This fall ABC offers a choice: Watch a team of cunning ironists slip past social conventions with humor and lady-luring dance moves or wince through the bumblings of some dudes who give in to impulse, invite shame, and antagonize the females. One group is a trio of troglodytes—literally, with furry backs and cantilevered brows—and the other is a country-clubbing foursome who think they have mastered the universe. So which is which?
The more upstanding citizens appear in Cavemen, an arch, nuanced showcase for Joel, his brother, Andy, and best friend, Nick (Bill English, Sam Huntington, and Nick Kroll, respectively). I admit that I can't tell them apart, and I'm playing into the running gag—it's a satire about race, seen through the jaundiced eyes of the oppressed, who prove more evolved than their oppressors. You first saw these cavemen refuting their stereotypes in Geico commercials—slumped on the therapist's couch, taking a time-out from a penthouse party, or squawking via satellite on a cable news show.
In the preview pilot, with more minutes to play with, a love story emerges, as Joel wins the blonde but not her old man's approval. He's the classic Newhartian straight man, dogged by sidekicks who disrupt the status quo while he pays the price. The overeducated cynic Nick appropriates the "Cro-Magger" slur for fun, though Joel protests that he is just perpetuating the insult. His brother, a lovable oaf à la John C. Reilly, crashes a country- club hoedown and gets asked by an adventurous deb if he knows how to boogie. "Does a seagull eat corn chips?" he replies.
Meanwhile, the brash CEOs of Big Shots are not gate-crashers but dues-payers. Think of it as Sex and the City with Y chromosomes. The postcoital recaps and rapid-fire double entendres occur not in some SoHo bistro but on a Westchester golf course. The com- padres reveal to one another the naughty proclivities of a mistress, a mishap with a truck-stop tranny, and the real reason the boss had such nice things to say about one of their wives. That's a lot of sharing for the executive set, as most guys would entrust all that to one blood brother and not a passel of self-involved connivers.
But Big Shots deserves a big shot. It's got sex (witness the Joshua Malina character's insatiable partner for nooners) and soul (as when Michael Vartan's character lets rip a Jerry Maguire–style tirade). With Christopher Titus and Dylan McDermott cracking wise, they turn the kind of campy misdeeds seen on Desperate Housewives into something racy.
If the clever cavemen prove they've discovered more about the world than just fire, these business bumblers can't seem to learn that every time you touch something hot, you get burned. Sorry, Mr. Darwin.
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