Previously on Suits: Louis had a bit of a meltdown about not being married or having kids, so they took his associates away and gave them to Rachel. Dule Hill showed up as Harvey’s BFF Alex and is coming on board to Pearson Specter Litt, Mike took control of his prison story in the press, and Harvey dated his therapist and told Donna she can’t be partner, but she can be COO.
Here we go.
Louis is at the mud room… AND HARVEY IS THERE TOO! He looks VERY amused. And then Alex walks in and this is the guy version of the dream shower sequence at the beginning of that Grey’s Anatomy episode. It turns out it is all a dream, or nightmare, or as Louis tells his therapist, a mudmare. He doesn’t like Harvey’s friend Alex showing up and joining the firm and is worried Alex will steal Harvey’s friendship away.
His therapist says to look at this as an opportunity to have one more friend or one less friend and Louis takes his words to heart.
Then they show a little half second of stock footage of New York City before going to a scene at the office, but the footage they use shows One World Trade Center only about half-way built… It opened in 2014. Time to get some new stock footage.
At the office, Harvey has papered Mike’s office with blowup pictures of his story in the Times with a bunch of fake pull quotes, like “Lawyer gets cocky, gives interview,” and “Big Boy Pants: The Mike Ross Story.” Funny. He apologizes for saying he never should have hired him back, and now they’re all good. And I guess the entire Mike was a fraud thing is officially put to bed and they can move on.
The case of the week is a Radiant Technologies merge. Someone is trying to make some last-minute changes to the contract and Harvey assigns Mike to find out what’s going on.
Mike meets Mr. Reyes, his pro bono case of the week, in the conference room. Reyes says his son died in prison from a heart attack at 28 and he's suspicious. Mike says he’ll look into it in a few days, which concerns the father who wants him to start now since they only have two weeks to file a claim.
Meanwhile, Rachel calls out one of the associates about passing off an assignment to another associate. The woman looks somewhat apologetic but you know when Rachel assigns her something new, she’s just doing to do it again.
Mike tells Harvey the reason things seem off about the Radiant Technologies merger is because the client is trying to get out of it. But that doesn’t matter to him anymore, because he has to drop the case since his pro bono case is more important.
After an exchange in which Harvey basically says this better never happen again (even though we all know it's definitely going to happen again,) Harvey takes the case to Alex and the two of them leave to go to the meeting. Alex makes sure to call Louis on the way out to say they’ll have to reschedule lunch and is available anytime the rest of the week. Louis initially understands but then spots Harvey and Alex together, assumes that Harvey has swiped his new BFF, and panics.
Mike is now talking to a prison rep and wants details on the guy’s death. The basic story, we’re told, is that he was in a fight, sent to solitary where he had difficulty breathing. Doctors treated him, but he passed away. Mike smells something fishy and pressures the rep for more details.
When Mike presents Mr. Reyes with the incident report, he refuses to accept the story because he says his son wouldn’t have gotten in a fight with only one month until parole. He knows it’s too late for his son, but he wants Mike to look into the prison before something happens to someone else.
Elsewhere, Harvey and Alex meet with the guy who’s trying to back out of his contract. They put the screws to him and say he has to obey the terms of the deal and step down. He sighs and signs away. Well, that may be the easiest resolved case of the week ever.
Meanwhile, Louis is on a call with his therapist about how he thinks Harvey and Alex are laughing at him. His therapist - we got a name! Dr. Stan Lipschitz! - rattles off the “Seven Stages of Louis” (think the Seven Stages of Grief) and then works through a calming technique so he can chill. I love Stan and I want him to stick around.
At lunch, Alex and Harvey is basically doing exactly what Louis fears. Alex asks Harvey what the deal is with Louis and Harvey explains that Louis has a crush on him, which is very accurate. He clarifies that he’s basically Frank Burns from MASH, which helps Alex understand. “He loves you, hates you, and wants to be you all at the same time,” he says. Alex wants to make sure this won’t impact their professional life and Harvey says as long as you talk cats with him, it’ll be fine.
I like that scene - it’s nice to see what the people around Louis actually think of his antics. It can be simultaneously immature and concerning, but they just accept him and let it roll.
