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No Reviews For ABC’s CAVEMEN!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
There’s an early pilot for “Cavemen,” the new sitcom based on the memorable Geico Insurance commercials, that’s been floating around the Internets for months, but will never appear on ABC. It was circulated to critics back in May. More than half of the TV critics polled by Broadcasting & Cable last month picked it as the worst new show of the fall season. Worse than “K-Ville,” “Big Shots,” “Private Practice," "Moonlight” and “Carpoolers.”
The first episode airing tonight, which features new cast members and an entirely new plot, was not made available to TV critics.
I’ll be tuning in. Though the original pilot was hobbled by substantial tonal deficiencies, I maintain a lot of affection for one of the lead cavemen, the pissed-off, sarcastic Nick. Nick most closely resembled the exasperated “primitive” in Geico’s airport commercials, and actor Nick Kroll did a dryly hilarious job of underplaying the Cro-Magnon’s barely managed contempt for idiocy.
Happily, Kroll was not one of the actors recast. If the producers managed to carry over the venomous Nick while damping down some of the original pilot’s broader elements (its roadtrip sing-along was excruciating), they might have something I, at least, might keep TiVoing.
8 p.m. Tuesday. ABC.
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ferst dood
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I've been going back and forth on this one... It feels like one of those things that could be pretty funny, and probably very polarizing.
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you know, Dinosaurs, Baby Talk, that last season of Full House when Michelle got amnesia, Hi Honey I'm Home, Hangin with Mr. Cooper, and the Clueless spin-off series. You know, the classics. Thanks ABC, for balancing out your quality sitcoms with banal crap throughout the decades!
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I loved Dinosaurs!
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and it's only slightly lamer than the fact that people still like to post "First!"
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ABC has had quality sitcoms?
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when did that happen? Why was I not informed? Internets was teh smartest thing GW ever said, I say Internets must stay!
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once George W. Dipshit leaves office. 'Til then... internets away.
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Those are always funny. Hell, Bud Light taste like shit, but they got the best ads which is why it sells. What next, someone makes a show based of a T-Moble ad. I could see it now. The SMS Family, where they all speak in abriviations cause the family is too cheap to get phones with qwerky keypads on them. IDK it lol'd me.
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Dinosaurs was great! Speak not of such blasphemy!
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hand ... was never actually funny.
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and be yanked after one episode.
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You heard it here first.
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Or a Heather Graham lookalike...I'm not picky. Zing!
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Private Practice is a stupid fucking show. they just took Addison away from Grey's Anatomy and turned her into Ally McBeal. Big Shots is fucking horrendous and should have never been greenlit. And they need to realize that whoever is in charge of their half hour comedy development is a fucking idiot. NBC knows how to find a good half hour comedy, why can't ABC? What happened to them? did they forget they were the network responsible for many huge sitcoms in the past?
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that is all.
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The Thick of It, whose pilot was written by Mitchell Hurwitz and directed by Christopher Guest.
ABC sucks. -
Too much wrong to imagine it could even be fixed by starting over. I guess I'll wait for the 2008 ABC sitcom based on the Jack's Links commercials where a group of 20 something assholes play pratical jokes on Bigfoot. Of course, they'll shoot 13 episodes and ABC will pull it with only 1 left unaired (again).
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an Erin Esurance cartoon.
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You are correct sir!! I laughed the loudest at any televised program recently with the second installment of the Snickers FEAST commercial, when the viking character throws a trash can at a car when finding out that the station was out of Snickers. Then throwing a second trash can at the same car in joy, when discovering they had dark chocolate Snickers. FEAST!! And I love the beat up car they drive around in...
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It's not a series based on the grinning "Bob" from the Enzyte commercials... filled with ludicrous erectile puns.
A show like that would definitely blow. ;) -
It's "teh intarwebs" now.. you can even exchange the S with a Z if you're feeling really adventurous.
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and that annoying whistling song would be playing all through the show NON FUCKING STOP.
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They should make a sitcom out of the "where's the beef" commercial. It would be COMIC GOLD.
