I really wanted to give this show a chance. I really did! It seems we watch so many police procedurals, it
doesn’t leave a lot of room for other kinds of dramas. We like lawyer shows though, like The Defenders,
which was canceled, and we got tired of Harry’s
Law when it devolved into yet one more David E. Kelley legal/liberal
potboiler. That doesn’t leave a lot of
other courtroom dramas, so, on my brother Terry’s recommendation, I gave TNT's Franklin & Bash a try, from the same
network that gave us the excellent The
Closer. Going in, I wasn't a huge fan of Mark-Paul Gosselaar, but I had liked Breckin Meyer after seeing him in the movie Rat Race.
The first episode of Franklin & Bash we saw was rather
lightweight and frothy, and to me, it was reminiscent of The Defenders, so I put a bunch on the DVR and kept pushing it, and
Mom kept resisting. I finally put an
episode on, our second, and Mom made the comment that it wasn’t “real,” and I
know what she means by that. It seems like we’re
watching an obviously scripted TV show.
At no time did this show seem like something that might happen in real
life.
Now I actually like some frivolous, insubstantial, comedic material; in fact, I like the show Psych. Even The Defenders had a bit of this bouncy, fun-loving atmosphere about it, and we liked that show as well. But what finally made us turn this one off was its
moral quality. Clint Eastwood’s rather grizzled but noble
character Walt Kowalski from the movie Gran Torino
would have grunted at it and shut it off.
The second episode we saw showed the boys stealing their friend Pindar’s
collectible Star Wars Light Sabers to use in court so they would be purposely
thrown in jail for contempt where they could hand out their business
cards. When the judge realized this, she
placed them under house arrest instead. But this wasn't actually a huge problem for them.
 |
| Not a night club: This is their house. |
Their substantial house is set up like a night club, and Pindar, an Indian
geek, lives there with them (probably having something to do with the fact that
he’s on meds and suffers Agoraphobia) and a black woman named Carmen lives
there too, a former con artist who still has feelings for her con artist
boyfriend Dante. When he shows up with a bag of stolen money, even though
she hates him, she sleeps with him. Not
that anyone noticed; they were too busy partying and getting drunk. Of course Lily Garrett, the femme fatale
niece of their boss, shows up, and soon after, so do the police (since
Franklin’s ankle bracelet went off when he took the trash around). The police search the house and find a bag of pot in Lily's suitcase. In the middle of trying to hide the cash and
any more pot she might have (some of which she apparently cooked into muffins), Bash casually
sleeps with her, much to the chagrin of his ex-wife attorney who is prosecuting
Ms. Garrett. Since they can’t leave the
house, they convince Pindar to represent Lily for them. He gets nervous about leaving the house, but
decides to try the cannabis muffins, and it calms him down enough to show off
in the courtroom. Of course, when
Franklin and Bash tell him by phone they were regular muffins, it ruins the
placebo effect for him, but it doesn’t really matter, because by this time he
has started questioning a sex expert on the stand, using the kind of language
I’m sure teenagers think is cool! But
we’d finally had enough, and I removed the rest of these shows from my
DVR. Who needs to watch a show about a
couple of congenial lawyers who are just fine with drugs, alcohol, and casual
sex? Representing such people is, of
course, a lawyer’s job, but you know you’re in trouble in the morality
department when your main characters of happy-go-lucky lawyers live the same
cushy, liberal, and criminal existence!
 |
| "It's his fault!" |
The type of people who like Howard Stern's radio show and have no problem with characters who drink a lot, have casual sex, and live like frat boys, can
stick up for the show. You can call me
prudish and close-minded if you want to, but I’ll do the same thing the
character of Walt Kowalski would do:
Give a disapproving grunt and turn the damned thing off!
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