New Television

Last night I sat down to check out the new fall shows, particularly ABC's Man Date (or whatever they're calling it) hour of programming. So first up was the long anticipated Geico spinoff called Cavemen.

The biggest problem with the show is that they tiptoe around all of the biggest points of conflict, presumably in the name of being family friendly. In the episode last night they had a scene where one of the cavemens' neighbors clearly had trouble telling them apart. But instead of having the caveman press the issue and actually become stereotypical angry minority by saying "I bet we all look alike to you", they just inserted awkward pauses and sheepish nods. If the show is going to take off they need to be a little more edgy in those scenes. They did it in a few other scenes with Andy's girlfriend, a homo sapien, by having his fellow caveman and roommate Joel being adamantly against dating regular women. His line was "keep your penis in your genus", and then later when Andy's girlfriend was found out to have dated a few cavemen before him they lightly touched on the idea that she might have a caveman fetish. It was decent, but its potential was definitely not filled.

The other show I watched was ABC's Carpoolers. This show was beyond awful. The premise is four guys that work at an office park and share a ride to and from work every day. The actual workplace is never shown so all the show's conflicts have to take place in the car or at home. So when the conflict takes place at home, the discussion of said conflict must take place in the car.
Last night's conflict was about one guy's wife and the $200 toaster she bought. So the entire episode revolved around four men driving in a car bitching about a toaster. And that is all you need to know.

I also watched CBS' Cane last night with Jimmy Smits. Its about a Miami-based Cuban family
that owns a sugar cane business, but also dabbles in organized crime. It was a quality show, but I am not going to get my hopes up. CBS has a way of striking down every show I ever watch.

And I should mention that I watched The Big Bang Theory on DVR last night as well. That show is actually pretty funny. Its a little heavy-handed, but it works out.