. They were poking fun at the hyper-sensitive, politically correct culture we live in. Where the only group you can make fun of are cavemen and how obsessed they are with perceptions of them.
I don't see how you could do an entire show with that, but they didn't even try.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:29AM
Keith said...
Bring in Aaron Sorkin to write an episode.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:30AM
Jay Black said...
Keith -- I'm interested in what the changes were between the pilot and the final (ahem) product we saw tonight. What was worse about it?
Jose -- Very good point about the political correctness. You're absolutely right; they turned a clever commentary into sophomoric nonsense.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:33AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Actually, a lack of ugly people is part of the problem with most sitcoms. Think about it...the classic sitcoms (cheers, taxi, etc) had ugly characters. By ugly I mean they had characters with ugly visages or personalities. Now we've got a dozen Cosby show clowns and another dozen Friends clones. Once in awhile we get a show that breaks out - Office - but for the most part most shows have fairly good looking, bland people doing bland things.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:33AM
justelise said...
I can't believe someone spent money on this. I find it even harder to believe that the cast/show was also retooled along the way. Another mildly amusing concept is going to get canned because they put the rookie squad in the writer's room and let 'em have at it.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:34AM
Chris Bragg said...
I got fired earlier today and preferred that experience to this show. (not kidding)
I, of course, had to stop watching halfway through as to not become suicidal.
Carpoolers was actually pretty good. Of course anything would have been more entertaining following this garbage.
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10-03-2007 @ 12:35AM
Bob Sassone said...
God, this show was really painful. And Carpoolers wasn't much better. ABC's "Must-Miss" Tuesday comedy hour.
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10-03-2007 @ 1:02AM
John Hewitt said...
They would have been better off running the caveman interview from The View. It WAS funny.
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10-03-2007 @ 1:13AM
shawn said...
i didn't watch it. but i hope it continues. and succeeds.
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10-03-2007 @ 1:30AM
Chester said...
I now know what it would be like to watch paint dry for half an hour.
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10-03-2007 @ 1:31AM
Walt said...
"[It's] so easy to get a show greenlighted on the ABC network, even a Caveman can do it!"
I watched enough of the show to notice that it's not "My Mother The Car" bad. The cynical "Chandler" Cavedude seems to be enough to save the show... for now. He's the one that made the appearance on "The View" so fun.
Of course the show is going to play on stereotypes. Of course the attention for that may take away from the show's attempts at humor.
Here's my over/under on bad TV comedy shows:
Is it better or worse than "Joey" ??
Joey was nails on chalkboard awful. The "Cheers" spinoff "The Tortellis" was just as bad. The first episode of Cavemen was better than the average ep of Joey, so I'm guessing Cavemen will NOT get canceled. Scary thought, eh?
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10-03-2007 @ 1:39AM
Matt said...
Great review, Jay. I saw the early pilot, so I felt absolutely zero desire to watch the "retooled" version of the pilot that aired tonight. I'm glad to hear it sounds as sucktacular as the version I watched was.
How'd they end up sticking you with Cavemen, though? First you get stuck with the worst LCS ever, and now this? Must be your "reward" for getting to review The Office, eh?
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10-03-2007 @ 1:40AM
new reader said...
I didn't even watch it because the whole concept sounded as though it would end up being running jokes you can't use anymore in an altered form. The fact that you included Bill O'Reilly in your rating scale makes me wonder if I should watch the show to see if the rest of your review is off.
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10-03-2007 @ 3:39AM
Kurifurisan said...
I watched the original pilot a while back and I can say the retooled version was a bigger waste of time. The younger brother caveman was an idiotic mistake and an obvious filler character to give Nick Kroll's caveman someone to mess around with. The retooled girlfriend Kate was just as bad. It may be my memory but it seemed like the plot of the original was kind of tweaked but pretty much the same minus the girlfriend's family barbecue and the game of horseshoe and I think the scenes with Nick Swardson at the Ikea ripoff. The jokes seemed out of place and forced almost like the writers were trying to be smartly funny.
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10-03-2007 @ 4:51AM
Sean said...
I attempted to watch this.. uhm thing they called a TV show. Well apparently I should try harder, since I didn't make it past 7 or 8 minutes. I was.... zzzzz... brain numbed. And then the um storyline.. oh wait, was there one? Yes.. the mirrored African American bigotry was noticed.
Did I mention I lost interest? I truly only made the attempt to watch this show because I was interested in watching "Carpoolers"! (Also... a sleeper)
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