Despite ABC's affection for "Cavemen," which premiered Tuesday on Channel 5, any sitcom about Neanderthals as an oppressed minority in homo sapiens America has very limited potential. The question regarding the series has never been "Will it be good?" so much as "Just how bad will it be?" And the answer is, "Cavemen" is pretty bad. It's definitely among the stalest pieces of bread in the loaf, which already includes "Two and a Half Men" and "According to Jim." And it's certainly the most tasteless.

Oddly enough, ABC aired a re-shot pilot on Tuesday, since the original pilot was offensive as well as unfunny. But some of the worst material made the new cut, as the cavemen face the same stereotyping as black people - that they're good in bed, for instance, or that they all look the same to white people. Also, the lead caveman, Joel (Bill English) takes flak from his caveman roommate Nick (Nick Kroll) for dating a white woman - excuse me, a "sape." Nick, a bohemian know-it-all, is a fount of lines such as "Crave the cave." It's as if the show is delivering retro black jokes thinly veiled as cavemen jokes.