Summary
Suits LA pulls what is becoming a familiar trick in Episode 8, bringing Harvey Specter back to liven things up. It has mixed results.
There seems to be a bit of a pattern emerging now where Suits LA pulls out an emergency solution whenever it starts to sag. And that emergency solution is Gabriel Macht returning as Harvey Specter, which happens for the second time here in Episode 8 after he first showed up earlier in the season. With the present-day plot continuing to sag after the end of Lester’s trial, “Acapulco” leans heavily into the flashbacks, which I’m pretty sure nobody cares about.
Just me? Maybe. But I’m still not convinced that the New York sequences have anything illuminating to offer, given we already know from the present-day versions of Ted, Samantha, Stuart, and Kevin how the whole debacle affected them and informed their relationships. All we’re really hanging on for now is finding out precisely what happened to Eddie. And more Harvey Specter cameos, it seems.
Let’s start with the present-day nonsense.
It’s a HR Issue
In an incredibly dumb subplot in “Acapulco”, Erica and Leah have a bit of a falling out. Both are suffering recent losses – the former a family friend/surrogate grandfather, and the latter her cat, and as a big animal guy, I consider these of more or less equal severity. However, Erica needs to go to dinner with Adam Driver to convince him to stay with the firm, so she has to put her struggles aside to retain him.
Erica would like Leah to do the same, but she’s not quite as well-heeled at bottling up her emotions. And Erica doesn’t give her much chance to reveal what’s going on with the cat, anyway. As soon as Leah says she can’t attend the dinner, despite it being blatantly obvious that something’s up, Erica chews her out like a crazy person and ends up getting pulled by the head of Human Resources.
Erica thinks this is all nonsense, society getting all woke on her – she doesn’t use these words specifically, but it’s implied – so Rosalyn makes a point that basic principles of respect should apply to everyone, whether that’s colleagues like Leah or the head of Human Resources. She also tells her about Leah’s dead cat, and Erica is pretty sympathetic, right up until Leah reveals the cat had already died when Erica asked her to dinner, and then she berates her again. Apparently, missing the dinner to say goodbye would have been fine, but missing the dinner due to being in mourning is not. Erica was mourning too, after all, and she went ahead and cosied up to Adam Driver anyway.
I’m totally on Leah’s side here.
Back to Bowie
Josh McDermitt and Bryan Greenberg in Suits LA | Image via NBC
The Not-David-Bowie case continues in Suits LA Episode 8, and it turns out this is once again a way to reiterate the show’s curiously determined argument in defence of criminal defence. It quickly becomes clear that Hollywood’s go-to fixer might be a much more dangerous man than he’s claiming to be, and Stuart isn’t interested in defending him if he’s blowing up cars and the like. Simple intimidation is apparently fine, though, so Stuart agrees to stay in Bowie’s corner… until it’s revealed that he might be guilty after all.
But this is generally weird because Stuart’s whole thing is his belief that everyone, even people who’re guilty, should have someone to advocate on their behalf, and he’s happy to be that guy. He’s always been happy to be that guy, hence he and Ted’s ongoing disagreement about it. He even reiterates this to Amanda when she calls by to ask him about Ted’s morals, because Ted wants her to head up the defence department of his own firm and she wants reassurances that he abides by the letter of the law.
So, yeah, I still think it’s weird that we keep circling this same drain in so many different ways.
Hey, Look, It’s Harvey Again
In the past, which is where “Acapulco” spends most of its time, Ted is thrown for a loop when one of Pellegrini’s favoured hitmen takes the stand and claims to be responsible for multiple murders ordered by the mob boss. However, the defence team proves he’s committing perjury, collapsing his credibility and, of course, the conspiracy to commit murder charge that Ted is pushing for.
Enter Harvey Specter, who represents one of Pellegrini’s corporate partners. Ted compels Harvey to hand over some damning financial records and Harvey compels Ted to put the hitman back on the stand and somehow sell the idea that he can be trusted about one murder, just not the others. And since one murder is still pretty bad, legally speaking, that should be it.
We know it won’t be it, though, because we know where this whole thing is heading. We know Eddie dies, Kevin loses his job, and Ted is forced to flee to the West Coast in disgrace. This is what I was talking about at the top. The whole plot is just meandering on its way to conclusions we’re already well-aware of.
Suits LA Episode 8 throws things for a bit of a loop by reintroducing Harvey in the present day, bringing up that Pellegrini is getting out of prison. The implication is that Harvey did something that prohibited Pellegrini from being sent down on the lifetime charges he deserved, so he’s at least partially at fault for his pending release, which makes it a bit rich that he’s telling Ted they need to go back to New York to sort things out. I can only imagine this will have the Pellegrini plot dominating both the present day and flashback sequences in Suits LA, and I’m not totally thrilled about that, but we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe Harvey’s consistent presence will be enough to inject the show with some needed energy.
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