We liked the ads, Geico. We really did. Even though
some of them at this point probably don’t need another repeat airing.
But when we heard that ABC was going to create a series based on the Geico cavemen, we had mixed emotions. On one hand, stretching out a funny joke for 30 minutes was probably a bad idea ("Saturday Night Live" has problems doing it for five minutes at a time). On the other hand, … OK, so the emotions weren’t exactly mixed.
Then came the news that the show's producers
wouldn’t be showing the first episode in advance to critics. That’s not always a bad thing. Usually critics will declare a show must be terrible if it doesn’t get screened for critics. This is only partly true. A movie can be truly bad, yet studios don’t need to screen it because it has a huge built-in audience that doesn’t care what middle-aged print media writers think – just think of every teen slasher movie that’s been made in the past five years.
[...]
Cavemen are, by their very nature, extremely insecure. Anyone who has seen them in Geico's auto insurance commercials knows that they take any slight very seriously, whether it be from their shrinks or from television newscasters.