“That Kind of Makes Me Sound Like a…” “What Ever Word You Are Searching For, Double It.” “Handsome Handsome.”
I was a fan of Suits back in the day. I mean, back when it was originally airing on the USA Network in the 2010’s. Yes, I did get tired of it in the last few years, but I was still interested when I heard about the Suits LA spinoff, especially when they cast Stephen Amell as the lead. As I kind of expected, it wasn’t nearly as good as the original. There was promise there, but the execution needed to be very different.
When we meet Ted Black (Stephen Amell) in the present, he’s the head of a law firm in LA. He thinks that his firm is about to merge, but in reality, his partner, Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) has effectively cut him out of the deal, leading to a firm split. Stuart sets up shop with Samantha Railsback (Rachelle Goulding), who just happens to be Ted’s ex. The two firms battle it out for clients, some of them real celebrities and some fictional. Also, Ted, a former prosecutor, takes on a case for movie producer Lester Thompson (recurring guest star Kevin Weisman), who is accused of killing his business partner.
Meanwhile, we see flashbacks to the time that Ted, Stuart, and Samantha were all back in New York City in 2010 (just before the original Suits). Ted is trying to get a mob boss behind bars, but that comes with incredible danger. What will it mean for his relationships, especially with his slimy father (recurring guest star Matt Letscher).
Let’s start with that last one. Obviously, if you’ve followed my reviews, you know I was a huge fan of the Arrowverse. While Stephen’s Oliver Queen and Matt’s Reverse Flash never shared a scene in those TV shows, it was fun seeing them acting opposite each other here.
Like the original show, this one had plenty of legal maneuvers, more often than not outside the courtroom. I will say, the way the lawyers procured deals for their clients, I felt like they were more agents than lawyers, but maybe I just don’t understand the entertainment business as much as I thought I did. Anyway, those stories could be fun. Also, since all the characters from both firms know each other, that added to the interpersonal drama.
Each episode featured a flashback to what happened to drive the characters from New York to Los Angeles. Honestly, this hurt the show for a couple of reasons. First, we knew the ultimate outcome very early on. So there was little suspense in seeing all that unfold. Second, it took time away from the current storylines. Unfortunately, we kind of needed that backstory to fully understand the character relationships, but the way we got it just wasn’t satisfying.
It didn’t help that there were too many characters to easily track. Some were only recurring, but they took up quite a bit of screen time when they were in an episode. If you look at the original Suits, it had six main characters, and the first season really focused on them. And it had a fairly simple hook. Yes, the characters had backstory, but we didn’t get it all at once. Or even in the first season. We had flashback episodes, but it was something related to what was currently going on. That show had narrative focus; this one was a bit all over the place.
Like with the Pearson spin off, I felt like it was trying to include too many characters and storylines all at once, and that just didn’t work well.
So what did work? I found the murder storyline interesting. What can I say, I’m a mystery fan. That had some nice twists. I would get on board with a storyline here and there, but I wasn’t compelled to keep watching from week to week. Oh, I did, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t wait to see.
I’m not faulting any of the actors, who are all good at bringing their characters to life. For me, the problem lies with the writing, which felt like a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.
I already mentioned that we had real life celebrities popping in as versions of themselves. That was often my favorite part of each episode. None of them had long arcs, but they were always fun.
Three characters from the original popped up. The most prevalent was Gabriel Macht as Harvey Specter, who guest starred in three episodes. He was electric as always, and I really liked his storylines the best. Showing up in one episode each, we had David Costabile as Daniel Hardman, who would have been about the last character I expected to show up, and Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt, which just reminded me that a little bit of Louis goes a long way.
The show never did well in the ratings, so I wasn’t surprised when NBC cancelled it. While the show leaves quite a few things up in the air, I felt like we got enough of a sense of closure that I’m okay. Don’t get me wrong, I very much want to see what the show would have looked like going forward, and I would have turned in. But I also feel like we can move on from these characters satisfied. Or at least I can.
If you are a fan of the original and are curious about this one, give Suits LA a chance. Otherwise, you aren’t missing much of you skip it.
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