A Sitcom about the Geico Cavemen

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/6879/storyvk8.gif

Oh Charley, you're the robust predecessor of all my heroes.

The critics rave:

The atmosphere grew so tense that actor Nick Kroll, who plays the sardonic caveman Nick, aimed for something between comic relief and gallows humor.

"I was told there was gonna be a laugh track here," Kroll told the mostly stone-faced press tour crowd, "but I guess that's not the case."

Now if this show is going to be all about a bunch of cavemen who get a show and everyone hates it, I'm watching.

i re-watched the coneheads movie a month ago... it's so much better than it has any right to be. really quality stuff all the way through.

Another report:

Eight white men onstage told TV critics, columnists and reporters that the new sitcom "Cavemen" -- in which the cavemen are depicted as great dancers, naturally athletic and able to drive blondes crazy with their sexual prowess -- is not, as one critic suggested, "the series about black folk that ABC was too scared to make."

"In terms of them standing in for any one group, that's not our intention," executive producer Josh Gordon said in response to the question posed by Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times. Deggans, who is African American, based his comment on the pilot episode, which will not be the first episode of the series after all, critics were told. It will air later in the show's run -- after it's canceled, if we're all very good and eat our vegetables.

"We're aware that the pilot seems to lean a little bit more in that direction," Gordon said. "But in the episodes that we're sort of coming up with now, we never saw them as, again, a stand-in for one group."

The critics didn't buy it. One noted that in that pilot there "weren't a lot of stereotypes of other ethnic groups."

"You just loaded up on one particular one. . . . How could you have thought that wasn't going to be a problem?" the reporter asked.

Here's where the executive producers began to talk about the show being "subtle" and "about acclimation."

The critics: still not buying it.

"You said you want it to be subtle -- the show we saw is anything but subtle," one said. "It's not going to be about black discrimination, but that's the only thing the show we saw is. What are some of these episodes going to be if they're not going to be an allegory for racial relations and you say they're going to be subtle -- what can we expect?"

Don't worry, they were told. It will all become much clearer when they see the new episode in which one of the cavemen is shown to be -- very lazy.

This kind of thing becomes less bewildering to me when I think about the people I've met who've expressed the desire or intent to move to LA and write for television comedy.

Don't worry, they were told. It will all become much clearer when they see the new episode in which one of the cavemen is shown to be -- very lazy.

http://telemaniac.free.fr/rodriguez.jpg

this show sounds like a stunning analysis of racial relations in Atlanta, what with widespread concern about black cavemen stealing our blonde white women with their sexual prowess

I absolutely LOVED Slowpoke Rodriguez when I was a kid. Some part of me still objects that he was not stereotype-related and was just the natural counterpart to Speedy. Also I related to him way more than Speedy, but I guess that's just because I'm non-white and honnnngry.

critics: black people are like THIS
stoner writers: waht?

Some part of me still objects that he was not stereotype-related and was just the natural counterpart to Speedy.

Oh, I liked Slowpoke too, but this here kind of forces the question as to why Speedy was funny in the first place. (If you think he was.) i.e., "A super-fast Mexican? Ludicrous!"

mouse on speed shouting Spanglish at high volume = funny!!

I never really thought of Speedy as funny! He was just a straightforward hero, traveling around Mexico providing cheese to starving villagers. All the humor came from cheese-guarding cats getting screwed -- same way the roadrunner is completely humorless, but Wile E. Coyote getting screwed is hilarious.

Interestingly, "He was just a straightforward hero, traveling around Mexico providing cheese to starving villagers" is the logline for Jared Hess's next movie.

I disagree about either Speedy or the Road Runner being humorless, but I find humor in them outside the narrative but in the poses, characterization, etc.

Speedy's fairly benign in terms of racist cartoon caricatures (of which there are MANY)

Yeah, Speedy makes me feel the same way as Apu, where i thought they were funny before i was even old enough to totally understand/recognize the stereotype the character parodies or personifies. So i keep wanting to put the genie back in the bottle and just enjoy them as a funny cartoon character with a funny voice that just happens to be a caricatured accent.

Also the Roadrunner TOTALLY is funny, with or without the context of Wile E. Coyote chasing him. For shit's sake, his only line of dialogue is "meep meep."

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/SPAN/images/bandito.jpg

WHAT????
The second, "Mexican Boarders" (1962), revolves around Speedy trying to protect Slowpoke from Sylvester the cat, but in the end, Slowpoke demonstrates his ability to hypnotize Sylvester into becoming his slave. This short (which was later edited into Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales) contains a possible allusion to a marijuana habit when Slowpoke sings La Cucaracha. English Translation of what Slowpoke Rodríguez says: "The roach, the roach, can't walk any more, because it needs, because it needs, marijuana to smoke"

serious question: do cavemen drink Moolattes?

For shit's sake, his only line of dialogue is "meep meep."

He also does that tongue-waggling noise thing, which is hilarious.

