Rachel is asleep alone in bed (in full eye makeup and a cute sleep T-shirt and shorts) when her cell phone vibrates, Logan calling. She does not pick up, but freaks out when she sees it’s past 9 am, and figures out Mike turned off her alarm so she could sleep for all of 6 hours. But she can’t afford to sleep what with the demands of law school and law work and Harvey the mean boss, can’t Mike see that? He suggests she ask Harvey for a day off.
Harvey catches the end of a Cahill-prosecuted trial on the courtroom set and engages Cahill in a pissing contest in the aisle. Actually it’s more of a silly who-played-with-tougher-toys-as-a-child contest, which Harvey wins by saying he was a Rock-Em-Sock-Em guy as opposed to Cahill and his wussy little Battleship barbs. Which means they were both not tough at all since actual tough kids play with kitchen knives and bent crack spoons, duh. Harvey threatens to have Cahill fired if he keeps going after Harvey’s clients, but Cahill is not scared.
Mike exposits to Amy, who looks a little more mature this week (because she’s not wearing a girlish tunic dress?), that he hasn’t taken Forstman’s money yet. Maybe he can just use it as leverage (again with the leverage!) against Harvey and Logan. He meets Harvey by an elevator bank and tries to do this but Harvey sees through his bluff right away and says no dice. Foiled again.
Harvey goes up the elevator (continuity!), and talks to Jessica about some Gillis Industries shares that the Wexler hedge fund will soon be offloading. (These Wexler shares will be discussed far too many times during the episode.) Jessica acts all bossy when she tells Jeff Malone to find a way to acquire these shares, by hook or by crook, but she says this while wearing a tight white dress that verges on being bridal, with basketweave panels on the bodice and the hip and an off-the-shoulder sleeve/strap thing. The dress looks good on her but the costumers are just fucking with us now – the dresses Jessica and Donna wear are gorgeous and flattering, but they are so not office-wear.
Donna is going to perform the role of Portia that evening in an amateur production of The Merchant of Venice with a three night run. I know, what? But just go with it, because this subplot is the big (and only) story line in which Donna and Louis appear in this episode. Louis finds her rehearsing her lines in the file room, is shocked to discover she is not yet off-book, and offers to help her learn her lines, even if it takes all day. He is well-equipped to do this because he happens to have memorized every word of every Shakespeare play. (Like I said, just go with it.) She confides in him that she gave up her acting dream when she was younger to get a paying job but has always wondered if she would have made it as an actress, and what if it turns out she is not good? He gives her a rousing pep talk that includes a mention of the stage fright he has suffered since grade school when he wanted to play a molar in the school play and was assigned the part of Plaque Man (heh) instead, then mocked for it.
Mike and Sidwell (whose first name is Jonathon) have a bonding moment over Sidwell’s tombstone awards, which are these cheap acrylic trophy things that are apparently imprinted with details of financial achievement and given to banker types on completion of big deals. (Talk about nerdy toys.) Or it would be a bonding moment if Mike weren’t worried about having to cut Sidwell out of the deal as Forstman has decreed.
After listening to and smiling at a voicemail from Logan saying his Board loved her takeover suggestions from last week, Rachel, in a suitable shirt for once, asks Harvey for “a day or two” off so she can do some of her law school homework. Harvey gives her total shit and says no. Joke’s on him when she faints in class the next day and is hospitalized for exhaustion, and he’s called because he’s one of her emergency contacts. Bad Harvey.
Donna tells Louis she triumphed on night one of her Merchant of Venice run (though, if you ask me, there’s a pretty gaping plothole here that Louis didn’t go see her perform after coaching her the whole day). She asks Louis to fill in as Shylock for night two, because the show’s Shylock broke his ankle. Louis agrees, gets dressed up like this (that’s some expensive getup for a community theatre production), but is seized with stage fright just before his entrance. Donna talks (yells) him out of it, and he goes on to his own triumph, only to withdraw from night three because he’s happy being a lawyer. Donna reveals the play’s lead did not actually injure himself (but agreed to give up his part for one night? How likely is that? Not. Gaping plothole number two) and that she wanted to give Louis a chance to shine. Donna and Louis compliment each other in their own bonding moment.
After a meet-awkward at the hospital where Rachel is “resting” under sedation (?! ) – totally not how I was treated when I fainted in a public place and was taken to emergency by ambulance a few years ago, but never mind – Harvey calls off the dark pool bidding auction he and Mike were about to have for those damned Wexler shares, and the two go out for a steak dinner. Noted vegetarian Gabriel Macht gamely puts food that could be fake steak in his mouth in this scene, and Patrick J. Adams doesn’t even pretend to eat. They share the third bonding moment of the episode when Harvey shows Mike a pic of Louis in his Shylock costume, complete with codpiece, and indulge in some not unfunny speculation about the size of Louis’s dick.
Harvey and Mike are almost kind of getting along like they used to when they worked together when Cahill ambushes them on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. He’s having them watched and he thinks he can make a case for the two of them colluding on this takeover deal what with Rachel working for Harvey and living with Mike and the number of clandestine meetings Harvey and Mike have been having at elevator banks, hospitals and steak houses. He also tells them someone (Jessica!) bought the damned Wexler shares, which makes Mike feel like Harvey played him, and makes Harvey swear he will “fix it” but when he tries, Jessica won’t let him. Oh and Mike tries to return the money he got from Forstman but he can’t because Forstman has now told Sidwell about it without telling him that Mike will cut Sidwell out of the deal. Meaning that Mike is now not only in bed with the devil, he’s being … FOILED AGAIN.
Rachel wakes in the hospital from a bad flashback/dream in which Logan proposes to her, then morphs into Mike, whom she calls a fraud she could never marry. She’s soon back at the office, where there is a thoughtful bouquet with a warm but not cloying note from Logan saying he’s glad she’s okay. On the way out of the office, Donna, wearing a pretty lace-trimmed blue dress that reveals too much lace-framed cleavage for work, runs into Harvey, who waits for her holding a bouquet of flowers and standing next to a lingeringly and lovingly shot product placement Lexus. He’s going to drive her to the theatre and catch her closing night because he may not be a Shakespeare fan but he’s a Donna fan. Good Harvey.
