'Suits' - Seasons 1-5

That Was A Big Binge

My better half has been watching this show regularly and I've sort of shrugged at it because the aesthetic of the show was way too smooth and manicured. I like my law shows a bit grittier; my fave law show was 'The Practice' back in the 90s where Dylan McDermott played criminal attorney Bobby Donnell and each week had a big trial speechifying moment. Of course the same person who created 'The Practice' also created 'Ally McBeal' so ... what can I say? Maybe 'The Practice' wasn't as gritty as I remember it to be - Wikipedia lists its genre as comedy drama. I sure don't remember laughing a whole lot watching 'The Practice'.

Anyway, I decided to take the plunge because FetchTV served it up on a platter, and I was researching how to write a series and it seemed appropriate to see what a multiple award winning show did. Plus, my better half is the better half for a reason. She has a sharp eye for character drama. It couldn't be bad at all to go through it all, could it?

80 episodes is a long journey to go through, but having gone through it, I think I at least understand what the hell is going on in the show, and why it might appeal to audiences. The one benefit of watching a show about lawyers is that they do it without special effects or masked vigilantes saving the day. It's nice watching something that is ostensibly content for grownups, and in most part it is.

'Suits' seems to hark back to the 'L.A. Law' style of slick lawyering show that inspired another generation. You can see how this works - the constant glamorising of the law sucks in the ever aspirational into a turgid career pushing paper. I once met a woman who wanted to be a trial lawyer who explained to me just how far one had to go just to be the kind of lawyer that gets up and works a trail. After her explanation it seemed to me law shows were far more misrepresentative of the career allure of its profession than medical dramas. Yes it takes a long time to become a surgeon too, but you don't exactly go into not expecting to see blood and gore.

'Suits' gives the impression that lawyering is not only glamorous, it might just be easy enough that you can watch a few episodes of 'Suits' and then you too can go into court and argue for a client. It is fanciful. But then so is 'My Kitchen Rules' or the Six o'clock News.

What's Good About It

The best thing about the show is the premise whereby a savant turns out to be a en excellent lawyer in practice but has no qualifications to be practicing law. Much of the tension in the series is built on whether the character Mike gets found out for this brazen fraud. The show teams up Mike with Harvey who is meant to be the sharpest lawyer going, and Harvey is complicit in the fraud because he can see the immense potential of Mike.

The show isn't as good a survey of the law as something like 'The Practice'. It's relatively light on the sort of procedural law show tropes. Instead, it spends a lot of time exploring the hierarchy and institutional strengths and weaknesses of a top flight law firm.

Gabriel Macht who plays Harvey is a very solid leading actor with great range. you can see why the show is so successful watching him. He has more range than the character he is playing so he surprises you at least once every few episodes. The show hangs on him more than the other main character of Mike played by Patrick J. Adams. Adams is also good, but when you watch 5 seasons in a row you start seeing his limitations. He just repeats certain moods and moves over and over again. It wouldn't be noticeable if you saw the show once a week, but it sticks out when you watch the series in a row. He's simply not as varied in voice or elocution or body language as Macht.

What's Bad About It

The writers of the show can't resist quoting movies. It's just time-wasting fodder when real character stuff could be explored. The show has many moments where they're just spinning wheels, which are more apparent when you sit down and binge watch 5 seasons. You get to hone in on which narrative lines are important and which ones aren't, and you find yourself watching quite a number of tedious exchange built on quotes from movies.

The worst moment was when they started quoting 'Mad Men' when 'Mad Men' clearly informed the template for the office politics. It was just bad writing, bad execution. The moment they likened a situation to 'Game of Thrones' was also terrible. I'm sure they meant it as an homage, but it killed tension and the sense of place of this show. It was these moments where the writers gave in to their own anxiety of influence.

