Cavemen: Send Them Back to the Stone Age

Those Geico cavemen commercials were hilarious. Extremely civilized cavemen facing discrimination and bias in a human world-brilliant. I loved them and each and every one of them made me laugh. In one scenario, the cavemen go to a fancy restaurant and one orders duck with mango salsa while the other explains he lost his appetite in disgust. In another he goes to a therapist in his attempt to deal with the Geico "So easy a caveman can do it" campaign. In yet another he appears on a split screen talk show to defend his viewpoints and stick up for cavemen rights while he is mocked yet again with no recourse except to sigh disapprovingly. Could ABC expand on these lovable and hilarious characters, making them into an entertaining full-length sitcom?

Simply stated: No, no they could not. Not that anybody truly expected anything different. While curiosity was certainly piqued by the concept of Cavemen, few actually believed the show would be great. In the first episode of Cavemen they inserted the jokes and storylines you might expect. The show began with one caveman ridiculing The Flintstones and why he didn't find it funny. In the words of one of the cavemen talking about a cocktail party, the show was unfortunately, mostly "lamesville".

That's not to say the entire show was awful. The highlight of the Cavemen premiere was a long debate amongst characters when one of the cavemen was dating a member of the Homo sapiens species; a normal human being. There was shock and awe when he announced the reason they haven't met his girlfriend was that she was a "sape". He was also concerned that his girlfriend's friends wouldn't accept him, a caveman, either. However, he later finds out that his girlfriend may actually have a cavemen fetish, and has been around the block of the cavemen meat market, so to speak.