Suits restructures the firm (and the series) in midseason premiere

Suits’ midseason premiere was all about shakeups at the firm, but it also served as a catalyst with the reveal that the series will be ending.

The Suits midseason premiere aired on the same day that USA announced the series is ending next season, which completely changed the way one looks at “Rocky 8.”

It was understandable that the network would want to make the big announcement at the same time that the series was returning; that’s a common tactic, used just this week when USA’s sister network SYFY renewed The Magicians before its season premiere. But from a creative standpoint, it immediately cast a new shadow over our return to TV’s favorite law firm.

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Would there be clues in this episode about the upcoming ninth and final season? If there weren’t, should there be? Was the series starting to show its age, as fans were reminded it’s been on the air for most of a decade?

And in the middle of all that, Aaron Korsh and company still had to tell the story they were trying to provide for Suits season 8.

That’s not an enviable position to be in. But “Rocky 8” succeeded on both counts—whether it meant to or not.

In true Suits fashion, the installment picked up the day after the midseason finale, with Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman) as the new managing partner and the rest of the team adjusting to his promotion.

Meanwhile, there was still fallout from the battle between Alex Williams (Dule Hill) and Samantha Wheeler (Katherine Heigl) in the previous episode, even though both had become name partners at what was now called Zane Specter Litt Wheeler Williams—try saying that three times fast. Or at all, actually, it’s just awkward.

So the episode had to function on three different levels: wrapping up the previous story, starting off a new one for the remaining episodes of the season, and also appeasing those who might be already wondering how Suits is going to end. And it hit each of those three marks near perfectly.

Anyone who’s watched Suits over the last seven and a half seasons knew how the whole Louis in power storyline would play out in “Rocky 8.” Louis would be filled with glee about finally attaining the top spot at the firm, while Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), Robert Zane (Wendell Pierce) and Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) would have to adjust to the new world order, with a well-placed joke or two.

The script was smart to get the comedy out of the way at the top of the hour, with Louis talking to himself and then literally dancing his way through the office with music by Portugal. The Man. It was cheesy, but that’s who Louis is, so it worked—especially because the show didn’t spend a lot of time using him for laughs. Instead, it got down to the very real problems (and internal thoughts) of Louis being managing partner.

Logistically speaking, audiences watched Louis unable to handle the fact that being the new boss meant divorcing himself from day-to-day legal work, especially when one of his oldest clients was the case of the week. He could delegate in some respects, but not in others, and firm issues piled up on his desk because he was still acting as more of a lawyer than a supervisor. Louis might have been great at managing the associates, but managing the entire firm was a whole other beast and he just didn’t have the skill set for that—yet.

What “Rocky 8” made clear is that Louis needs to develop to be a good managing partner. He’s a talented lawyer, and he can manage lower-level employees, but there are different levels of being in charge and his previous experience doesn’t necessarily translate. By the end of the episode, as he figured out the difference between delegating and abdicating, he took a big first step. But more are coming.

And that honestly was just scratching the surface. Suits puts its characters first, its cases second, and so the “A” story was more about Louis, as well as Harvey and Robert separately, and who they are in this new regime.

Louis has always wanted more power; he spent seasons trying to get his name on the wall. But it isn’t really about promotion or ambition. Making managing partner, for Louis, is almost more about what it represents: validation and respect. Not only has he earned a seat at the table, but now he’s sitting at the head of the table.

And it’s Donna, Harvey, and Robert—three people whom he deeply respects—who put him there. It may have been under exigent circumstances, but they still chose him to lead them. After all those years of fighting Harvey and feeling snubbed for Harvey, now Louis has Harvey saying that he’s the boss.

Louis wants to do well by the firm, and even by Harvey, which is why he trusts him so openly at first; he wants that respect and approval, even though he’s in charge. But the only person the boss can look up to is themselves, so Louis has to change the way he operates, and he’ll keep growing as the season goes on.

On the flip side, this allowed for a Harvey and Robert story that let Suits once again capitalize on the great back and forth between Gabriel Macht and Wendell Pierce. The two are dynamite when they’re together, and even more so now that their characters are coexisting. It was interesting to see both of them in the same spot, going from being the boss to now working under Louis.

In one sense it’s freeing because they are no longer responsible for the minutiae that comes with the top job (see: co-ed bathrooms). But on the other, their hands aren’t on the wheel anymore, and it takes a second for that to sink in because of Louis’ reluctance to seize authority. After spending the first half of the season battling for control of the firm, now they’re true equals and that’s yet another evolution of the Harvey-Robert relationship that’s worth watching. They don’t know how to operate when they’re not in conflict, but this episode gives you hope that they’ll figure it out.

