23 hours ago
8
For all my eye-rolling at spinoffs, reboots and IP rehashing, I have to admit that a redux of Suits, the erstwhile USA Network show about smartly dressed hyper-smart lawyers bickering smartly, is smart business. The original series, which ran from 2011 until 2019, is the type of show that linear television used to excel at, and what streaming services have long struggled to replicate: lightly serialized, an aspirational workplace drama with near-comically low stakes, sleek and sexy and easily second-screened. It was the show of the summer in, of all years, 2023, nearly half a decade after it wrapped its run and cultural eons away from the heyday of breezy, beautiful so-called “blue sky” television.
Given that everyone and their friend was watching (or rewatching) Suits a year-ish ago, it made sense, and was even maybe promising, that NBC greenlit Suits LA, a spinoff set in a somehow even sunnier environment than the original’s unrecognizably bright vision of New York (via Toronto). As an original series watcher carried back by the Netflix resurgence, I, too, was hopeful for an extension of the show’s cheeky, clever, bad-but-fun spirit, a show that doubled down on the magnetic hyper-competence of a corporate lawyer like Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), continued the predominance of unrealistically sexy tailoring, and transcended the presence of a pre-Sussex Meghan Markle.
Unfortunately, Suits LA, again created by Aaron Korsh, disappoints in the tradition of many a network reboot. Like Frasier, How I Met Your Father and the Gossip Girl 2.0 before it, the new Suits is an echo of the original that neither embodies enough of its ethos to satisfy nor sufficiently differentiates itself to stand alone. To be fair, while the original made the drudgery of corporate law unrealistically and definitively sexy, the new version takes on arguably an even more difficult case: the work of entertainment law. Where there was once mergers, embezzlement and white-collar crime, there is now contracts, movie-star schmoozing and one actual murder involving a producer that is so dry and unmoving it made me wish they stuck to negotiations of film schedules.
Suits LA certainly has the pieces to succeed: in the tradition of Harvey Specter, entertainment lawyer Ted Black (Stephen Amell) is a fast-talking, quick-thinking, largely unflappable closer of extreme confidence, with a keen sense of banter and, of course, a pretty face. In the tradition of Patrick J Adams’ Mike Ross, a broke autodidact who fakes his way into a Harvard-only law firm at the expense of everyone’s trust for the rest of the series, Ted also has some secrets – though not nearly as endearing and rendered in shoddily deployed flashbacks to his 2010 New York life. (None of the three episodes provided for review were finalized for air, but I doubt color correction can fix a stale aesthetic that is particularly drab in the 2010 scenes.) Like Gina Torres before her, Erica Rollins (Lex Scott Davis) is an ambitious careerist made ruthless by the corporate norm that Black women have to work twice as hard to get half as far, engaged in a war of egos and chemistry with comparatively laidback frenemy Rick Dodson (Bryan Greenberg). Everyone, yes, wears excellent suits (Erica in particular); there are obligatory shots of tight pencil skirts sashaying away.
Spoiler guidelines prohibit much discussion of the plot, which, in the spirit of the original, shuffles the main players around in a wheel of self-interest and pride. The show tries, largely unproductively, to wring mystery out of how Ted, a former federal prosecutor of mobsters turned entertainment lawyer with the most baldly stated daddy issues I’ve ever seen, moves from New York to Los Angeles to set up a firm with close friend Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt), a former corporate lawyer turned criminal defense attorney (the practice of law is fungible, I guess).
The pals open the show staring down a merger with another shop run by Ted’s very attractive ex Samantha (Rachelle Goulding). All the while, Black Lane clients – all actors playing themselves, including the late John Amos – flow in and out of the office with a slew of actor-specific demands that seem much more compelling in theory than in practice. Nice as he may be, watching Brian Baumgartner, aka The Office’s Kevin Malone, seek help on becoming an Oscar-winning dramatic actor doesn’t have quite the same intrigue as, say, going after an investment firm that ripped off a non-profit.
Crucially – and this really the whole deal – not enough of this work is in the service of Suits’ bread and butter: characters verbally jockeying their way through life, musical tête-à-têtes of exceptional timing and wit. There are flashes of that, such as when Ted and Erica recognize their mutual shark-ness, or when Erica takes on Rick, or when Erica deals with a less straitened junior assistant (Alice Lee). Aside from Erica, and an occasional good Ted Black moment (Amell has the cadence and the jawline), the banter wilts more than it zings. Without it, Suits LA is just convoluted plot and unrealistically alert lawyers – maybe baseline entertaining, but not sexy. Without it – after three episodes, at least – this spinoff is just business.
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Suits LA airs on NBC on Sundays with a UK date to be announced
