Where the Douchbags Are: The Franklin and Bash Vegas VIP Package From Hell

In the two years I've been writing this blog, I've recommended more than 20 places in Las Vegas where you can pretty much avoid dealing with the douchebag element that haunts most Las Vegas establishments. I've tried to help you steer clear of the bro-ed out elements that infest The Strip's more commercial attractions, but there comes a time when a man has to face his deepest fears and stare the beast in the face.

And there is nothing in Las Vegas that encompasses the perfect ideal of douchebaggery more fully than the Franklin and Bash VIP Package that the Luxor is currently promoting.

Brought to my attention by VegasChatter, one of my absolute favorite Las Vegas blogs, The Bashover VIP All Inclusive Package sounds like a dark Lovecraftian nightmare made flesh and promoted with an over abundance of hashtagged Tweets.

Full disclosure: I've never seen an episode of Franklin and Bash (and while I am in the market for a new "hate-watching" candidate, it sounds like Aaron Sorkin's new HBO show The Newsroom will finally fill the Aaron Sorkin's ego-sized hole left  in my heart by the cancelation of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip 5 years ago),  but as far as I can tell it's about a couple of cool guy bro lawyers (broyers? broterrnys?) played by Zach Morris and the dude from Road Trip. Promos for the show feature scenes where the lawyers make out with clients on the witness stand, admit that they're drunk in front of judges, get attractive women to take their tops off to win caes, and call other lawyers "lame" for raising objections (and doing their jobs like professional adults), essentially acting like entitled pricks who treat the courtroom like a frat house.

Of course there is audience out there for this kind of idiotic garbage. While I fully buy into the idea that we're living through a golden-age of television, an era when visionary, deeply intelligent, and artistic programming like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Louie, Community, Girls, and 30 Rock have brought the auteur theory to the small screen, there are still many hours of programming to fill on many channels. The cream of televisions crop might be creamier than ever, but the medium still allows for a lot of base level stupidity, which explains the prominence of shows starring the Kardashians or Real Housewives and basic cable mediocrities like F and B.

USA and TNT seem to be competing for the most banal show with the most generic title, and while Suits, White Collar, Rizzoli and Isles, Fairly Legal, Necessary Roughness, Royal Pains, Common Law, Covert Affairs, Burn Notice (featuring, in its defense, B-movie God Bruce Campbell), and the Dallas reboot (which is insane to me, by the way... it's 2012 and we're allowing a Dallas remake to happen?), but Franklin and Bash seems to be aiming so low on the totem pole of stupididty, it's almost heroic. Perhaps normally classy co-stars Beau Bridges and Malcolm Macdowell are actually dead and Franklin and Bash is their personal Hell as they are being forced to atone for sins we can only imagine. This may be a pretty existential explanation for the show, but makes more sense than a television executive, even one who works for TNT, green-lighting a show that was almost certainly pitched as "it's like Entourage, but with lawyers."

Anyway, The Bashover VIP All Inclusive Package includes such bro-dacious features as 24 hour all you can eat passes to Luxor's mediocre buffet, two tickets to the violently hated Criss Angel Believe (starring the Franklin or Bash of magicians), two admission passes to the Titanic Exhibit (getting that sinking feeling yet?), day spa passes (I have no snark for this, this sounds lovely, actually), VIP passes to Cathouse (so you can be as misogynistic as the cool lawyers from the show), admission to LAX Nightclub (where you can practice your awesome Pick Up Artist moves you learned by reading The Game), VIP check in privileges, and a "special gift" (even money that it's that Axe Body Spray that makes you smell like chocolate). Notice the package does NOT include admission to Luxor's Savile Row, an exclusive club that attempts to attract an interesting and eclectic clientele (whose the discerning gatekeepers wouldn't let you within a mile of the club if they found out you "got totally hooked up by the VIP Bashup package, bro").

If I was a more dedicated journalist (or had more money in my bank account), I'd sign up for the Bashup Package and dig in deep into the belly of the Chocolate-body spray smelling Beast to give you a hilarious and insightful warts and all account of what it's like to get VIP status with a package that ties in with a basic cable courtroom comedy drama thing. But instead I'll avoid the situation entirely and head over to Dino's for a stiff drink.

That said, if any Vegas hotels end up offering a "Sanctimonious Sorkin" VIP weekend, complete with walking and talking tours of the city where we all pontificate on how all other Vegas VIP packages are not nearly as intelligent as the one we're on, I will totally hate-participate in that.

 Fist bump, bro!