Multiple appearances by Suits USA merchandise (mug available in the online gift shop on your way out), tense meetings, blue files handed back and forth, tight dresses worn well, Rachel bringing her hotness to makeout scenes, Eric Roberts pwning crisp white dress shirts worn open at the collar, and Harvey taking a break from being angry to joke that he’s George Clooney’s better-looking brother – this episode has it all!
Louis, in good spirits (because of his triumph as Shylock last week?), dance-walks through the office handing out his You’ve Been Litt Up mugs to deserving colleagues. Donna, who looks fetching in a sexy-widow-type black cocktail dress, receives a mug containing a necklace that’s a replica of one worn by Dame Judi Dench when she played Ophelia (Dench actually did play Ophelia in London in 1957). Donna is touched by this gift. Louis is grateful Donna helped him overcome his stage fright and asks her to give Harvey a mug too.
Sidenote: I’ve recently discovered wornontv.net, a website that identifies selected styles (and provides info on where to buy them) shown on selected TV shows, including Suits. The site is how I found out that some of the beautiful dresses worn by Donna and Jessica can be bought at retail for prices that begin around the $1,000 mark, and go up from there. Of course they cost that much.
Jessica is worried about “exposure” on her sneaky purchase last week of those boring-as-hell Wexler shares so she asks Jeff Malone to double-check his work. When he refuses, Jessica, wearing a pink top I don’t like with lovely silver-rimmed pink crystal (quartz?) earrings that made me want to get my ears re-pierced so I can wear them, takes Louis out to lunch and asks HIM to double-check the transaction.
Louis praises Jeff’s work but finds a small error that will allow the firm to cancel the sale and not get caught doing something untoward. Jessica is pleased but tells Louis not to take any action until he checks with Harvey. When Harvey doesn’t return Louis’s calls, Katrina (She’s back! With her hair as beautifully styled as ever, though Amanda Schull must be bummed at how little screen time she’s gotten in the last three episodes) urges Louis to act quickly before Jeff figures out his mistake, corrects it and gets the glory.
Louis offloads the shares, Forstman scoops them up, and Harvey gets super pissed off, like he has done every episode this season – being without Mike is making him SO cranky. Louis meets with Forstman and puts on a convincing performance (no stage fright there) as someone who hates Harvey with a passion (the diary he produces that lists, by date, every insult Harvey has ever hurled at Louis, is a nice touch) and will do anything to fuck up his deal.
Louis gets the shares back from Forstman for Logan to purchase, and his successful subterfuge makes Harvey happy enough to suggest that he and Louis drink Scotch together in Louis’s mugs, which is not a euphemism. (Or is it?) Except Forstman makes Louis do illegal tax-evasion things with the money, which Louis does not tell anyone about except Katrina, nor will he refuse to comply, because Harvey likes him again and that’s worth being dishonest and compromising his principles for.
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. Rachel does that thing we’ve all done where we go see the guy we used to be into and pretend we no longer have feelings for, with an ostensibly above-board and high moral ground excuse that nevertheless requires dressing up in a low-cut top that looks like the top half of a nineteen forties bathing suit underneath a fabulously chic light grey wool coat (by Burberry, according to wornontv.net, and it costs only $2,495!) that’s all business. She also visits Logan at his condo in the early morning (again) when everyone knows early morning drop-ins end badly. Especially when you indulge in shivery flashbacks on the way over in the cab of that time a few years back when Rachel acted completely out of character and steamily seduced Logan, the married man, in the law firm library, when he just wanted to do the right thing and go home to his wife.
Logan sees through Rachel’s fabulous coat to her looking-for-trouble bathing suit top right away, calls her on her motives in coming over, recites back her come-on line from the flashback about their sexual chemistry, and starts a makeout sesh with her full reciprocation (though he goes awfully quickly to the two-handed butt grab, didn’t you think?) until she shakes herself out of her sexual stupor and runs out of the apartment. She spends the rest of the episode confiding in Donna and wringing her hands about is she a bad person and how could she betray Mike and should she tell him what happened. Donna says Rachel is a good person who had a bad moment and warns her against telling Mike. Rachel decides she must tell him anyway, because drama. And conflict.
Mike spends this episode in a series of one-on-one meetings with Harvey, Sidwell and Forstman, and a two-on-one meeting with Logan and Harvey. Throughout, he acts clever, cocky, secretly nervous, and like he might manage to complete the takeover and find a way to not cut Sidwell out of the deal as per Forstman’s decree. But it all blows up in his face, because Forstman is the devil, and Mike won’t leave his personal animosity toward Logan out of his business dealings, and let’s face it, Mike can’t succeed without Harvey at his side to complete him.
Sidwell – played by a Canadian actor named Brandon Firla, who has a very amusing, self-deprecating bio on imdb.com and who is hella tall (6’5”+), enough to tower over not-short Patrick J. Adams in their final scene – fires Mike. So much for Mike’s investment banking career. Wait till he gets home and Rachel tells him what she’s been up to with Logan! Fisticuffs will ensue, also attractive facial cuts and bruises, according to next week’s preview. And weed smoking, I bet.
