Cavemen: Quite Possibly the Shortest-Run Sitcom in History

"They're making the Geico Insurance cavemen into a sitcom," my husband announced to me one morning. I assured him that he must have dreamed it and suggested he get an extra shot in his latte. "No, really. They're actually making an entire show about cavemen." Still not convinced, I bet him a week of laundry, my least favorite chore, that he was mistaken. I didn't believe him until it actually aired tonight.

At first I thought it was another Geico Insurance commercial. Then I looked at the channel guide to see what was supposed to be on, and imagine my chagrin when I realized that my husband was right. I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that there is actually a television show about cavemen in modern-day America, or the fact that I have to fold my husband's boxers just so and arrange it in his drawer in descending order of how much he likes them.

Cavemen is a typical ensemble-type show, starring Bill English, Nick Kroll, and Sam Huntington as a group of cavemen friends who live in the modern day, dealing with typical cavemen-in-modern-times issues. Well, they're sort of caveman issues I suppose, but really they're mostly idiot guy issues. Joel, Nick, and Andy live together and go about their lives like typical young men trying to make their way in the world: going to their entry-level jobs, trying to pick up on women, arguing about whether they should date modern women and stay with the cave. They put up with their annoying landlady, who can't tell them apart (because all cavemen look alike) and wants them to keep their primal grunting to a minimum while she shows apartments, which turns out to be two of them playing a video game. I think this is supposed to be some sort of joke about cavemen who grunt.

I won't provide a detailed account of the whole episode because I'm feeling particularly ADD-y tonight and the show didn't manage to hold my interest enough to allow me to really care about the plot. I will say that while it's worth watching if your only other options are reruns of Saved by the Bell or Jerry Springer. While I found the "So simple a caveman can do it" Geico Insurance campaign mildly amusing as long as I didn't have to see the commercials too many times, there's hardly enough of a premise there for an entire television show. I predict that the show will be dropped after the second episode and it will never be seen again.