Like many avid television fans, I have been enthralled this summer with the freshman USA show Mr. Robot. Starring Rami Malek and Christian Slater, Mr. Robot depicts a socially awkward and drug-dependent computer hacker as he is recruited to join a shadowy organization attempting to take down a behemoth corporate conglomerate. If you are not already watching Mr. Robot, you are missing out; the main and supporting characters are all unique and nuanced, the plot already has had numerous twists and turns, and the cinematography is not quite at Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul level but is better than 99% of shows on television. Plus, who doesn’t like Christian Slater? But whenever I recommend Mr. Robot to my friends, I always begin with the following caveat: “Well it airs on USA, but don’t let that deter you.” For better or worse, USA is known for its entertaining, popcorn-worthy shows that would never make a television critic’s year-end top-10 list.
USA’s legal show Suits – which I have been reviewing off and on this season – is the perfect example of this. Suits typically doesn’t strive to be a great show, merely an entertaining one. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it does not. Two weeks ago, I wrote a glowing article about the Big Bad on this season of Suits, Jack Soloff (John Pyper-Ferguson), the bearded, three-piece-suit-wearing, pen-wielding head of Pearson Specter Litt’s Compensation Committee. Because of Soloff, I was actually enjoying Suits’s office-politicking and was somewhat looking forward to the mid-season finale, in which Harvey (Gabriel Macht), Louis (Rick Hoffman), and Jessica (Gina Torres) would try to prevent Soloff from successfully carrying out an office coup on behalf of former name partner Daniel Hardman (David Constible, forever Gale on Breaking Bad). As I wrote last week, the Soloff plotline is fun, and – while not in the same strata as Mr. Robot, the show that airs immediately after it – is everything that a show like Suits should be striving for.
That is why I was incredibly disappointed in the mid-season finale, in which Harvey, Louis, and Jessica ultimately succeed in preventing Soloff from taking over the firm, but the bulk of the episode focuses on Harvey and Mike (Patrick J. Adams) wrestling with their demons from the past. Relying heavily on flashbacks, the episode is exceedingly boring, especially for an episode of the usually fast-paced Suits (this column will contain spoilers through that episode, which aired on August 26).
After Harvey discovers that Charles Forstman (Eric Roberts) is truly behind Hardman who is in turn behind Soloff (in the words of Vince Vaughn’s character in Swingers, Forstman is the “guy behind the guy behind the guy”), Forstman agrees to terminate the coup if Harvey resigns from Pearson Specter Litt. Naturally then, Harvey spends the entire day at the office of his therapist Dr. Paula Agard (Christina Cole), who, in the most cliched way possible, believes that the root of all of Harvey’s troubles is Harvey’s mother. Lo and behold, Dr. Agard is right! As a result, we spend virtually this entire episode hearing Harvey tell the story of how he caught his mother cheating on his father and was forced to disclose this information to his father during a sparring match, indirectly causing the breakup of his parents. Somehow this story leads Dr. Agard to conclude that Harvey is really afraid of leaving the other attorneys at Pearson Specter Litt to fend without him. Accordingly, Harvey makes a deal with Forstman in which Harvey will resign in return for Forstman effectively calling off the coup.
Macht does good work in a lot of the flashbacks, particularly as he breaks down during the sparring scene. But the heavy reliance on flashbacks means that the audience gets to spend no time seeing Harvey fight against Soloff, Hardman, or Forstman. Dr. Agard’s insight at the end of the episode is not worth the amount of time it takes to get there.
As much as I disliked the heavy use of flashbacks in Harvey’s plotlines, Mike’s flashbacks are far worse. While the fate of his firm is entirely up in the air, Mike is off in his old world, taking the day off and visiting Father Sam Walker (Scott Michael Campbell), the priest at Mike’s old church. The show flashes back to depict how Father Walker mentored Mike after his parents died, and how – in an act of rebellion – Mike stole the nearly $1,000 that his late parents had donated to the church. Ultimately, the insights Mike learns from Father Walker underscore the importance of family, and lead Mike to decide to quit Pearson Specter Litt so he can focus on raising a family without worrying that his secret (that he never went to law school) will be revealed.
Just like with Harvey’s flashbacks, Mike’s destination is not worth the journey. Instead of hiring an actor to play the petulant teenage Mike, thirty-four year old Adams plays the role. Unsurprisingly, instead of looking like a teenager, he looks more like a man in his mid-30s trying to rediscover his youth at a Green Day concert. And the scenes between Mike and Father Walker are almost laughably serious, complete with hilariously over-the-top emotional music, which undermine the intended emotional catharsis. If the writers wanted Mike to realize that he needs to quit his job to focus on his family, I would have preferred that he learn that lesson from watching Furious 7.
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The show also attempts a brief flashback with Jessica, depicting that she was once married and that her husband left her because she is a workaholic. But this flashback is half-hearted and merely reinforces that she cares about her firm, information that we already knew.
With these flashbacks taking up most of the episode, Suits does not spend a lot of time on the actual central conflict of the episode – preventing Soloff from going ahead with the vote to replace Jessica. Early in the episode, Jessica tells Louis that he must find out what dirt Hardman has on Soloff so that they can turn Soloff to their side. Louis – a name partner at a major law firm so presumably a smart man – decides that the best way to accomplish this is to walk into Hardman’s office, threaten him with bodily harm, and flatly ask him what he is holding over Soloff’s head. Unsurprisingly, this tactic does not work. Harvey’s resignation turns out to be the only reason that Soloff’s plan fails, which is extremely anti-climatic.
The big twist at the end of the episode is that Mike is arrested for fraud, leading to the intriguing possibility that Harvey (no longer employed by Pearson Specter Litt) will defend him. I sincerely hope that the next half-season contains more of what the show did right this half-season (Soloff) and less of what it did wrong this episode (boring flashbacks). Suits will never be its Wednesday night USA lineup partner Mr. Robot, but it can definitely be better than this.
Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at [email protected]. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.