Suits returned last week after its regular autumn hiatus, and the show felt different. The lighting was brighter, the characters seemed to be quieter in the sense they were thinking their next moves, until their explosive personalities took the lead, but even then there was this sense of hopefulness, of this work family's evolution and certain shift in the status quo we are used to after 6 years; watching them fight for their firm more than their own happiness. After two episodes and only four left, it looks like there's some dazzling time ahead finding endings to certain conflicts that have been developing for too long.
"The Painting" is one of the best hours Suits has delivered, settling the characters' arc of its three main male leads. While Harvey flies to Boston to fix his family problems, Louis stays heading the firm. Mike, meanwhile, tries to find his place in the world after his time in Prison and losing a job in less than a week.
When the episode starts, Mike is shown to have done a selfless act not to rain on Rachel's parade after her new job offer. He fails to tell her he lost his teaching position, and it's ok, because money is not what brings this kids together. Magically he gets offered a job, because he didn't lie about his past in his application, and he finds himself as the new counselor of one the law clinics he visited last week.
But his new work place isn't anything as PSL, one of his co workers, Marissa instantly puts him in him place, thinking he's only an unscrupulous corporate lawyer. Her reticence to work with him makes Mike show the greatest evolution he has, until now. Not only coming clean to his new colleagues about the crime he committed, but also helping his new client out of his own pocket. He wants to help people, and that's what he's doing.
Meanwhile Harvey's arc travels between present time and 7 years prior, after his father died. He wasn't going to say his goodbyes to his dad, until Donna convinces him, and when he's there, at first things are ok, even if his mother is present and gives an eulogy, because what she says really touches him. His brother and him were everything to his parents, even if as a couple they didn't work. However everything falls apart when the man, Lily cheated on Gordon with, shows up. He lost it back then, he loses it now when Lily mentions he had left them, and she's forgiving him too. She wasn't the greatest mother, she hurt a young man, but he's an adult now, and he didn't behave like one. He doesn't understand this, and storms out of the his brother's restaurant, but not before lashing on his mother while she calmly tries to explain what his absence meant to her. Meeting his mother, viewers get to see not only the other side of a really difficult family story, and the narrative we have been feed for as long as we got some insights into Harvey's psyche is finally closed when we hear Marcus and his mom's husband's version. Harvey disappear from their lives, Lily couldn't even reached him when Marcus had cancer, and his brother is tired from his broken family. Harvey needed to hear the truth, because it makes him confront his mother with humility, it makes him get in touch with the feelings he has neglected for so long. "I'm so angry, I don't want to be angry anymore, but I don't know how" After 20 years, mother and son, both stubborn to their bones, finally accept what they did wrong and apologize genuinely. It's all it needed to make me reach for tissues, for Gabriel Macht to give the best performance up to date (and he has showed how talented he is several times) and for Suits to reach another level of empathy and brilliant characters arc. Harvey Specter has one of the best evolution seen on TV, and this is what makes the show valuable. His outer fortress in starting to crack, and the man that was afraid to feel and accept his mistakes seems to be gone. Not only because of how he leaves things with his mom, but his conversation with Louis solidifies this change, besides leaving the door open for Jessica to come back by suggesting not to get rid of her last name from the firm's name. As if this wasn't enough to see how his emotions are turning, the episode ends with him asking Donna for help to hang a photo of the painting his mother has made and he lost last season. Donna and Harvey's dynamic is changing, he's letting her in, and not only about work related things. (Let's not forget, she's someone very special to him; his words not mine)
Louis also shows he's different, somewhat more tranquil, even if there's still the old him there, letting his insecurities drive him to edge, it seems like he has learned to listen, or at least be open to listen. And maybe like this, he and Harvey can run Pearson Specter Litt.
This episode, was not only beautiful aesthetically, which Suits never fails to delivered breathtaking setting, but also writing wise. The dialogues were on point, and the performances of the whole cast delivered them with such grace and subtlety that made it difficult not to be moved by the story that we were told.
