Jonathan Storm | Hard to say who's the stupidest

A big mean bear has the Cro-Magnons, who really aren't

that

terrible, cowering back in the cave, while a bunch of modern nitwits show no shame zooming along in the HOV lane.

ABC introduces two sitcoms tonight, the controversial Cavemen (8 p.m.) and the so-far-unnoticed Carpoolers (8:30).

Buffeted by criticism that Cavemen was racist (not to mention stupid), ABC decided the pilot that's been circulating among insiders since May would be held for a few weeks and that a new first episode would be broadcast tonight.

But everybody was working so hard to make it so good, the story goes, that it just wasn't ready in time for anyone to see in advance.

Apparently, one of the unattractive traits that cavemen have, aside from their hairy bodies and thick skulls, is that they don't always tell the truth. The idea of a sitcom being reworked to the last minute is ludicrous.

It's difficult to understand why the network would be so afraid of harsh public criticism. The din of disapproval is already so loud, even a lousy second effort would probably quiet it a little bit.

The sitcom, for those of you who have actually been living in a cave, is based on the delightful Geico insurance ads that are demeaning to cavemen, the conceit being that they still walk among us.

"How could you make a TV show out of an advertisement?" indignant critics cried.

Well, a lot of thought and money goes into advertising, and basing a show on characters that emerged from that effort and expense is no more bogus on its face than making up ridiculous excuses for human beings out of thin air, like the men in Carpoolers.

What matters is what you do with the characters you select, and in Cavemen's pilot, the producers turned them into stand-ins for real minorities.

A lot of people thought, more pointedly, that they were just cheap substitutes for African Americans and that the show was racially insulting. Not an unjustifiable conclusion when the three cavemen argue about whether it's OK to use the epithet for their species, Maggers, among themselves.

The brain trust at ABC decided that maybe it would be better to make the cavemen less socially relevant, and then they decided not to let anybody see the product of their thinking, leading some people to believe that the real cavemen in this saga are the ABC executives.

In the pilot, the trio (all played by actors who did not appear in the commercials) consisted of an earnest fellow engaged to a pretty Homo sapiens girl, his dim-bulb brother, and his sarcastic friend.

It's hard to imagine viewers actually blocking time to hang out with this crew, but they are far from the least pleasant characters to show up on TV this fall.

Laird, Gracen, Aubrey and Dougie, the carpoolers, come much closer to that characterization, and the distaste they engender begins with their ridiculous names. It gets worse. Gracen has a son named Marmaduke.

This foursome drives back and forth to work in a carpool lane that is magically devoid of almost any cars but theirs, bickering about sex and manliness.

Jerry O'Connell (Jerry Maguire, Crossing Jordan) takes his career down another notch as the most obnoxious of the four, a divorced dentist. Little-known Fred Goss plays a husband who worries that his wife (Faith Ford) makes more money than he does.

Ford's the only ray of sunshine in this soggy exercise, though the person who plays Aubrey's couch-potato wife is the cleverest actor.

All you ever see is his/her lower legs and feet, propped at the end of a La-Z-Boy, so when that actor goes for future auditions, he or she won't have to explain any involvement in the wreck that is Carpoolers.

Television

Cavemen

Tonight at 8

on 6ABC

Carpoolers

Tonight at 8:30 on 6ABC