Franklin & Bash – Gay jokes & random filler

This episode attempts to have its cake and eat it too — meaning that the subplot about Damien’s old college friend Lance (Tuc Watkins) is at first entirely played for laughs and gay jokes. But in the end, they try to generate a real emotional response with that revelation about whom Lance was really interested in, before obviously closing it off with another mild gay joke. Does it work? Mostly — there aren’t too many of those stupid scenes at first, and Reed Diamond is actually capable of showing all the various emotions Damien must be feeling. Although it was just odd the way they forced Malcolm McDowell‘s Stanton to be so over-the-top accepting of the situation.

The best of the gay jokes was probably the sequence of Hannah’s gay test of “Cooper recognition” (mini, Bradley, Anderson), that led to Stanton’s own test (Dancing with the Stars, Kathy Griffin’s hair color) — meaning it’s all arbitrary criteria in general. Not bad. Obviously real legal work isn’t the point of this show, but cleverness is everything. Some of the “red herring twists” needed in the F&B format were forgettable (like the relationship with the ex-wife), and perhaps the ultimate twist of Lance being interested in Damien was a bit overly foreshadowed, but this isn’t atypical for the show.

As for the other plot, this week Franklin & Bash seemed to have the less important/interesting story. Oddly enough, that works better, because we get a chance to develop the normally ill-defined other characters. The other guest star playing the seemingly no-nonsense judge Derek Kohler (Don McManus) is probably just a vaguely familiar character actor to most, unlike some of the previous episodes this season. In terms of the case itself, all the talk about dates is probably where F&B is weakest: legal minutiae. It’s boring to keep track of those details, and it rarely matters — this time, it didn’t either. The build up of Peter and DA ex-girlfriend Janie flirting until the eventual hookup did demonstrate some chemistry, but it’s hard to really care about their relationship.

Sometimes the show gets cute in its meta-references and callouts — having the judge’s secretly evil fiance use the phrase “patented F&B bluff” with the set of  switched tickets led to the most “Franklin & Bash” level of silliness of the episode, with that “tricking a witness into yelling something out inadvertently” nonsense. But I suppose I’m glad for any character growth at all, and any time I don’t completely anticipate the twists makes for a more interesting episode.

Clacked by Jeremy Fogelman
on Jul 04, 2012 @ 02:14 EST5EDT