Hollywood loves a reheated nacho. Between reboots and revivals, nobody is eager to spin the block and drown in nostalgia more than a TV executive who can’t be bothered to read the scripts for anything new. Every day, there’s some Pop Base update confirming the news you feared most of all: that the beloved show you saw end, wrapped up in a neat little bow, would indeed be making an ill-timed comeback stripped of the magic that made it special to begin with.
Suits creator Aaron Korsh is doing the reheating this time, taking his premise — a fast-talking legal drama revolving around charming but bullish characters — and setting it in Los Angeles. The original show became a fan favorite, earning the crown of the most streamed show in the U.S. years after its final episode aired, thanks to people binging it on Netflix. Its appeal mainly lies in audiences being charmed by a perfectly cast ensemble. Gabriel Macht’s turn as Harvey Specter, the douchebag lawyer with more charisma than any man with a quiff should ever be allowed to have, was nothing short of iconic.
Suits LA switches him out for Ted Black (played by a stiff Stephen Amell), a prosecutor turned celebrity lawyer. We meet him not in the present day but in one of many jarring flashbacks set more than a decade ago in New York. He’s nose to nose with a witness, blackmailing him into tattling on the city’s most influential mob boss. Watching the main character trying to force a testimony from a civilian would be alarming if every character in the original show didn’t treat laws like they were merely inconvenient suggestions; a white boy throwing his weight around to get what he wants is very much a staple of the Suits universe.
What isn’t a staple is what happens next: an explosion going off when Ted leaves the witness’s house. It’s shocking in an almost amusing way; the entire sequence — from Amell’s mild, sauceless delivery to the pyrotechnics — feels more reminiscent of an episode of Arrow than it does the show’s sleek predecessor, but on we march. Ted wakes up from his flashback nightmare in the L.A. home he shares with his brother Eddie (Carson A. Egan). This isn’t the first time he’s had a bad dream about the city or his last year there. Whatever phantom is chasing him is a persistent one, the show teasing the events that drove him away from his job repeatedly through the pilot. Black Lane — the law firm Ted started with his friend, criminal defense lawyer, and human hairball Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) — makes its first appearance. Where Pearson Hardman was all sexy dark wood and pristine glass, the Black Lane offices lack any and all sensuality and allure. It has no personality, and in that way, it represents the show’s failings. Part of the problem could be coming from the fact that the entire thing is color-graded and lit like a Dhar Mann video, but that’s neither here nor there.
The firm is currently going through a rocky merger with his ex-partner’s practice, an agreement Ted protests initially but eventually welcomes, much to Stuart’s delight. Despite Ted’s vehement disdain for criminal law, it seems he and Stuart get along well, and the pair does well in their respective fields. In a poor attempt at replicating Harvey’s “cool,” the show keeps putting Ted in circumstances that call for finesse and swagger despite them coming off as anything but. In one of the most notable instances, we watch him “smooth talk” Hollywood actress Dylan Pryor (a charming Victoria Justice) into letting the firm represent her with the help of Rick Dodsen (Bryan Greenberg). Rick very much gives golden retriever, playing eager good cop to Ted’s bad cop in the room.
Rick is eclipsed entirely by the existence of Erica Rollins (Lex Scott Davis), his competitor for the position of head of entertainment within the firm. They’re generic opposites. Erica is a fierce competitor who knows how to talk and close a deal, while Rick is a studious good boy who follows the rules and strives for extra credit. What he lacks in charisma, he makes up for with hard work, we’re told, which means I want him off my screen every time he appears on it.
Erica wants that promotion and is willing to do almost anything to get it, a desire that comes into play strongly in the second half of the episode and sets her up in the “bad bitch attorney” archetype Korsh loves so much. Internal power struggles are brewing, and a game of corporate chess is well underway. As it stands, Ted values Erica and respects Rick, meaning he is leaning toward gifting his golden retriever the title; he doubts that Erica’s ferocity — the thing that makes her an exemplary lawyer — would make for a good leader. The introduction of Leah (Alice Lee), an associate who works under Erica, into the equation furthers the “she’s too much of a diva to trust” agenda the show is pushing; Leah comes to Rick and asks to work under him instead, apparently put off by her boss’s ambition.
While Ted is busy bullying Victoria Justice’s Dylan into making him her lawyer, Stuart is across town dealing with a client accused of killing his partner while “celebrating [his] big opening, doing ecstasy and shooting up into the hills.” It doesn’t matter that there’s gun residue on his hands; the client insists he is innocent, which Stuart doesn’t believe. It seems to disturb the client, who goes to Ted and begs him to represent him in court despite his aversion to “helping criminals stay out of jail.” But Ted won’t budge.
