Jason Alexander


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Alexander will play Carter, a wealthy CEO who seeks to put the titular lawyers on retainer, but his unethical behavior puts the duo in hot water.

"He's basically a Bernie Madoff kind of guy who screwed everybody rather heartlessly," Alexander tells TVGuide.com exclusively. "He finds out he has very little time on the planet and has a 'come to Jesus' transformation. He hires Franklin and Bash to keep him out of trouble when he decides to distribute the wealth in the way he's going to. He's going to screw a lot of his fellow bad guys in order to do it."

Franklin & Bash stars Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar as two young, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants street lawyers who make major waves when they are recruited to join an esteemed, buttoned-down law firm by its leader (Malcolm McDowell).

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Alexander first took interest in directing an episode of the show after watching the pilot. "It was so far ahead of the game with the pilot because it was a good legal script and the two guys had a lot of chemistry going in," he says. "The show had a lot of style. You could see that they knew what their show is the way you normally would a season or two into it."

Alexander's schedule didn't allow him to take any work behind the camera, so he agreed to do a guest spot. And while he believes the show is wildly funny ("It's M*A*S*H at a law firm," he says), his character isn't likely to pull any George Costanza-like laughs.

"He is very cold and calculated," Alexander says. "There are several layers of persona to this guy, and he does some pretty outlandish and silly things, as a man who has very little time to live might. But there's nothing terribly comedic about him. The thing George had that made him palatable was that George was outrageous, but he was aware of his own outrageousness and his own foibles. This guy is completely not. I think you will laugh at him and what comes of him, but he's not a comedic character."

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Alexander, who currently has a private detective drama in development at CBS, is only slated to appear in one episode, and its air date has not been determined. But Alexander has some very bold predictions about the show's possibility for success.

"You do yourself a disservice to not watch Breckin and Mark-Paul at work," he says. "I think they are going to be one of most beloved teams in TV comedy for a while if the show can get enough face time. They have a magical rapport that I haven't seen in a comedy series, let alone a legal series. It's something not to be missed."

Franklin & Bash is scheduled to premiere this summer.