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Ah, the great days of tv commercials...
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The spots were funny. The show is not funny. Hmm, let's see. We changed the actors. And, oh yeah, we stretched it from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. That might have something to do with it, too. I say, do a series with the guy who had a Snickers bar toupee. That's the best spot of the last five years.
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I think you mean the Oreo dessert pizza beard guy from Domino's...yea his earnest, sincere delivery is hilarious.
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This is right up there with "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" and "Homeboys in Outer Space."
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That CAVEMAN show needs more cowbell or HULK HOGAN
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So much darkness
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But I'm talking about one where the guy literally has a toupee made out of Snickers bars. But now I'm starting to wonder if it ever aired or if I just saw it on a director's reel. It'd be a shame if that never aired.
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Remove the spaces they're always kind enough to put in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji7VmldBE_A
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This will either be a glorious disaster or a glorious triumph. Either way I'll be entertained.
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We're talking "Cop Rock" legendary. Fifteen years from now people will be scratching their heads like cavemen trying to figure out what a few now-fired executives were thinking.
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oh wait, that shit may actually happen! http://www.rodneyallenrippy.net/
I love you internet. -
About two men in the strangest place. First the Astronauts went back in time, then they brought the cavepeople back. Hilarity ensued.
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Watch the numbers. People will watch this crap. Can't be worse than reality shows, eh Herc?
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Thats all I have to say...
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'Small Wonder'. It was probably the worst program ever put to air. I believe Cavemen sees some jealousy in SWs acheivement is is trying to usurp it..
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...from past thru present, and just show them for 30 minutes every week.Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio--now that is must see tv.
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HA HA HA HA... HE SAID IT AGAIN!! AFLAC!!
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So who knows what they'll do with this show...sad that John Heard needs the money from this, wasn't he in a John Grisham movie once?
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justbecauseyoucan ;~)
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Man I loved those commercials and now there are only going to be bad memories of the whole thing after the show tanks. Tina called, we're getting back together. Hey, give us a minute!
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Hey maybe Baby Bob can stop by for a visit.
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I'm fully prepared for it to suck, but I still say "fuck you, naysayers". It certainly can't be worse than most of the television shows I've produced. And believe me, I've made some bad ones.
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Pilot Episode Brief: Victor Chiahead's son Quinn gets filled with vodka instead of water. Hilarity ensues.
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I've been telling people about this like it was Star Wars. You know its going to get shitcanned inside of a week, maybe less, so this'll be TV history here, folks. Also, I still like the word "Internets". Anything that reinforces how goddamned stupid Dubbya is is fine by me.
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That would be a really funny review... I know this is probably going to be horrible but I'm still going to watch it. I love those commercials.
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And then drink some more.
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That is what I thought when I first heard of this, Jesus, over a year ago? This is one of those things I thought was more of a joke than an actual idea.Corporate TV Guy 1: "So, we need to make a show that is cheap, but one that people already have some sort of knowledge of..." TV Guy 2: "Fuck it, why not turn a commercial into a show, then have the commercials that inspired the show pay for it. Ha, that would be great." TV Guy 3: "Holy shit, TV Guy 2, I think you are, like Einstein or something." TV Guy 1: "Alright, we'll go with that. How about those Geico caveman ones? Meetings adjorned, time for lunch."
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Even if Internets is just shorthand for "the Wide World Interwebby Thingy". I want a show with the dreamless insomniac, Abe Lincoln, the talking Beaver nd the diving bell man. Maybe the Geico lizard and the Eveready rabbit could form a group. Everyone knows this Cavepersons show is a disaster waiting to happen. Now watch: hordes will tune in to the debut just to see if it's really as bad as they expect it to be. Word of mouth on how incredibly bad this show is will actual attract an even larger audience for week two. And the ratings will be so high American will okay a 13 ep commitment, then cancel it when the ratings fall to zero in week three, and there will still be people buying the complete DVD set to get the 10 unaired episodes! Meanwhile the Minori-teens and the PC Cops are poised to strike if this even remotely stinks of being racially insensitive in its mockery of social prejudices - so of course the new pilot is about inter-species romance with the CroMags disapproving one of their own dating a "whoo-monn" female. This is SO DOOMED that of course I'll record it; how can you look away from a train wreck?
