Friday, March 23, 2007

"Can the Geico cavemen make it in prime time?"

No, no, no.

Just when you thought movie remakes had pushed cinematic entertainment to all-time lows, here's this news. As if there's not enough shit entertainment out there, Geico apparently believes we need a 30-min commercial for their services.

Do you know how expensive Geico is in South Carolina? Extremely; I had Geico for the whole time I lived in Virginia because it was relatively cheap. Moved to South Carolina, the payments jumped by almost 200%. For the first few months of my time living here, I saw Geico commercials made especially for the South Carolina market; they didn't last long, mind you, but I saw them, and they were practically begging for South Carolinians to try Geico. I'd love to see some numbers on how high or low their percentage of covered South Carolina drivers is.

This means, of course, that for the show to work, you'd have to believe that enough people trust in the Geico product. And, if things have remained the same since I tried to switch to Geico from one state to another, that could exclude the whole state of South Carolina.

Plus, I just can't believe that this Geico cavemen show would be that funny, or that good. As a litmus test, I mentally plugged the Geico cavemen into a variety of sitcom milestones, in place of the original protagonists:

- The "Fresh Prince" episode where Will & Carlton are arrested for DWB;
- the "Family Ties" episode where Alex is on drugs;
- the "Taxi" episode where Reiger brings his old dog to the dispatch;
- the Seinfeld "Contest" episode;
- the "Friends" episode where that one chick gets married, and the other chick is pregnant; and,
- any one of the thousands of episodes of "Night Court" where they had to finish so many cases by midnight, or something terrible would happen.

In each reimagining, I moderately chuckled at the idea of cavemen being stuck in these situations, but the fun stopped there. And those are cleverly written episodes ... how funny are the writers going to be that do get hired for the caveman show?

I can't imagine anything good coming of this.

3 comments:

Rev. Joshua said...

The upside to that story is that I now know Royksopp is responsible for that groovy little tune when the caveman is in the airport; I had assumed that it was a musak-style interpretation of the classic Naked Eyes "Always Something There To Remind Me."

And sure, "Studio 60" can't get a clean run, but we'll put some cavemen on for half an hour.

Ron said...

That's because Studio 60 was garbage (and yes, I watched the first several episodes and actually gave it a fair shot. It blew).

My idea for a new reality show would be to send a van of old people to Ryan's family steakhouse but only have one plate for the Mega-bar in the whole place.

Nate said...

Worst episode of Punk'd EVER!!!