Ted tells the client to trust Stuart, talking him up as the best criminal-defense lawyer he could possibly have, but soon we’ll see that Ted is as gullible as he is sauceless when we get to the episode’s first big “twist”: Far from being a loyal friend, Stuart has been playing Ted this entire time, stealing Black Lane’s best talent — and all the clients they represent — to start his own firm, all while using the merger as a cover.
The show plays it up as this massive moment of betrayal, but betrayal has to be earned. We’d barely seen the two men interact by this point, one scene of them having a boozy dinner the night the merger is finalized being the only extended conversation we get to see, meaning Stuart, being a shady little rat, doesn’t sting. I don’t care because I don’t know Stuart or haven’t been given time to care enough about Ted. Mike and Harvey’s relationship was the core of Suits and part of what made that show so watchable, and here, the writers eradicate any possibility of having a similar dynamic duo to root for almost immediately.
The thing that’s even odder about this choice is that they choose to play the Ted-gets-betrayed-by-a-close-friend card twice in the same episode with the reveal that Rick has left Black Lane. It turns out Stuart, being both slim and competent, prepositioned Rick and Erica with a simple deal: If they choose to leave the firm and betray Ted, he’ll make them the head of entertainment at his new place. Erica weighs her options, choosing to test her associate by disclosing her supposed departure to her to see Ted’s reaction. Naturally, Leah goes straight to Ted and snitches on her boss, proving herself untrustworthy and a tattle tale.
Ted looks the least dead behind the eyes in scenes with Erica. Whether it be his confrontation with her when he thinks she’s betrayed him (she hasn’t and ends up being promoted to partner by the end of the episode) or another scene later when Ted asks her what made her choose to stay, it’s clear these two have the closest thing to chemistry anyone on the show does.
Suits has an interesting relationship with its Black characters. Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres) was the very definition of a girlboss, capable and stylish. That didn’t stop the writers from having her fall on her sword in order to save Harvey Specter, though. The same can be said for Robert Zane (Wendell Pierce), who also ends up losing his license in a scheme to protect Harvey from facing the consequences of breaking attorney-client privilege. Their Blackness, though acknowledged, was rarely discussed, which I often appreciated. Still, it also felt unavoidable when they were made disposable at the end of the series to save the white lead.
They address Erica’s character with more realism. She recounts a conversation she overheard between Stuart and Ted a few months into her time at the firm. Legal Quiff had wanted to only give her “diverse clients” and turn her into some sort of BIOPIC-only specialist, wheeling her out as a special token. It was Ted who called the ridiculousness of that idea out: “If I only knew she could close people of color, I wouldn’t have hired her,” he says. He bet on her succeeding as a lawyer and said he’d “do it seven days a week and twice on Sundays,” whatever that means.
Her being by his side and helping him lock down clients stop the bleeding that Stuart’s stunt created, bar one major obstacle. Ted has to get over his distaste for criminal defense if he wants to keep his biggest source of income in place, and he does. He pitches himself to Stuart’s alleged boyfriend killer client from earlier and tries to convince him to switch counsel, to which he agrees. Again, it’s meant to be satisfying when Stuart is forced to watch his client switch lawyers and ditch him in favor of Ted in court, but Amell doesn’t have it, that star power that makes him fun to watch, so it’s just a little cringe. Stop trying to make him cool, then Ted might actually be watchable.
Another thing the show really wants you to know about the lead? He has daddy issues. With the help of some more awkwardly placed flashbacks, we get a little more insight into what happened back in New York and how tense his relationship was with his father (played by Matt Letscher, giving us a mini Arrow-verse reunion). After the explosion, Ted treks to the hospital to check to see if the witness he was blackmailing — the witness his case is dependent on — is still alive (he’s not, which prompts Ted to convince the doctors to lie about his death in the hopes of buying some time).
His father is waiting for him, and immediately you can’t help but want this man dead. Their relationship is filled with darkness and cliche: a deadbeat dad who abandoned his kids and was in some way responsible for the death of one of them through his neglect. Harvey had mummy issues that took him seasons to shake off; it seems having a dysfunctional relationship with a parent is another Aaron Korsh staple. Papa Ted is days away from death in the present day, much to his son’s satisfaction. We get another big “reveal” as Ted monologues over his father’s deathbed: Eddie, the brother we’ve seen Ted converse with at home, is essentially nothing more than some phantom memory ghost. In actuality, he’s been dead for years. The episode ends with a lone, sobbing Ted clinging to a photo of him and his brother.