Once upon a time, an executive at ABC headed home after a long day of sucking on the back nine, taking with him a load of TV scripts to pour over during a scotch and water and the latest episode of Lost. As he threw the 14th script in the fireplace to keep his study warm, along with the sheets of $20 bills, a commercial for Geico popped up on his television before he could hit his TiVo fast-forward. “Oh man, I love these guys!” he said, as he turned to script number 15, titled Cavemen, and history was made, as one of the most awful shows ever to grace television got an instant greenlight.
At least that’s how I heard it went down. Seems perfectly plausible.
Cavemen was an awful show, but lately I’ve been thinking that maybe that golfing ABC exec wasn’t totally off his rocker when considering a commercial as a good premise for a full-out TV show. In particular, the Capital One Vikings.
You may have seen the barbarians in their earliest form, when they’d be organizing intense raids on unsuspecting credit card victims, only those carrying the aforementioned card being saved from certain, grisly pillaging and dismemberment:
Then the poor guys lost their jobs and had to find new ones:
The latest commercials have taken a different twist, featuring the Vikings taking advantage of the Capital One rewards points, having one hell of a time figuring out what to spend them on:
The cavemen commercials were clever, but they were never funny. These are funny! Here’s another:
Cavemen‘s failure may have forever ruined any chance for commercial characters being considered as a premise for a TV show, but this is one I’d be up for considering. Here’s a possible premise for you: the largest credit card company in the world, Uppercase Two, is losing money. In order to fix the situation, the company’s CEO — who’s actually the Viking god Loki — calls upon the god Odin for help “like the old days.” To both help and punish Loki, Odin sends him one-hundred Viking warriors from the ninth century. Hilarity ensues!
Hey, I didn’t say it was going to be perfect. Meh, maybe vikings should just stay in commercials. Now pirates, on the other hand….
Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Mar 08, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
