Having at last reached the end of Tolstoy’s novel, the book is finally being closed on Franklin & Bash, TNT’s epic tale of man’s constant struggle against the laws of God and nature, and how—if humanity hopes to scratch its name into the very face of the Earth, to leave its mark, to scream aloud that it was here, that we lived and we breathed in the sun and rain, in both drought and flood, in the promise of heaven or threat of hell—then sometimes those laws must be subverted by a couple of bros in cool suits. It’s a fight we make every single day of our existence, and it’s one Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer made every summer since 2011. But their battle is now at an end. Ours must go on without them.
According to Deadline, the ratings for Franklin & Bash have gradually been in decline over the years, much like man’s power to bend the land to his will and make the wacky closing arguments that save their trials at the last instant. The show’s fourth season opener had around 1.25 million viewers, down 60 percent from the premiere the previous year. And by the finale, Franklin & Bash had fewer than 1 million people watching—though Nielsen obviously does not take into account the numbers of people it had touched.
No, it cannot measure those who have learned that every man is either Franklin or he is Bash, and that the alchemy that is created when they join forces is what powers the world. There is no box for that, else Franklin and Bash would have already created it.
My friends, we have Franklined. Long have we Bashed. And even now, in our darkest hour of TNT summer programming, we will persevere. Indeed, that is the eternal yin-and-yang—the very Franklin-and-Bash of life.