We start with Samantha giving Rick, the firm’s newest head of entertainment, a gift: a box filled with the employment records of every lawyer in his department. His job? To fire three people and prove that he has the cojones to do what’s necessary to be the lead of his department. It’s a cliché that works well to demonstrate what counts as “high stakes” in corporate chess, a character test meant to determine how seriously Samantha should take him. How callous can Rick really be? She may have relented and given him his dream promotion after he won her the business of Dylan Prior, but that doesn’t mean she respects him yet. (I’ve never aligned with a Suits character more).
You might be curious to know who he fires or what lesson is learned. He fires no one. We learn nothing. In fact, the next time Samantha and Rick are in a room together, she tells him to throw the names away because they’re no longer relevant. If you introduce a lazy character test, then at least you can see it through. Show me this man being interesting or compelling, or stop showing him to me at all. We keep being told that these people are remarkable and fierce. We never get to see it.
Over at Black and Associates, Erica has marching orders of her own: via Rosalind, we learn that one of Ted’s oldest clients is coming by the office for his annual meeting with the lawyer. Her job is to give him anything he wants to keep him a satisfied B&A client because Ted is still busy working on producer murder-gate. You’d think that after we had an entire episode of “silly Erica for not knowing a thing about the industry she works in” last week, the writers would be bored, but alas, that is too much to ask; Leah once again saves her uncultured boss’s bum by making her a dossier on her latest client. He turns out to be some B-list comedy actor who has dreams of being a “serious, Oscar-level” actor. What he wants is a meeting with Tom Hanks, of all people, to ask him how he transitioned so seamlessly from comedy to drama, a meeting he thinks he can get because Ted supposedly represents him (lol).
One of the most irritating things about the show is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It has moments of sheer ridiculousness and false stakes that feel conceited and lazy, especially when it starts to get “Hollywood.” Apparently, Suits LA was initially going to follow a group of Hollywood talent agents, and it’s obvious what parts of the plot are a remnant of that original idea and what has been tacked on to make the show more “Suits-esque.”
Ted is busy trying to find out if his client Lester did know about the affair his wife was having with his now dead (possibly murdered) business partner. From the temper tantrum Lester throws, it’s obvious he didn’t, leaving Ted to try to track down his philandering wife and prep her for the trial in the hopes of keeping him out of jail. But he’s met with a surprise: Lester’s wife has switched attorneys and is now represented by slimeball Stuart of all people. She’s decided that in the lead-up to their inevitable divorce, having the same lawyer as her husband/prime murder suspect isn’t the smartest thing to do, and she’s right. To Ted, though, the entire thing just looks like yet another way Stuart is proving to be a back-stabbing nuisance with a penchant for ruining his day.
Here, we get the first flashback of the episode, this time slotted in to contextualize the pair’s friendship. We learn that Stuart wasn’t always a conniving dickhead or a criminal defense lawyer. In fact, when Ted approaches him to represent the new witness he blackmailed in his New York mobster case, Stuart is surprised at the request primarily because he’s a corporate lawyer, of all things. He relents, though, taking the case on to help his bestie keep their city safe (yes, that was an Arrow reference). Considering they’re dealing with the mob, he’ll be given round the clock protection so he doesn’t get choked out on his way to work.
In the present day, Erica isn’t making any progress with the comedic actor, unable to give him a friendly reality check or land him a meeting with Tom Hanks. Leah tries to negotiate with Rosalind to get the actor to sit down with someone else who could inspire and advise him on making a career change in an effort to prove her loyalty to Erica. Cue the strangest Patton Oswalt cameo known to man. Instead of the pair getting along, though, the entire meeting turns into a massive blow-up in which Oswalt and the actor client start going at it, trading barbs about being unwatchable, middling actors who will never get the respect they crave. It’s so random, it’s actually kind of camp.
Just when it looks like Erica is about to take another L, we find out it was all planned. Oswalt used verbal abuse and belittling to motivate him to build his confidence to take the leap himself — or some nonsense similar to that. If it doesn’t make sense to you, that’s fine; it doesn’t make sense to me, but who cares? The client Erica was ordered to look out for is happy, which means my girl Erica is happy, which means I cheered.
Why doesn’t Ted call Tom Hanks, you ask? It’s probably because he’s knee-deep in his own drama with his frenemy, Stuart. The show really needs to drive home the point that these two were once besties and now can’t stand each other, so we get another flashback, this time one that details how dirty Ted’s father really was. The rumor is that his old man worked with the mob and was in constant communication with them, including about getting Ted a job. Naturally, if this comes out, Ted’s career at the justice department is toast. Guess who valiantly decides to fall on the sword and take the fall instead for “the closest person (he’s) ever had to a brother” by taking his place as this mystery son his dad was shopping around for in the mob? Stuart, of course. This is the same man who, in the present day, is in charge of executing Daddy Ted’s will, representing the only person Ted hates more than him. The wildest part about this will is the clause that requests his burial place be right next to Eddie, the son whose death he was in part responsible for.
Even from beyond the grave, that man proves to be incorrigible in his audacity. Ted is, of course, having none of it; imagine going to visit your brother and being forced to see the grave of the man who neglected him right beside it. Hell is not hot enough.
All this is to say that by the time Stuart and Ted sit across from each other to start Lester and his partner’s divorce negotiations, it’s very clear that they need someone to mitigate their own breakup. The agreement basically boils down to giving the wife everything she earned during their marriage and her promising to testify that Lester knew nothing about her affair. But here’s where it gets interesting: pictures come out of Lester at a bar with his glasses in his hand and his wife and partner right across from him, obviously together. The picture throws everything up in the air again, including the divorce settlement the pair were about to sign.
Stuart wants to renegotiate for better terms, using the picture to squeeze his former client for every cent. Ted though figures out what the wife really wants: a role. It’s Suits LA, and thus, some Hollywood nonsense must be inserted into the most random conversions to remind you that this firm deals with stars. Her story is a well-worn one: she’s the former acting protégé who left it all behind, victimized by the whims of her egotistical producer husband. All it takes to undo all those years of hurt is him calling her talented and presenting her with news he’s gotten her a role in some esteemed new film. She promises to stand beside him; the fact that he’s as blind as a bat and can’t see a thing without those aforementioned glasses — including his cheating wife mid-affair — also helps convince her of his innocence.
Rick starts to express guilt for his snakey behavior (namely abandoning the ship because his ego was bruised) now that he knows Ted lost his father. He and Erica have a phone call, proving that they’re only a believable couple if they’re in two separate rooms, far away from one another. The episode ends with Stuart turning up to help bury Ted’s delinquent dad, the ghost of Eddie, making a return. The show hopes this is poignant, but it plays like a poorly thought-out melodrama. In the end, there is no believable way to counter Ted’s dislike for the man enough to let him be buried with his brother — half his personality is ‘lawyer with Daddy issues — which means we are stuck with a puzzling return to blurring fantasy and reality together in a show that is already in the midst of a raging identity crisis.