Frat Guys, Attorneys at Law

What do you do when you've pigeon-holed yourself into one of the most over-done genres in the book? Re-invent it in cheesy and annoying ways, apparently.

TNT has never been lauded for its original programming (at least not rightly so... The Closer is terrible, peeps, whatever the Emmy voters may say), so I went into it's latest stab at scripted content with fairly low expectations. Franklin & Bash wasn't a total disaster, but overall, it met said expectations.
Having seen and reviewed more legal shows than I can count, it's basically impossible for me to review this kind of show. I've seen every trick, watched every story arc play out, and rolled my eyes at every cliche this genre has to throw at me. For every surprise knockout like the incomparable The Good Wife, there are about 87 The Whole Truths, The Deep Ends, Raising the Bars (hey hey, that lawyer looks familiar! Only with much better hair!), Canterbury's Laws, Harry's Laws, Fairly Legals, and Outlaws. It was way too easy to rattle off that list... Anyway, Franklin & Bash definitely falls into the latter category. It wasn't at the bottom of that heap, but a heap is a heap, no matter where you fall.

The show stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar (yes, the Zac Morris) and Breckin Meyer as a pair of freewheeling best friends who run a podunk law practice together until they get recruited by Malcolm McDowell (an actor who has clearly fallen on very hard times) to join the big leagues. The pilot seems to be setting up character arcs where Peter Bash and Jared Franklin (Gosselaar and Meyer, respectively) will try to retain their laid back, frat guy ways in the fact of corporate overlords, but in the end, it mainly just seemed like a lackluster ploy to add some depth to the frat house. (And when I say "frat house," I pretty much mean frat house. Literally, their house has a hot tub, all manor of video games, alcohol aplenty, hot naked girls, you name it. I didn't see any frat boys specifically, but I assume they were there.)

As heavy-handed and fairly cheesy as the frattiness was, it wasn't entirely unsuccessful. Gosselaar and Meyer had nice chemistry together and really sold the friendship on the screen. The writers (and the network probably more than a little bit) went out of their way to make these guys likable and to force a slew of redeeming qualities on them. I say "force" because it all felt very contrived. It had hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold undertones that I couldn't overlook. Sure, they're a couple of laid back party guys, but they're the guys who really care about their clients and will do whatever it takes to win. In all honesty, I think they would have been much more compelling if they didn't care one bit about their clients but felt a competitive compulsion to win. Sure the latter sounds like something you've seen a million times, but in just about every iteration, the writers end up turning the characters into lovable puppy dogs with a troubled past and six kids to feed, blah, blah, blah. With formula in hand, the writers here have crafted a couple of (they're hoping) likable guys, but ultimately, not terribly interesting guys. What little glimmers of depth they tried to impart fell in lock step with all the formulaic trappings we've seen a million times before. The slacker-ier of the pair (Breckin Meyer) is the son of a great (and I'm guessing serious, austere, cutthroat, and, no doubt, disappointed in his offspring) lawyer who runs some big law firm (you know, Meyer was never hugged as a child, so when he grew up, he was determined to practice law his way, yada, yada, yada). Gosselaar's ex-girlfriend is, wait for it, the prosecutor! Wha?! What a crazy, random happenstance! I. Am. Shocked. To boot, he's still in love with her (as we get to hear all about in Gosselaar's closing arguments during a case as he very cleverly applies his notions of love to the case and his love life (it's as though they happen to overlap!)), and she's engaged to someone else! Dun, dun, dun! Again, utterly shocking. The only way to make an overdone genre work is to tweak the genre itself in an interesting way or to craft truly unique characters to inhabit such a familiar world. Well, if there are two legal tropes I've seen before, it's the little guy lawyer who stands up to the big boys, and the truly caring, truly human lawyer who rails against the heartless corporate guys. In Franklin & Bash, you get both, with very little deviation from the center.

As if the leads' mad cap misadventures weren't enough, the minimally necessary supporting players that round out the cast are equally stereotypical, but even less engaging. Oh, they also represent the faces of color of the show, which, while I'm glad they're on a show at all, would it kill the powers-that-be to give them leading roles? Anyway, as helper people to the main guys, we have the always charming and perky Dana Davis and an actor of Indian descent (I couldn't find a name credit online) playing Pindar, an agoraphobe who lives with the guys and can hardly leave the house. They're both fine in their own ways, but more than anything, I just didn't buy the dynamic among the group. Again, it really felt like, as the writers were piecing together the concept, they decided they needed some faces of color, and an attractive younger woman, and a quirky character and settled here. Neither of the characters felt organic to the story or their surroundings. Over time, I'm sure they'd settle into the roles (roles which, if the writers just saw what I saw, will be reworked), but from the pilot, I wasn't interested enough to really care. They felt like an afterthought mostly, or in Pindar's case, a shameless ploy for comic relief that felt completely ham-fisted and that was neither comedic, nor a relief.

As with just about every review of a genre show, I end up concluding that if I had never seen a show from this genre, I'd probably have enjoyed the show a whole lot better. So let it be with Franklin & Bash. There were aspects of the pilot that worked, and it had some charming moments and ideas, but I found myself hoping it would just end already. Indeed, I started checking how far we were into the show at the 22 minute mark. I couldn't believe it wasn't even half over. That makes is sound far more painful and awful than it really was, but I couldn't help but be bored, what with having seen this show so many times before. What's more, with this kind of a concept, I know exactly what to expect for every episode to come. This show isn't edgy enough to push the envelope and doesn't have enough uniqueness to it to surprise me. The only truly surprising thing is that the networks keep trying to squeeze show after show into an already over-stuffed genre.

At its core, Franklin & Bash does one thing pretty well. The friendship between the two leads is the basis for the show and it works well enough. I believed these two guys were friends and I enjoyed seeing them together, even if I didn't have the urge to chug a beer with them as I kept getting the feeling I was supposed to. That bond is the one saving grace of the show and is the reason viewers may learn to love the show. Without that chemistry, the show would be a total disaster. With that chemistry? It's a harmless fluff piece that, if you've never seen a lawyer show before, only watch law shows, or had a kegger at your apartment last night, you'll find enjoyable. For me? Their dynamic may work well, but not well enough to keep the rest of the show afloat. I was pretty bored throughout, even in spite of a couple of memorable moments, and even the promise of Winona Givens guest starring in the next episode isn't much enticement to give it another episode. Okay, maybe it is. I'll give this show one more episode, but my hopes aren't high. Much like the standards at TNT.

If man-boy antics are your thing, this may very well be your show. To skip to the end of the syllogism, this doesn't appear to be my kind of show.

Pilot Grade: C-