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Dunno. They made Space Jam out of a Nike commercial. Wait. That movie sucked. Never mind.
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Two white, teenage rappers try to break into hip-hop with songs revolving around their middle-class lifestyle. Hilarity ensues.
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If anyone can answer this I'd be appreciative. But okay. ABC makes a pilot and a series based on characters created by an ad agency which was essentially work for hire as hired by Geico. Yes? so technically, Geico owns the rights to these characters? Or are characters like ideas and can not legally be copyrighted? The actors who created those roles, I'm assuming, get nothing if they're not in the show- so that rules them out... my question is where does ABC get permission to do this? Who gives it to them? If it's Geico, it stands to reason then that they are gaining ad revenue for every minute this show is on the air, no? And if THAT'S the case, is there come kind of conflict of interest now when airing commercials on another network? Who are they paying if they run their own ad on this show? I'm so confused...
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Man obsessed with proving aliens are living on earth tries tracking them down in all sorts of unlikely places, risking ridicule, loss of family and even arrest. Hilarity ensues.
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Two guys, polar opposites on everything from fashion to computers, are forced to share an apartment. Hilarity ensues.
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They just have to be different enough so as not to cause confusion.
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So as not to cause confusion with Apple commercials.
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An action packed epic, starring Justin Long and that other guy. What started off as a casual rivalry is going to turn into an all out WAR.
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Characters in a man's dreams come to life, reeking havoc on his job, home and social life as they follow him around. Hilarity ensues.
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commercial, why didn't they do the one about the normal-sized people in a small house!? That could've been comedy gold and wouldn't cost much. No need to hire writers, actors, etc, just get some average folks together in a house too small for them and let the fireworks fly.
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it seems like they have been trying to punch up the idea, though, that they are the same well loved characters from the tv. It's just one stop short of being called "the Geico Cavemen" after all. so I wonder about money changing hands is all. For theater buffs, there have been similar disputes over a show called "Three Mo' Tenors" wherein an original cast member whose contract was not renewed went on to do concerts siting the use of that name or something and he got sued. And likewise with some show capitalizing off the success of "Naked Boys Singing" which, less than a year after its inaugural run was touting "the longrunning" or "world famous" or whatever 'naked singing boys show' or whatever that was- purely on the basis that most of its cast had in fact come from the original. And they got their pants sued off. Pun intended. So I'm just wondering what kinda deal has to go down cuz erm... no matter what it was I'm sure the actors who created those characters and geico even are not getting nearly as much money for it as they should.
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ABC bought the "cavemen" from Geico. You won't be seeing any more cavemen in Geico commercials.
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I'm actually semi-sad by that fact.
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Anyone want to take odds on whether this gets cancelled by its second commercial break? :)
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I mean, honestly, there are better uses for your time and energy.
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Wow...it is just unfunny and lame.
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did they take the first segment from some other sitcom? Aside from the Flintstones line there wasn't even any real reference to the premise of the show. the mention of the Flintstones was the funniest thing in the show. It would have been a lot funnier if the whole series had people yelling things like "yabba dabba do" to them or "have a gay old time!" at them all the time.Asitiswe just gotalamesitcom. That's good tv channel executiving there ABC...
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Not funny, but not horrible. My minds eye forsaw it using the basic sitcom setup ala Friends, you know, obvious fake interiors and such. But no, it was well shot and had a sense of direction, but it just wasn't funny.
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Oct 02, 2007 7:34:59 PM CDT
Lte's make the Miller Cat fight commercial into a serie
by the real jack bauer
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
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mmmmmmmmm old boobies...
