‘Suits’ 1.02 Recap: “Are You That Pony?”

As much as I enjoyed the first episode of the USA Network’s new legal drama ‘Suits’, pilot episodes always leave me a little uneasy that further episodes of the show won’t be able to live up. Pilots often have more money and resources poured into them (including carefully-honed scripts) in the hope of appealing to network bosses with greenlight approval, and that can be a difficult standard to maintain. Fortunately in this case, the second episode of ‘Suits’ reassures me that something interesting is developing here.

In ‘Errors and Omissions’, Harvey and Mike are handling a hotshot electronics developer named Wyatt (Eric Ladin from ‘The Killing’) whose new satellite phone is expected to be a breakthrough product that will make everyone a lot of money. Because Harvey deems him not yet ready to sit at the “adult table,” he assigns Mike the menial task of filing the patent, which of course Mike doesn’t know how to do.

Mike thinks he’s clever when he works out a trade with another junior associate named Gabriel who’s done patents before. All Mike has to do is proof the briefs on his latest case. That seems like a breeze, until Mike learns that the briefs fill an entire conference room with boxes. Gabriel turns out to be an even bigger prick when he refuses to file the patent until Mike is done. As a result, the patent goes in a day late and is denied when a rival firm called Suntech Digital gets in first.

This of course turns into a big mess that Harvey has to clean up. He files for an injunction against the company, but the dickish judge he lands denies it because he thinks that Harvey slept with his wife. Harvey actually didn’t sleep with the wife. She just told her husband that to be spiteful. But the judge certainly isn’t going to take Harvey’s word for that.

As if Mike doesn’t have enough to deal with, Harvey’s rival Louis makes uncomfortable overtures to him, highlighted by a weird speech about how every year he culls one promising pony from the herd to be his special stallion. Louis forces him to play tennis rather than complete something that Harvey assigned him, and lies to Mike that he failed the company drug test. Louis tells him that he’ll sweep the drug test under the rug if Mike helps him to woo an internet millionaire who thinks Louis is a creep (because he is). This would entail getting high with said internet millionaire, which makes Harvey really pissed off when he finds out that Mike broke the deal they had about him giving up drugs.

In the end, Harvey has the judge investigated for misconduct. He also informs the judge that he never slept with his wife, but since they’ve filed for divorce, he’s going to go ahead and do that now. Harvey is kind of awesome.

He finds a solution to the patent issue when he convinces Wyatt to threaten to publish his specs for the phone online for free to anyone who wants them, which would totally devalue Suntech Digital’s investment. Suntech buys him out for a hefty sum to prevent that from happening.

Mike tells Harvey about everything Louis made him do and tries to stand up for himself, but Harvey very succinctly dresses him right back down again. I like this relationship. It doesn’t follow the expected TV formula where the young wunderkind knows better than everyone else.

Mike does get a little redemption, however, when he lands that internet millionaire as a client, which will get him a seat at the adult table. He also manages to burn Louis by convincing the client to go with Harvey instead.

This is an excellent episode with sharp writing, good character development, and a lot of dramatic twists and turns. I’m officially hooked.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *