Last episode, Mike and Harvey bargained away a legal chip that could have saved Mike’s ass to keep Donna and her dad out of the mor-ass (yup, I’ll be here all week) that is Mike’s case. This episode, they do the same thing to keep Rachel from having her future as a lawyer ruined when Gibbs goes after her. But how many legal chips do they have left?
Mike Gives Gibbs the Stink-Eye
Mike and Harvey are in court to demand Gibbs hand over the discovery (all the evidence she has collected in support of her case) when Mike recognizes Gibbs’s associate: a lawyer named for whom Mike once wrote the LSAT’s, back when Mike’s fraudulent activities were confined to test-taking.
Hey, I know that guy
Yeah, that guy
The judge orders Gibbs to hand over her many, many boxes of files, and sets the trial date for two weeks hence.
Nice coat on Rachel, nice blowout on Gibbs
Rachel is heading to work in one of her many nice coats when Gibbs ambushes her. She lures her to a nearby café by mentioning that Rachel cannot claim spousal privilege re: Mike because they’re not married so she WILL have to testify and what’s she gonna do on the stand – take the 5th or perjure herself? Rachel won’t be tricked into saying anything without her lawyer (that would be Harvey) present, but Gibbs whispers sweet nothings to her about how if she’ll only turn on Harvey, Rachel and Mike can both live to see the day when they graduate together with law degrees from Columbia. Whereas, if Rachel doesn’t make a deal, goodbye law career.
Rachel knows Gibbs is a completely untrustworthy snake but she can’t stop thinking about the offer, especially after she has her regularly scheduled “student review” meeting with the law school dean (how can this meeting be a real thing?) and he a) accuses her of having gotten Mike to write her LSAT’s, and b) makes vague threats about expulsion.
Rachel’s upset
Rachel’s pissed-off-ness about the whole matter spurs Mike to yell at Harvey and suggest that they hire an outside lawyer to go after someone Gibbs is close to, the way Gibbs has been doing with Donna and Rachel. Harvey thinks that’s a horrible idea but Mike goes to see Scottie anyway and asks if she or someone at her new firm will take on the job. Not for his sake, understand, but for Harvey’s.
Scottie – who looks, I think, the best she has ever looked on Suits, in this cool black sheath dress with an interesting cut-out neck/arm line, though the thought of the undergarment wrangling that would be necessary to wear it is pause-giving – tells Mike to get out and go away, she will NEVER help him because he ruined her and Harvey as a couple.
Call me maybe
She later berates Harvey for siccing Mike, AKA the person whom Harvey chose over her, onto her. He tells her he didn’t, apologizes for everything, confesses that he’s in therapy, and asks could he maybe call her when this mess is over. She’s in therapy too, so yeah, he could call her if he ever gets out from under the case and his childhood issues. And if she is still alive then, and still contractually able to appear on Suits.
Scottie puts on her own nice coat, and on her way out, has a strange conversation with Rachel wherein she coolly (more like ice-coldly) warns Rachel that even the best scenario for Mike and Rachel is not great. Because if Mike gets acquitted and quits law and Rachel goes on to practice, Mike will probably resent Rachel’s success in his once-and-former field. Rachel assures her Mike is not like that, but damn if another successful woman lawyer hasn’t gone and planted another seed of doubt in her mind about her future with Mike.
When Mike hears that the dean brought up false LSAT-taking – a crime he has not yet been charged with – he realizes Gibbs must have found out about his past and illegally convinced the dean, her old law school buddy, to threaten Rachel. He gets his face up very close to the associate and blackmails him into providing sufficient proof of Gibbs’s wrongdoing to trade the suppression of such proof from the judge for a free pass for Rachel on the intimidation tactics. Gibbs agrees to this side deal, because no matter what happens pre-trial, Mike is not a real lawyer and that will come out in court, so there.
Harvey, Mike, Donna and Rachel may be working on nothing but protecting Rachel and preparing for the trial, but Jessica, in her glitter-edged sweater, is still hell bent on keeping the law firm going through this crisis. Her first task: to come up with PR moves to counter the effect of a damning Wall Street Journal editorial that suggests one or all of the name partners must have known about Mike all along.
Jack Soloff – who is looking more like an ally than an enemy these days – suggests the firm take on some pro bono work for their clients’ favorite charities. Jessica wants to make the more aggressive move of poaching an entire department’s worth of real estate lawyers from another law firm. But no one wants to jump on the sinking ship, even for twice their salaries.
When Louis reports that so reduced is the firm’s reputation that only 3 bottom-of-the-barrel candidates from Harvard have applied for the usually coveted summer associate jobs at the firm, Jessica gets him to open up the application process to other colleges – and not shitty schools like the University of Arizona (burn), but other big-time Ivy League schools. Only they’re not interested either.
Jack tells Jessica he was offered a job by the law firm he tried to poach from, and says he’d rather stay with PSL – for which he has complicated feelings of attachment and loyalty, something to do with the idea that if he can make it there, he can make it anywhere (he’s from Boston) – if he has a shot at ever being a name partner. To prove he can be trusted, he gives Jessica an envelope containing whatever incriminating info Hardman has on him.
Jessica floats the Jack name partnership idea by Louis. He explodes at the thought, and accuses her of weak leadership. She suggests that if he thinks he’s so smart, why doesn’t he stop Sheila Szaz from testifying at the trial about Mike.
Louis goes to Boston for what seems like his fourth or fifth time in two weeks, and gives Sheila a demonstration of what cross-examination from Harvey would be like – cruel, humiliating, and possibly career destroying for Sheila. To protect her from that ordeal, he gives her a plane ticket (does anyone in real life ever, anymore, use paper plane tickets that come in paper folders? NO) to Argentina and persuades her to leave the U.S. until after the trial.
Endnotes:
- This week’s drinking game is all about the surprise drop-in: chug whenever someone says, “What are you doing here?”
- Mike decides the way to prove he is too a lawyer is to defend himself. Not sure where that will leave Harvey.
- Donna wades through hundreds of boxes of discovery documents and finds out that Gibbs has located Turncoat Trevor. Uh-oh.
Kim Moritsugu is a Toronto novelist and sometime TV show recapper whose latest novel is a suburban comedy of manners about food and sex called The Oakdale Dinner Club.