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The unaired pilot had some balls, but this is sort of the politically correct re-write. They cut the dumb brother, changed the situation from "People are prejudiced against cavemen" and reversed to "Cavemen are prejudiced against sapiens" which sort of wrecks the whole premise. The idea was, I thought, to use cavemen as a metaphorical character race to "stand in" for all minorities. Instead, they're just hairy dudes with a beef against non-hairy people. All "caveman" ideals and all the stereotyping jokes are practically deleted from this version.
The most curious change is that in the pilot, Nick sees the weatherman caveman and is embarrassed and upset by him. NIck takes on a stance like a Black Panther or Malcolm X of Cavemen, if-you-will. He's sick of the Sapiens keeping him down, and sees racism in EVERYTHING, including the "dancing for the man" done by the weatherman. In this version, Nick isn't nearly as acidic and doesn't have that chip on his shoulder, and thus says "I love this guy" when he sees the caveman weatherman doing his little act.
I sort of preferred the perpetually-offended Nick to the slacker wiseass Nick... I wonder why they'd rewrite his character so completely?
I also miss the whole thing with Kate's best friend wondering what it's like to fuck a caveman, thinking it's going to be wild and amazing with the main character's brother... And the brother throws up on her.
If they'd have mixed parts of the unaired pilot with this version, they'd have had something much better. As it is, this show lacks the teeth the original premise held. It's like they wussed out at the last minute. -
That'll collapse faster than their 17-game loss! :P
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...about that dog whose supposed new trick is that it wipes its ass on the carpet. That dog's hilarious!
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...Kal Penn is on House tonight...ha haaaa! He'll only have like 2 lines I'm sure...but its Kumar!
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that actually makes a lot more sense. one of the reasons i love those geico commercials anyway is that they refuse to milk a gimmick till it dies. Sure they got some mileage out of the gekko but it wasn't like the budweiser frogs/lizards where it was the same joke over and over again. He started as one of like five different fifteen second slots with a standard british accent and then he became this little guy driving a car and then he was that CGI spokesperson with the cockney accent- all very different riffs on an idea. geico rocks for having the balls to cut their cash cow loose. still don't have a car but maybe one day i'll save a bunch of money by switching my insurance to them...
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Hee hee. That's all I kept thinking. It was like "Swingers" remade by Zombie. Actually it was like "Multiplicity" meets "Swingers" staring Zombie himself.
The poster who quoted"gay old time" made me laugh. That should have been in there. Oh well. Maybe next time.
Did anyone else think the whole Caveman thing was distracting? It's like the blandest show on earth and the thing they do to spice it up is by adding... hair? -
i watched it and i honestly couldn't decide if it was shit or just mediocre. it's certainly not good... but i don't think it was as unwatchable as past reviews said it would be. carpoolers, on the other hand was a sure fire dud. so, i probably won't be watching cavemen ever again, but i was just curious if anyone else was a little confused as to the show's level of shittiness.
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I mean it was oddly stale. It was like everything before and after "the funny" of the Geico moments. Truly odd. So odd I may tune in next week and the next week after that until this car wreck is kaput.
I'm honestly weirded out by how lame this show is. It's idea wothout a concept. Truly odd. -
And I thought the waiter joke and the carpet gag as well as "keep your penis in your genes" was pretty clever. I might watch it again.
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DON'T DISS IT!
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It was "Keep your' penis in your' genus", not genes. That would, possibly, imply inbreeding.
