Pilot Reviews Cavemen and Carpoolers

The reviews of the fall pilots continues with what ABC is advertising as a "Man Date", I know that some men are bad at planning dates, but this is just embarrassing.

CAVEMEN

Well, I was actually looking forward to this show.  I love the commercials.  Unfortunately, the actors from the commercials aren't in the show.  Sadly, what works brilliantly in a 30 second spot fails miserably in a 30 minute show.  In the commercials, one of the cavemen takes huge umbrage to the portrayal of his people in the Geico commercials, and his sarcastic response to the situation is hilarious.  In the show, they make Nick more of a Sape (short for Homo Sapian) hater than a Caveman defender.  It's not funny, it's a little sad actually.  Speaking of funny, I wonder if they even attempted for funny in this show.  Generally that's the point for sitcoms, but I didn't laugh at all during the episode.  I was greatly disappointed, and will most likely just wait for more commercials to get my caveman fix.

Interesting fact:  This is the second show that was based on a commercial.  Bob the talking baby got a television show after pitching for an Internet business.  That show failed miserably, but luckily, Bob was able to get another job as the pitch man, er, baby, for Quiznos.

Pilot Grade: 0%

CARPOOLERS

When you have two television shows in one hour, you hope that at least one of them is good.  Sadly for ABC Tuesday nights, such is not the case here.  While I'm a fan of Jerry O'Connell from his fine, fine work on that awesome television show Sliders, he's not the greatest actor in the world.  He could probably do alright in a comedic role on a sitcom, after all he was really good in Jerry McGuire, but it would require better writing, and a much better situation than this one.  I really don't know how this even got green-lit.  Is there anything worse than driving to work?  Not much.  So why in the world would you think that the drive to work is a good place to stage a television show?  The characters aren't very interesting, and the pilot did a very poor job of making them seem at all realistic.  For the second consecutive supposed comedy I failed to laugh.  At least in this show, I could tell they were jokes, unlike in Cavemen.  Sadly, they still weren't funny.  At least they tried though.

Interesting fact: Fred Goss who plays Gracen was last on the ABC comedy Sons and Daughters which was a largly improv type show and despite not being watched by many people was a very enjoyable show that has become a cult favorite.  I don't see the same for this show.

Pilot Grade: 7%

Until Next Time, tonight is the pilot of Pushing Daisies, one of the most anticipated shows of the year