Also some of the lesser characters seem have difficulty breaking out of their two-dimensional characterisation. Louis, the strange obstacle character, spends a better part of the five seasons until he finds himself enough to stand in solidarity with his cohorts. It's just not believable that somebody so smart could be so dumb about their circumstance - especially a circumstance the character claims to love and cherish above all else.

What's Interesting About It

The whole exercise turned out to be quite instructional on how to formulate a long-lasting TV series. The show has an overarching problem - that Mike Ross is a fraud - but it also has secondary story arcs that last the season where the show presents with a antagonist who seeks to destroy the firm or take it over. There is a tertiary arc where the character interactions reside whether it be romantic love interest or professional regard for one another or simply bickering over process; and only after then does something happen in each episode to nudge things along on all the arcs.

Some times you wish they spent more time on the big arc, while other times you're happy watching the lawyers do their TV lawyer thing. The tension between the story arcs goes a long way to pushing the show out to 5 series and counting.

Defending The Indefensible, Arguing the Implausible

The trick to writing a good lawyer show seems to be capturing the ability of lawyers to and do and say things normal people would never consider doing. The system is there to give a fair trial to people and that means somebody has to argue to the best of their ability in favour some unsavoury people and things. Take our foreign minister Julie Bishop who as a lawyer defended Big Tobacco and James Hardie in the famous cases before she turned to politics. I know some well educated people who hold this against her as a sign of bad character but you watch enough law shows, you quickly understand that those trials wouldn't have been fair trials had Big Tobacco and James Hardie not had their lawyer in their corner arguing the implausible to defend the indefensible. To that extent I sure don't hold Julie Bishop's legal career against her as having bad character. For our society to be as moral and ethical as it claims to be, somebody needed to be in that corner for the system to work.

In many ways the fun of watching these law shows is watching the lawyers do and say these extraordinary things. Harvey Specter then, is an interesting lawyer character because he often opts to not go to trial. Instead he looks to make sure he cuts the best deals for his clients. That is an interesting wrinkle because for a show about lawyers, they don't seem to go into the courtroom anywhere near the frequency that the lawyers in 'The Practice' or 'L.A. Law' or 'for that matter 'Ally McBeal' did. Instead we're treated to a world of finding the leverage and pressing hard to get outcomes. It's indefensible at times, implausible at others, but it sure makes for interesting viewing.

Race, Gender, Faith And The System

The main characters are palimpsests of American anxieties about race, gender and faith.
I was watching the series and it struck me that Harvey Specter was a dead giveaway name. Harvey is like the imaginary rabbit from the eponymous movie, and Specter is actually spectre, a ghost. He is the least present of the characters in the show, and so he gives us the least information of himself or what he is truly about. Harvey is also unlike any standard American character in that he hates his mother. That's something you don't see everyday in American media. He seems to be living out a WASP nightmare of repressed feelings and memories which are finding expression in his angry outbursts and terrible treatment of those around him. By season 5, he is sent packing by the writers to go see a Psychiatrist which creates its own troubles.

Mike, in stark contrast, is a Catholic boy haunted by a sense of guilt. He finds moral purpose where other sane, normal people might not choose to find them, but given that his character pretty much is at the centre of the main problem in the show, you sort of accept the whole thing. Mike is constantly flip-flopping about what to do, essentially weighing up what makes him feel less guilty as he goes along, but all the while repressing the fact that he is indeed a fraud.

Louis is a man full of self-loathing and a strange sense of satisfaction at his own idiosyncrasy. He's a man in search of one good friend, and he can't maintain friendships because he perceives his social standing only in hierarchical terms. If he is meant to be comic relief, then it is pretty psychotic. It is revealed Louis is Jewish by birth and upbringing but he seems to have devoted his faith more to the church of Harvard Law school as an institution than his own naive faith. It's not clear what exactly drove him to the self-loathing, but what seems to soothe his self-loathing is prestige. It is comic but also profoundly sad when put next to the fabulously WASP and cool Harvey, or the Catholic and empathic Mike. Louis' pettiness is the foil to distract us from the repressed anxiety of Harvey and repressed guilt of Mike.

