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statusquoergo · 5 years

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Part I Part II

I talked previously about my thoughts on Mike Ross’s return to Suits, but this episode offered some…additional insights, let’s say.

So this episode uses the word “fuck” four times, “goddamn” once, and “Mike” or “Mike Ross” a whopping seven times. Despite my dramatic emphasis, that may not sound like a whole lot, but considering where we left off last season with Mike having been reduced from subject to object (see here for a more thorough explanation of my argument), it sure does seem like he’s suddenly supposed to be on our minds for some reason. Yeah, he’s going to show up in episode 5, but I should hope the showrunners aren’t just biding their time with filler content until then.

Now, the simplest explanation for this sudden Mike Ross overload is that that’s exactly what they’re doing; they know this show is surviving by the skin of its teeth and they have to scramble for any advantage they can get to hold onto their viewers, and in fact I’m inclined to suspect that’s the truth. Occam’s razor and all that. But I’m a Marvey girl at heart, this is my blog, and if I want to write about what a Marvey episode this is, then that’s what I’m gonna do, goddammit.

Mike reference the first: Harvey called Mike the morning after his and Donna’s tryst.

The thing that’s been weirding me out about all these “phone calls to Mike” is that it would be easy, it would be so easy for Harvey to say that he just got off the phone with Mike, or for Harvey to talk about a phone call he had with Mike last night, or for Harvey to refer to a phone call he had with Mike a couple weeks ago. They could even have one of those one-sided things where we can only hear Harvey’s half of the conversation as he “talks to Mike” even though Patrick isn’t actually in the episode. No, instead we get one reference to a conversation that might happen, eventually (“I thought instead of calling and asking for a solution, I’d rather call and tell him a story with a happy ending” [s08e03]), and one gloomy answering machine message (“Hey, Mike, it’s me. … Gimme a call if you want to hear it” [s08e13]). So all through Season 8, I’m getting a stronger and stronger impression that Harvey is calling Mike and calling Mike and never talking to him, but he just keeps calling, and my god that’s depressing. He must really miss him.

Welcome to Season 9. Not only is Harvey still calling Mike to give him life updates, but he’s leaving him messages offscreen. There is no reason for this whatsoever. None. “I hope [Rachel] listens to her messages before Mike, ‘cause I just left him a doozy.” How hard would it have been to say “I hope she listens to her messages before she talks to Mike, ‘cause I just got off the phone with him”? They use every single opportunity they can find to point out that Harvey and Mike aren’t actually speaking to one another, and being that I haven’t heard any reference to Mike leaving messages for Harvey, I’m inclined to think that this relationship has become unnervingly one-sided. But Harvey’s going to keep at it!

How, um…melancholic.

Minor side note, Donna is apparently in touch with Rachel to the same degree that Harvey is in touch with Mike, and while this is obviously a Machel/Darvey parallel, it’s also a cute little Donna/Mike parallel, so there’s our first hint that everything Darvey is just Marvey in disguise. (Give me a break, I told you I’m a Marvey girl.)

Mike reference the second: Samantha proposes turning the tables on Kaldor because “the best defense is a good offense,” and Harvey laughs about how often he made that same argument to Mike.

This is just tacky, to be honest. The whole point is to drive home how similar Harvey and Samantha are, but they could’ve accomplished the same thing without the reminder that even after that hideous goodbye, Harvey still thinks fondly of Mike (and still thinks of him often; they haven’t seen each other or spoken in like, a year, and he’s still finding all sorts of reminders of him in his daily life).

Mike reference the third: Taking Jessica’s name off the firm’s letterhead was fine because she agreed to it, and she knew about Mike (i.e., was guilty) so she deserved it.

I got nothing on this one, it’s just another excuse to sneak his name into the script.

Mike reference the fourth: Harvey’s been renting out Mike and Rachel’s apartment since they left.

Here we go.

Mike asked Harvey to rent out his apartment. Harvey has not been doing that. In fact, he’s been secretly paying it off and keeping it empty, “in case they came back.” “They” have given no indication that this is ever going to happen (“I know it sounds crazy, but—”). Take this alongside the probability that he hasn’t actually spoken to Mike since Mike left, and this behavior is indicative of a very troubled individual. We know from his issues with Lily that repression is one of Harvey’s favorite tactics for dealing with his problems, and Harvey admitted, out loud, very clearly, to Donna, that he’s missing Mike (“Donna, I might be missing Mike, but I’m not Mike” [s08e04]), so, I mean…

Well. Res ipsa loquitur.

Harvey has been renting the apartment to a fake individual named, wait for it, Rick Sorkin. Now I know that those of us who make a habit of producing and/or consuming Marvey content are quite familiar with this name, but the writers obviously don’t assume that to be the case for your average viewer, given that Donna slips in the awkward reminder that “that’s the kid who didn’t show up for his interview the day [Harvey] hired Mike.” Harvey takes the fact that Donna makes that connection as an opportunity to tell her that he loves that she “gets him,” but I have a question:

Why does Harvey remember it?

Rick Sorkin’s name is mentioned in the first episode, four times by Donna to the Harvard recruits and to Mike, once by Mike to Harvey, and never again for the entire duration of the show until this episode. It’s a piece of obscure trivia, a footnote in the Life and Times of Michael James Ross. I’d be surprised Mike remembers it if not for the writers’ dire misunderstanding of how an eidetic memory works. And yet all these years later, after hearing it once, nearly in passing, Harvey remembers it, well enough to use it as an inside joke in this horrifically lonely task he’s been performing for the better part of a year. But why?

You know what, all I’m gonna say about this is that there’s a reason Marvey fans know the name so well.

Sometimes it’s kind of fun that these writers are only good at romance when they do it accidentally, don’t you think?

#marvey #suits usa #season 9 #s09e01 #analysis

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