Franklin & Bash


Frat-boy lawyers: Franklin & Bash.

Monday, FX, 8.30pm

Malcolm McDowell is one of those actors who seems utterly incapable of knocking back any sort of work. So while he has done some legendary stuff (A Clockwork Orange, Caligula) and plenty of fun stuff (Entourage, Metalocalypse), he has also done some unmitigated garbage. Exhibit A is this frat boy fantasy of what it might be like to be a lawyer. Our ostensible heroes are obnoxious young attorneys Jared Franklin (Breckin Meyer) and Peter Bash (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), who spend their days pulling ridiculous courtroom stunts and their nights partying with bikini babes. They're encouraged in this by their ever-so-groovy old boss, Stanton Infeld (McDowell). Tonight, Infeld lets them move in to his spectacular beach house, which has a great big deck from which they can ogle the local lovelies. One of these is an Australian kinesiologist (Nicky Whelan), who gives Bash the brush-off only for him to tell her that she shouldn't reject him until she's seen the size of his deck. Get it? God, it's awful. Anyway, Franklin and Bash are soon up to their usual stunts in the courtroom, only now they have to report to a new boss, played by Heather Locklear. Infeld, for his part, spends most of the episode telling tales of exotic travels in a manner too reminiscent of Seinfeld's Mr Peterman (try sitting through it without checking to see whether there's a Seinfeld repeat on). Everything gets resolved in time for a beachside party with scantily clad hotties. Well, everything but a couple of nagging questions. Why couldn't McDowell just have waited five minutes for a better show to come along? And how on earth did this one just get green-lit for a fourth season?