Mike shows up at the prison for a quick surprise conversation with the three guards who last saw Reyes alive. One of them drops the second near f-bomb of the show (so I guess this is a thing now on USA - really didn’t think they could do that) while threatening him, then the three run off. So clearly they’re hiding something.
Later that evening Mike has clearly followed one of the guards to a bar (pretty sure that’s not a technique recommended in any law book) and approaches him looking for details. He confesses that he had pulled the guy out of the fight and put him in solitary, where he complained of having trouble breathing. The guard told his supervisor who called a medic. There’s no conspiracy and nobody’s evil, he explains, the prison is just cheap. The reason the fight lasted as long as it did was because they were too cheap to hire enough guards to pull him off in time. This inspires Mike to immediately move to file a lawsuit against the prison.
Rachel comes to Donna, angry that the same associate pawned her work off again, and the newly crowned COO suggests that Rachel take a page out of Louis’ book and fake fire someone so she's taken seriously, or just actually fire the associate, especially since this is her second offense. Rachel doesn't like that because she doesn't want her first official act to be firing someone, and Donna says you have to be in command up front because they’ll walk all over you.
Fresh off of their BFF lunch, Alex drops a bomb on Harvey: tell Mike to drop the pro bono case against the prison because one of Alex’s biggest clients is the construction company that builds those prisons. I have no idea why that is a conflict of interest. This understandably turns into a yell-off between Alex and Harvey because Alex doesn’t understand why “the kid (Mike) doesn’t get it,” and thinks it’s ridiculous that Harvey wants Alex to drop his bullying client.
Elsewhere in the office, Rachel is facing off again with the associate who won’t do her own work and Stephanie fires back that she shouldn’t be wasting her time on that kind of work. Rachel starts to go in for the kill, but Donna swoops in and does it for her, kind of walking all over both Stephanie and Rachel in the process.
Harvey surprises everyone by sticking his head in Mike’s office and telling him to drop the pro bono case. I would apparently be a great fake lawyer, as Mike instantly argues what I said before - there’s no conflict. Harvey essentially says too bad, do what you’re told, which really just sets up a conflict of interest between Alex and Mike.
Meanwhile, it’s time for another fight in the bathroom. Rachel gets made that Donna undermined her in front of all the associates about something she knew nothing about. Donna defends herself, saying she was supporting Rachel, and maybe she wasn’t ready for her new position. Well, maybe Donna wasn’t either, Rachel comments. Whoa, those are fighting words! It was about time for Power Trip Donna to get a taste of her own medicine.
After Mike unloads the details of the whole “conflict of interest” situation to Louis, the partner immediately runs to tell Harvey that he can’t set a precedent of letting Alex’s clients run all over the firm. While the two are fighting, Donna tries repeatedly to interject, only to have Harvey either cut her off or just assume she’s on his side, which she really didn’t like, since she wasn’t.
In the meantime, fresh-out-of-prison Mike just figured he’d solve both problems at once and passes the case off to his pro bono lawyer buddy Oliver to handle.
Later that evening, Donna is waiting in Rachel’s office to apologize to her, saying she was knows how it feels to have the person who just gave you a job speak for you and say the opposite of what you wanted to say. The difference between Donna / Rachel fights and Harvey / Mike fights is that the women’s fights last about two minutes whereas the guys’ fights last all season. After accepting the apology, Rachel offers one of her own, saying that she just passed the bar and doesn't want to be in charge of anything else, she just wants to be doing her own thing.
So that’s two episodes in a row that someone took a job and got out of it almost immediately. And it looks like the associates belong to Donna now, since she fires Stephanie.
Mike is hanging out in Alex’s office, waiting to meet him (surprising that they haven’t met yet,) and gives Alex a list of future potential cases so they can avoid this problem in the future. Turns out Alex had just basically done the exact same thing, and they shake hands. I really like Alex as a new addition to this show - his character somehow magically gets along with everyone.
In the final moments we see poor, poor Louis having another meltdown over the phone and telling his therapist that it's his fault that everything in his life is going wrong and then calls his therapist Harvey. Turns out he’s really taking this Harvey BFF struggle to heart.
