The Song Fight Bulletin Board

This thread is speculative so far. I'm seeing some preliminary advertising for this show, and wondering what everyone thinks is going to become of this series and what it will actually be like when it's on the air. Is anyone going to make a priority to catch it once it's on? Every time I make a point to watch a new show, it doesn't turn out well for me. Either I don't like it, so I go away, disappointed, or I like it, and nobody else does, so it gets canceled, and I'm even more disappointed than if it had just been bad. This doesn't look totally great to me, but it does make me at least somewhat curious. So anyway, the main question is...

The GEICO commercials were arguably pretty good, as far as commercials go, (though, in my opinion, nowhere close to ads for Anheuser-Busch, or even FedEx), but is there enough material there to make into a TV show? Or did you think they were even good commercials in the first place?

I thought some of the ads were hilarious, and most were in the okay to good range. Probably the highlight for me was being introduced to Röyksopp in the ad where he's on the moving walkway in the airport. Apparently, the same fellow that developed the ads has been tapped to develop the TV series, so, in theory, we shouldn't have to contend with the thought of someone else's ideas about humor clashing with his concept. The thing is, we're no longer looking at the situation presented in all the commercials. We'll need some different plot ideas to move this along. And is it possible for advertisers to become television writers? Has anything like this been attempted before, or is this a new experiment? I can't remember the last time a commercial was so successful that they wanted to make it into a series. So as far as I know, this is unprecedented. Perhaps someone else will like to weigh in on the subject.

P.S. For your convenience, someone has compiled all of the ads up to a certain point here.

The cavemen were designed to be funny for fifteen seconds, basically. And they are, but I don't see it working for much longer than that. When someone attempts to stretch something from a short medium to a much longer one, the material almost always suffers.

Just look at all the awful movies based on SNL sketches. At least the sketches were designed to be funny for minutes instead of seconds.

Royksopp are great and that song worked really well in the ad.
I had no idea they were making this into a show.
I am skeptical.
I'm with Tonamel on the SNL comparison. Even so the SNL sketches usually tried to stretch the joke for too long as it was. At least since I got out of high school they did.
On the other hand, if you go to some site called the "Caveman's Crib" there is a song by one of my friends, Arthur Loves Plastic, on the Caveman's Ipod. That should be worth something, I think, heh.
-bill

Hmm...I was just thinking, "Ah yes, those movies. That's a good analogy. Oh, wait...I definitely never saw Superstar or A Night at the Roxbury." I guess that makes me lucky? Were there any others? I remember both of those being fairly heavily promoted in their day, and I watched SNL at the time, but I never saw either one. Oh, didn't they do one based on The Ladies' Man? So the only ones I can think of are all from the same era, and I never got around to watching any of them.

As far as the Caveman's Crib thing, that's how I found Röyksopp. I fell in love with that song the first time I saw that commercial, and it bothered me to death that I had no idea who it was by or how to find out. Then they advertised on Facebook or something, and I looked at the Caveman's iPod and bam! I'll have to go check that out again, if your friend is on there.

Well, the obvious successes to come out of SNL are Wayne's World and The Blues Brothers. Turning sketches into movies doesn't ALWAYS fail. Other SNL movies include:

Blues Brothers 2000
Wayne's World 2
Coneheads
It's Pat...the Movie
Stuart Saves His Family
A Night at the Roxbury
Superstar
The Ladies Man

Not exactly a noteworthy list, is it? The only other sketch-into-movie I can think of is Zoolander, which was based on a sketch from the VH1 Music Awards, or something like that.

Wow. I've honestly never seen any of those.

I suppose if I went on dates, I might see more movies.

The one critic article I looked at seemed to think that Cavemen may be the first show "replaced" this season, despite starting so late, so they didn't have much hope... so I'm making it a priority to see that first one, just because there may not be any more we get to see.

I thought the cavemen idea worked very well as a commercial, partly because when you see the cavemen, you immediately know the company name. There have been lots of clever commercials where everybody can describe the commercial, but nobody's sure just what company it's for. So they are very good commercials in that sense, but somebody at Geico has obviously been tuned into that from the very start.

I think the cavemen idea could be developed into a funny series with some things to say about prejudice and profiling and all that, but from the one article I've seen, apparently the show they actually came up with isn't very good...

Charles (KA)

<< Fan of the Cavemen. Im hoping its funny. (my apostrophe button came off on my laptop)

I watched it, and did not laugh very much. "Keep your penis in your genus" was the best line. I have no desire to watch it again.

ROCK!

Glenn Case

Lord of Oats wrote:Hmm...I was just thinking, "Ah yes, those movies. That's a good analogy. Oh, wait...I definitely never saw Superstar or A Night at the Roxbury." I guess that makes me lucky? Were there any others?

"It's Pat" is widely regarded as one of the worst comedic movies of all time, and apparently it's so bad it's not even appreciable as a bad movie.

I saw it in a bargain bin for $3 once, back when I loved collecting DVDs. I didn't buy it.

But Ween is in it!