Geico Cavemen Get TV Pilot

Geico Insurance has two very good campaigns going on. The first is the gecko with the Elephant and Castle accent. It’s a cute pun, and it does the job an ad should do – connect the company with the product in the consumer’s mind. The other, the cavemen, is a much broader and potentially much bigger campaign, “Geico insurance, so easy a caveman could do it.” But the cavemen live in modern times, dress and act like anyone else, and in one ad, visit a therapist. Now, it seems the cavemen are going to get a shot at a TV series.

There have been dumber ideas for a show. Open the television listings for any night of the week, and there are at least three really bad premises for entertainment. And one needn’t even mention reality TV, talent contests and games shows too stupid for a fifth grader. Looking at the last 50 years of television, there have been even worse.

What is potentially very interesting in “Cavemen” is the twist it can take on the usual “humor through the outsider’s eyes.” Touchstone Television, which is putting together 14 pilots including the caveman idea, said the idea would be to show the cavemen and their “struggle with prejudice on a daily basis as they strive to live the lives of normal thirty-somethings in 2007 Atlanta.”

Because of its history and because of flaws in the human species, racism and other forms of irrational bigotry persist in America (to say nothing of elsewhere). In the first part of the 21st century, the Bull Connor bigots have been put to rout but there remain more subtle biases, indignities and insults. A chance to tackle these with sympathetic characters (the cavemen are pretty likable in the ads) who belong to no living ethnic group could be refreshing and interesting.

The only worry one has about such a series is in excessively high expectations. The ads, 30-second pieces, are single jokes that work in small doses. Sustaining something for 25 minutes (those commercials eat into everything) is another matter. All the same, one looks forward to the episode where they have to insure their car. Odds are they won’t go to State Farm.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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