The managing partner Jessica is a stern black woman of considerable fortitude. She protects her turf because she alone understands how far things can fall, and she is determined not to let that happen. And so her story combines the emancipation of both women and blacks. The system does not play by the rules it advocates, and so Jessica is eternally committed to managing the firm in a way to stay ahead of the volatile ructions of the system. The absolute lack of faith she shows in her staff except Harvey is very revealing. It asks, can Black people ever come to peace with the system that has prosecuted them for so long.

Institutional Elitism

The less appealing aspect of the show is the affirmation of a two-tiered society where the chosen elite reign supreme over the unsuspecting masses. The lawyers in the fictional law firm Pearson Specter Litt are all recruited from Harvard Law School and from that school alone. The other 20 or so leading law schools are given short shrift for most part simply out of snobbery. The characters in most part believe in the snobbery and the importance of maintaining this snobbery which reaffirms their social standing. It's quite unappealing even if Mike who is not from the school runs rings around these lawyers because in most part the status quo is affirms over and over again. The maintenance the elitist institution takes such precedence over so many real concerns.

In a sense a show that strives to give us diversity chokes itself by giving us an institution that would resist diversity as the party for whom the audience supports. There are moments in the show where you just ant to vomit all over the worship of Harvard University. It is all too reminiscent the misplaced awe in which University of Sydney graduates were once held. There probably are law firms that only hire from one place and make it a hallmark of their firm. It's an ugly look.

Because the law is by its nature conservative affair the show never really gets close to undermining the institutional elitism that underpins the socius in the show. Nobody really breaks free, nobody questions the validity nobody really finds the gait creates with the rest of the world to be  serious problem. Louis, at the end of Season 5 is forced to consider graduates from other law schools but by then the firm is in too much turmoil to make good.

Donna Paulsen is clearly a outsider to the coterie of Harvard educated lawyers. She looks in as she contributes mightily to the fate of the law firm. But for all her extraordinary talents and accomplishments and personal guidance to the lawyers, she will never be acknowledged the way Joan Holloway is acknowledged in 'Mad Men' when she ends up owning a share of the advertising firm. Interestingly enough they're both redheaded women.

The Law Is A Sorry Ass

When you watch 80 or so episodes of a show, you come see many moments where characters reverse course of action. And then characters apologies to one another for having done the 180 degrees. Sometimes a character is forced to do two 180 turns within the space of two episodes. Then the apologies ensue.

There'a whole lot of apologies going on in five seasons. If you run a show long enough, the characters end up being n bad enough conflict to have to apologies to one another so often. It's no surprise Harvey ends up seeing a shrink in season 5.

The Law Can Kick Ass

The central tenet of the show seems to be the law can be made to do anything. If it's written down anybody can argue anything and there is a whole posse of lawyers trying to push an agenda. It's interesting because the law is seen as a utilitarian guide to the smooth and fair running of a society.  It's a far cry form the conception of the law that comes from above and perhaps this is why there are so many characters that play fast and loose with the law in this show.

That being said, the procedures and protocols seem to be rigidly enforced and judges seem to frown on most anything bought in front of them. You can imagine being a judge in America is like being asked to intervene in so many idiotic disputes that one's initial response is to frown at any document being thrust under your nose.

There is a lot of document thrusting. And for the sake of the show, most of the characters take one look at the first page of any file and seem to understand the entirety of the content. It's like magic.

The Magical Characters

For all the talk about Harvey being the superhuman amazing lawyer, he doesn't seem to live up to his billing all too well. Instead it is Mike with his amazing photographic memory and Donna's telepathy that saves the day more than once. There are quite a number of episodes that hinge on the fact that the talents of Mike and Donna are simply not normal. If this were Marvel or DC it would make sense. The fact that it happens in a law show reveals that American fiction really is degenerating.