Thursday, August 11, 2016

Suits 6x05 Review: "Trust" (Take the Good with the Bad)


"Trust"
Original Airdate: August 10, 2016

It’s unfortunate that this week we return to a lot of things that I feel like don’t work on Suits — convoluted storylines, the isolation of a few key players, and Mike being... well, Mike. But there was one surprising bright spot in “Trust,” and that was the new and improved Rachel Zane. Gone are the days where she would sulk to Donna. Now, Rachel has decided to pick up the pieces of her job and her personal life and march straight into battle with them. I love Rachel Zane in this season of Suits, and considering she was the best part of this pretty murky episode, I hope that version of her sticks around.

LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT’S GOOD


Despite my very blasé feelings, there were a few of the bright spots in this week’s episode, including the aforementioned Rachel Zane 2.0. You all know how I felt about the original Rachel Zane. Well, there are very few traces left of that woman now. On last week’s episode, we saw Rachel finally take up her Innocence Project case: a man named Leonard who she was going to work hard to get off death row. After smacking him down with some Rachel Zane Truth and Knowledge, she gets to work only to realize that since there is no new DNA evidence, she can’t actually take his case on the Innocence Project.

Cue Rachel, devastated and apologetic, confronting a volatile Leonard. After he yells at her, she calmly (I love the way Meghan Markle played the moment where Rachel composed herself before picking the phone back up) tells him that she’s sorry. But that’s not good enough for Leonard and it shouldn’t be good enough for Rachel, either. Because when she tells him about Mike being in prison, Leonard challenges her right back — would she give up on Mike as easily as she’s giving up on him?

Rachel is a fighter. We always knew this. But now, her fighting is proactive and productive and it’s stemming from a place of genuine strength and conviction. So Rachel boldly approaches Jessica about taking on Leonard’s case as a pro bono one for the firm instead of working on it through the Innocence Project. Though she initially dismisses this idea, simply because she won’t have enough time, Jessica finally accepts Rachel’s proposal at the end of the episode. When Rachel asks why, Jessica’s response is indicative of her character development too: she would much rather see the first thing people Google about the firm to be their charity rather than their fraud.

I sincerely hope that this season continues to develop the relationship between these two women and to continually mold Rachel’s characterization in a positive direction.

LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT’S NOT GOOD


The worst episodes of Suits, in my opinion, are the ones where everyone is double-crossing each other (or, in this case, pretending to double-cross each other) and where the cases are written to be so convoluted that it’s as if the writers do it on purpose so that you’ll just give up trying to understand what’s actually happening and mindlessly watch the rest of the episode. That was “Trust,” for me. For the first time all season, I felt really confused as to what was happening. The driving force for my confusion? The show’s reliance on exposition. A LOT of exposition.

And throughout the episode, Harvey and Mike kept running into issues, causing them to do things to fix problems that didn’t make sense to me in the first place. The episode added more problems to those problems, and then solutions to those problems which ended up confusing me as to what exactly was happening between Sean Cahill, Harvey Specter, and the douchebag that Harvey told off last week, William Sutter. From what I can gather, Sutter is father-in-law to Kevin — Mike’s prison roommate. And in order to get close to Kevin to get Mike out of jail, Harvey decides to represent Sutter and, by extension, Kevin. There’s something about Harvey representing Sutter that could compromise Cahill’s investigation of him (he’s being investigated for insider trading).

There is more complexity added in Mike’s storyline when he realizes the paperwork he filed to get Frank Gallo transferred didn’t go through because there needs to be a lawyer present. In a muddled, quick explanation of things, Harvey represents Gallo and then threatens him and Gallo is trapped into signing paperwork and befriending Mike or something like that.

I don’t know if I was just dense or tired, but this entire storyline and explanation of HOW everyone will get Mike out of jail is kind of baffling and convoluted to me. And I don’t really like it when I have to fight to understand the basic plot of an episode.

Speaking of basic, apparently Suits has reduced Donna to “fancy-looking and really pretty potted plant” this season because that’s basically all she’s done — sit around in the background and occasionally help people, but more often than not serve as their emotional punching bags. I didn’t mind the beginning and the end of her storyline this week with Louis, though the middle was a little bit weird (why was Donna being so angry? Why was Louis being so blatantly rude?). I actually enjoy when Louis gets emotionally vulnerable and honest with people, especially Donna. And his confession that he never thought he would feel love again after Sheila was heartbreaking.

But the fact that Donna agreed to manipulate the female architect love interest (whose name I’m too lazy to look up, so we’ll just call her FALI) by buying Louis a home so that she could remodel it seems weirdly out-of-character for her. And then, as it turns out, Louis’ anger at Donna half-way through the episode is because he misses having her as a secretary. Donna gets him to admit that, feels proud of herself, and then reveals that she put in an offer on the perfect home for him.

I think that if I were to tie the storylines in “Truth” together, the problem would be that there are too many problems and they overlap weirdly. Mike’s problems and Harvey’s problems in this episode lead to them both intersecting in an extremely convoluted manner. I’m all for layers — I enjoy layers within characterization, after all — but layers of issues that require different layers of solutions just seems wildly confusing to me. The same holds true of Louis and Donna’s storyline: apparently Louis’ problem was that he thought he would never fall in love; but his other problem was that he was acting out because he missed Donna.

Ultimately, the end of this week’s Suits made me feel more confused than it has all season, and not in the good way that Orphan Black usually makes me feel confused. If the show wants to continue to succeed this season, it needs to dial back the convoluted nature of its storytelling and focus on the characters first. Hopefully next week is an improvement in this area.

And now, bonus points:
  • I’m really happy Neal McDonough is back on this show, but in one scene (the scene where Sean is eating lunch), I honestly couldn’t tell if it was Sean Cahill or Damien Darhk delivering those lines.
  • “I don’t need legal advice from the convicts!”
  • I still like Kevin. Sue me.
  • Ugh, Mike kind of returned to being the worst in this episode again. It was the opportunities he took to demand things from people that really got me. He acts so entitled so often, and just when I think he’s grown, he proves me wrong. I hate that the warden and Malcolm-Jamal Warner (yes, I know his character has a name but I literally just refer to him as Malcolm-Jamal Warner) got roped into doing his bidding. Ugh again.
  • I like Harvey and Louis’ new relationship. I really do.
Well, what did you all think of this week’s Suits? Let me know in the comments below!

2 comments:

  1. There was a lot to take in in this episode, but it has very cleverly setup some interesting story lines.

    I really love the new investment guy Stu, he reminds me a bit of Harvey!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was completely disappointed with this episode too. There was too much going on in the Frank Gallo-Mike-Sutter-Cahill storyline, and the writers have relegated Donna to the sidelines. It's such a shame. :-(

    ReplyDelete