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Oct 03, 2007 12:54:41 AM CDT
The idea is actually good--the show so far, not so much
by jacksparasites
I know a lot of people are saying the premise is stupid, but I actually think the premise is great. If it kept to the spirit of the commercials, this could be TV gold. I love the commercial spots, but this pilot ignored all the things that made the commercials work. The actors in the commercial were pretty real & 3-dimensional despite only a few 30-second spots of screen time, while these new characters act like typical sitcom stereotypes. Also, the writers of the commercials seemed to grasp the subtle nuances of racial & minority issues while the sitcom writers don't seen to. The commercials had a dryness to them where they didn't seem to try so hard to get a laugh. It was all in the performance. Here, the writers went big with the comedy, which is rarely good. Also, it feels like they're trying to fill time with subplots that don't explore the theme at all and feel more like BAD attempts at Seinfeld. MY TIP FOR THE WRITERS OF CAVEMAN IF THEY READ THESE TALKBACKS: STICK WITH WHAT WORKED and remember the KISS rule of writing: KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID. Stop with bad cell phone humor and stick with the core elements of the commercials. Remember that one commercial where the Caveman's being consoled by his friend outside the party. It was silly and yet was real. In 30 seconds, you kind of care about the characters. Use more of that. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE HIRE THE MAIN ACTOR FROM THE COMMERCIALS. You just can't beat that delivery on "It's my mother. I'll put it on speaker" and "What!?"
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is that the cavemen act pretty white. it seems to me that they're going for a "what if white people were treated like a minority" angle.
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...until the first commercial break. Dear GOD I was never so glad for a commercial break--I didn't need to fake my own death to make the show stop.I am willing to bet 1000 dollars each of chrth's and MNG's money that this POS won't last past Halloween. They might have fun with a Halloween episode. Anyone remember the Beverly Hillbillies Halloween episode.
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Did you make it to the second break? I didn't.
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Next up....those riverdancing monkeys from the Arby's commercial. DO IT ABC!!
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The Geicko needs a series over them.
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Was this show only like 10 minutes long? It felt like an adult swim cartoon with its length, of course skipping the commercials.
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I left after the 1st commercial break to get that root canal I've been putting off.
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This one should have a shorter life than Anchorwoman.
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As you can see, the concept didn't work for CBS in 1966...
It's about time, it's about space about, strange people in the strangest place. That is what this show is about. Hector and Mac are two astronauts who break the time barrier and travel back in time to the prehistoric. Gronk is a cave man with his wife Shadd. In the middle of it's run do to low ratings the creators reversed the concept so that Hector and Mac made it to the twentieth century. They brought with them the prehistoric group.
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Good Lord...how does garbage like this get greenlit for TV? Carpoolers was funnier, and Carpoolers was AWWWWWWFUL. I hope someone gets fired over this show, because greenlighting this was a massive mistake. If I were an ABC investor, I'd be majorly pissed off.
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had already prepared to completely hate this show before you saw a second of it. Was it great? no, of course not. Was it good? Not really. But, it DID make me laugh a few times, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. So suck on it.
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should have said, "you guys"
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It's like swimming across a river of runny shit to get to a sandwich shop. Sure, I'm hungry, but damn it, is it really worth it?
TiVo that... -
I want my hour back for watching this and carpooling.
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It will win it's timeslot easily(based on what it was up against and all of the publicity it got), but it's television at it's worst. I hated it on almost every level. After the first ten minutes I was like "Ok, we get it, you're comparing the struggles cavemen have with the struggles that minorities have. NOW MAKE ME LAUGH". I'm still waiting.
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this many people actually watched it. I bet you people will smell dog shit if someone told you it stunk. Or eat it if someone told you it's disgusting. Why would you watch it when you know it's bad?
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only because i like watching train wrecks. It was "OK". it wont last because the cavemen-play-preppy-upper-class-30somethings is shallow, like the commercials. the jokes weren't "bad" and if the cavemen were just normal guys, it would be like any other sitcom... we'll see.... i give it at least another week. ABC is desperate for a sitcom. half of their week is reality TV, and frankly, people are hungry for comedy.
OT: have you guys seen Big Bang Theory? i think its really really good. very smart comedy! the blonde is hot, and the guys pull off the nerdy-anti social thing with like-ability. WATCH IT, its very very nerd-friendly, talking about superman, math, science and chemistry. right up talkbacker's alleys, i'd say. -
I decided to watch it because I think it has potential. I always liked Phil Hartman's Cavenman on SNL, which is probably what spawned the geico commercials. Thought it was good, not great, and will watch it again.
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FUCK ALL YOU CAVEMEN HATERS
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