Premiering Tonight: "Carpoolers" and "Cavemen"

By Jason Snell – October 2, 2007

Cavemen (ABC, 8 PT/ET): Cro-Magnons are a separate race in 21st-century America. They wear our clothing and go to our cookouts — rumor has it they even buy our car insurance — but something seems not right about them. It would be easier for nice cave-guy Joel (Bill English) if he didn’t have to deal with his dim bulb cave-brother Jamie (Sam Huntington) and his angry cave-buddy Nick (Nick Kroll). It would also help if the racism and prejudice that the Cavemen faced wasn’t so obviously a direct mapping of our society’s existing racist traits.

Carpoolers (ABC, 8:30 PT/ET): Four guys (Fred Goss, Jerry O’Connell, Jerry Minor, Tim Peper) carpool together, with their individual stories crossing over in various (and hopefully hilarious) ways. One of them is recently divorced and owns no furniture. One’s threatened by his wife’s business success, when he should be more concerned about the fact that his son’s kind of an idiot. One’s a happy newlywed. And if my math is right, there’s another one, too. But if he doesn’t end up making more of an impression, it may be time to kick him out of the carpool.