In Cautious Defense of ‘Cavemen’

During Monday Night Football last night, ESPN showed a little teaser for ABC’s already-left-for-dead sitcom Cavemen, and we must admit, we laughed a little bit. Which got us to thinking: What if Cavemen isn’t horrible? What if their reshooting of the pilot doesn’t mean it’s putrid but actually means that they took time and made it better? After all, as Emma Rosenblum points out in this week’s New York, Nick Kroll is kind of a funny guy. And even though we didn’t love the old pilot, we thought it had some promise, and Julie White was hilarious. She’s a Tony winner, for God’s sakes!

Look, if you had told us five years ago that a sitcom was on ABC’s schedule about cavemen struggling to fit in contemporary society, we would have laughed out loud at such a charming, offbeat premise. “Finally,” we would have said, “something that isn’t just another Friends ripoff, or yet another family sitcom with adorable moppet children.” We would have gone home and set our VCRs or laser-disc players or whatever Stone Age bullshit we had to do to record TV in 2002.

It was only when this show was pitched to America as “the Geico Cavemen show” that it became laughable (and not in the good way). Yes, we are pretty sure this is gonna suck. But isn’t there even the slightest chance it won’t? After all, it’s not the worst idea for a commercial turned sitcom anyone could have come up with. What if it’s good?

Earlier: Ten Commercials That Would Make Even Worse TV Shows Than the Geico Cavemen
ABC’s ‘Cavemen’: Cro-Mags, Julie White, and Wild Neanderthal Sex
Related: Neanderthal: Nick Kroll [NYM]