Oh yeah, I thought about that one! Great stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Nr4xnx8xs

hahaha

Ugh. Now I feel like I have to retroactively hate the original commercials, which I liked quite a bit.

i don't see how you could not get this from the commercials

(crazy pills wearing off...sigh)

Wow, I never saw that Slowpoke Rodriguez one before. The twist ending is pretty fabulous, if the Cavemen show was out of left field like that I would actually be sort of interested.

thing is, if it were actually about black people, it still would be too obvious to be funny. The only way this could work is if the cavemen had specific caveman problems, like having a really weird diet or not understanding how modern tools work, etc.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/images/2007/09/28/cavemen.jpg

The latest BS:

ABC’s new sitcom, inspired by the Geico insurance ads, is scheduled to debut at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, but advance copies haven’t been made available to critics, leading some to suspect the show is DOA.
Not true, says an ABC spokesman. Copies haven’t gone out because they’re not done. “They’re not ready,” the spokesman said. “They want the finishing touches” completed before critics take a peek, and that won’t happen before the premiere. “That’s all there is to it.”

The show revolves around a clutch of hairy, prehistoric men who struggle to be understood in the modern world. It got a cool reception at the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Beverly Hills this summer for playing too much like a clunky racial allegory. Since then, one of the leads has been recast and the pilot reshot. New writers and consultants have also been brought on board.

ABC will find out soon enough whether the revisions work. Working heavily in the show’s favor: No other new program has such instant recognizability thanks to those TiVo-defying Geico ads.

The ABC spokesman has seen a rough cut, and admits to being biased, but says that naysayers may be surprised: “I think it’s funny.”

I didn't know "clutch" is the group noun for hairy, prehistoric men.

Fun fact: one of the lead "cavemen" played a thinly veiled hybrid of Ryan Schreiber and Brent DiCrescenzo on Human Giant.

Seems fitting.

"Tivo-defying"?

Does tivo refuse to fast forward through them? (See: Tuesday's Colbert Report)

This eyeroller is finally premiering tonight. I do think the first episode will get decent ratings just on the watercooler factor alone.

Apparently a "clutch" is a term for chicks (as in birds (not as in girls, as in the real kind)), not cavemen. I'm just saying.

ILX needs a bookee. Anyone giving me 2:1 on this getting renewed for a second season is on.

woah terrible. so hard to watch.

You're a far braver man than I, sir.

i do my own version of best week ever in my basement. i need to know this stuff.

Which of the cavemen is the funny caveman?

This was a lot better than I would have thought it would be. I'm not saying it was great, but it wasn't really all that horrible, and certainly better than say oh "Back to You" or "According to Jim."

Yeah, not as horrible or cheap-looking as I expected (lighting-wise it almost looked like it was shot as a drama).

"Back to You"

The amount of side-of-the-bus ads I've seen for that thing with Kelsey Grammer's evilly grinning mug and Patricia Heaton looking tart make me want to kill all the white people.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD NED RAGGETT

LET US MURDER TOGETHER

uh ned?

I thought you just said you wanted to kill all the white people too!

Is this srsly the only way for white guys to publicly talk about race?

Gill's right about the lighting, though -- it's nice.

Is the Geico sitcom the only white guy method of discussing race, or mass genocide:?

why do they have to mutually exclusive?

So then was it rong to laugh when the caveman fell into the bourgie country club fire and enacted the caveman stereotype?

This seems to fall into the 'queasy racial comedy' category, along with 'Black Knight' and 'Bringing Down the House.'

it was terrible. the lighting looked like geico commercials. wtf you guys are dumb. even nick swardsen wasnt funny.

i watched this for one minute. unfunny and lame.

I actually had some hope for this. Somehow, someway, I think it could be pulled off. But from watching last night, it seems that the creators decided to go lowbrow.

And why are there so many cavemen?

look! cavement texting. craaaaaaazy.

who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make the gecko switch to full-on cockney? he sounds like nigel tufnel

i kind of like the cockney. don't like this crap with the faux nature show guy following him though.

I first saw this one when I was traveling through Prague.

unsurreal!

may 2007? weird. this seems like it happened like, 3.2 years ago.

never saw a bit of this.

Hoping for DVD set in my stocking this Christmas.

misread: A Sitcom about Geir Hongro

Also: Am waiting for Geico mashup wherein cavemen eats gecko.

Maybe the cavemen could also eat anyone who's been to fucking Jared.

I didn't mind the commercials much at first, and even the show was kinda-sorta OK, but after its failure it seems kind of ridiculous that they're back to making cavemen commercials again. Those dudes need to just go away.

not to be the antagonist, but I absolutely love those cavemen (and I hate the lizard). The caveman at the tennis match - classic. The caveman at the airport where I first heard the royksopp song - classic. Whatever the hell this one is that I just found on youtube - fucking class act.

I think what I dig about the caveman is that:
1) He's a caveman
2) He is living in another era
3) He is pissed off and so stupid that he doesn't even realize he is losing his tennis match to billy jean king by 665 points (take a gander at the scoreboard)

hilarity ensues, yada yada yadas, I wonder if the actor really has extremely hairly legs...