Elsewhere, there was drama between the rest of the staff related to how the previous case ended, specifically Katrina Bennett (Amanda Schull)’s role in the proceedings. Samantha’s unhappy client clued her into Katrina’s involvement when she accused Samantha of misconduct and demanded that the firm recover $80 million in losses.

Samantha easily figured out it was Katrina and tried to assert herself yet again, pressuring Katrina to make amends. Alex, who was tied up most of the episode with Louis’s old client (who’s also the new love interest for Donna!), came in near the end of “Rocky 8” to add his two cents, but it was really a Katrina, Samantha and Donna story.

If there’s been one foible in Suits season 8 so far, it’s been Samantha Wheeler and how she thinks she can muscle her way around the building. One would’ve thought she’d be more humbled after her loss in the midseason finale, but apparently not based on her conduct in this episode. It’s like she exists purely to antagonize everyone else, and that makes her harder to watch and to support as a main character.

So bravo to Katrina for finding a way around Samantha’s demands, and also for standing up in a few different ways. Katrina’s story in the first half of the season got tangled up in her ill-advised crush on Brian (which was also not a great plot point), so it was nice to see her back kicking some behind, even if it was a colleague’s.

Plus, Katrina made an excellent point when she discussed how the three previous leaders of the firm—Robert, Harvey, and Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres)—have all done some ethically dubious things in their careers. She posed the question of if that’s what it takes to be the boss. And that is a fair question that Suits should address more because its characters so often skirt the lines; the whole original premise of the show was about a fake lawyer!

It was refreshing for Katrina to be able to prove that no, there are ways to accomplish a goal (in this instance, closing a case) that don’t require scheming. That there’s as much room for doing it by the rules as doing it without them. Suits is showcasing both sides of the line, rather than just letting its characters run around like another bunch of TV mavericks, and that’s been part of the show’s DNA for years. But it’s particularly relevant again now.

None of this explicitly foreshadowed how Suits Season 9 is going to go, but if one stepped back from this episode and thought about it, there’s more truth here than you’d think. “Rocky 8” was a strong jab at the show’s ethos of the firm as family.

The “workplace family” concept is something that a lot of TV shows use. It’s the idea that the team is like a surrogate family unit, and people are expected to behave accordingly. Suits has that same general idea, but not quite because rather than just preaching that ideal, it actually did create this inherent family unit within the office through the myriad of connections it built up over the years. The characters had formative relationships with each other that created that, instead of the show just telling us they’re a pseudo-family because they work together.

But let’s be real: as the Suits midseason premiere depicted, this family is coming apart. Not in the “we’re not getting along for the 47th time” sense, but in the sense that the family unit that was established doesn’t really exist anymore, because of things that have happened both on and off screen. “Rocky 8” lays the groundwork for how the show could wind down, because we’re seeing characters who are less one family unit, and more a brilliant group of people who all just happen to be in this together.

There was a certain closeness when it was the original group because it was Jessica who made Harvey’s career possible and brought him into her firm. In turn, Harvey brought both Donna and Mike in, and Mike made them his family—both because he lost his own and because he married Rachel. They came together and stayed together.

The current iteration is more people who’ve found each other and ended up coming back around to one another. Robert showed up when his old firm betrayed him, and he brought Samantha. Katrina was here, then left, then came back. Alex, too, came in from the cold someplace else. Donna, Louis, and Harvey are still the core, and this is still a group that clearly cares about each other, but all of these characters having their respective histories with each other isn’t the same as having history together.

There’s a dissonance that exists within the walls of Zane Specter Litt Wheeler Williams, and it’s not just because there are more names on the wall and a new managing partner. Suits is changing as its cast and characters have changed, which is what it should be doing. The show evolves in ways that many TV shows never do.

But in that evolution, it’s reaching a place where these people would be ready to go their separate ways—to pursue their own dreams, like Katrina getting to manage her own firm, or Donna finding a love interest whom Harvey doesn’t have to beat up later. And that would be perfectly okay. After all that they’ve been through, and all the joy they’ve brought us, we want to see them ride off into the sunset.

And that’s what “Rocky 8” has us looking forward to—not just the end of this season but the end of what will go down as one of TV’s best-ever series.

Suits airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on USA. For more on this and other USA shows, check out the USA category at Hidden Remote.