#highly convinced that at that point mike and harvey should’ve just run off together into the sunset on a flight to buenos aires | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

statusquoergo · 5 years

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Part I

I wonder if Faye feeds on everyone’s hatred for her or what, because she heads on into Donna’s office to ask for help with the massive amount of work she now has to do as the firm’s new managing partner, Donna greets her with predictable snark and sarcasm, and I swear I thought Faye was going to ask her for help finding a secretary but no! She asks Donna to help her get a handle on things.

Now, true, “You were the best secretary this firm ever had” is probably not the best way to convince Donna-the-COO to give her a hand, but everyone keeps insisting that this firm is woefully understaffed (despite apparently having plenty of associates and also enough clients to use some of them as bargaining chips), and as Chief Operating Officer, it’s Donna’s job to make sure the firm’s operations are running smoothly, so…if the managing partner needs a little help getting her work in order…it kind of is her job to get that done? I still think it would’ve been more reasonable for Donna to hire Faye her own secretary, but it’s not like she’s qualified to be COO, or doing…anything, at all, to deserve the position, so I mean. It’s just a couple of days and it’ll probably go a ways towards getting Faye off their backs, why not take one for the team?

On the other side of the floor, Alex and Samantha have some more weirdly endearing bonding time, and I admit I thought it was pretty funny when Alex told Samantha how important family is and she asked if he was trying to adopt her. Then he invites her over to dinner, pointing out how highly his wife and daughter think of her, she accepts, and this is definitely the first time I’ve actually kind of liked her as a character.

Harvey gets an impromptu call from Dan, that random CEO from before, who tears into him for taking out a full page ad (what is this, 2003?) bashing Faye’s old firm for endangering the future of Dan’s company, and seriously, who’s going to see that ad who’s going to, one, give a shit, and two, have any idea what it’s talking about if they don’t already know? Anyway Dan informs Harvey that his board fired him, Harvey exclaims that they can’t do that in the middle of litigation, and actually, he’s probably right, but who cares about logic, this is Suits, for crying out loud. He promises to fix everything, Dan threatens to sue him if he doesn’t (which I’m sure wouldn’t be long and drawn-out and expensive and totally not worth it), and Harvey immediately goes to Donna to bitch and moan about this situation that is of course in no way his fault. She tells him that Faye has her doing secretarial work, Harvey tries to storm off to tear into her, and Donna proposes that they go out to dinner instead to give him a chance to clear his head because they decided earlier that they don’t want Faye or their work troubles to come between them as a couple. Which I get, I mean, that’s sensible, but how is this Faye coming between them? Is Harvey being mad at her for asking Donna to do this work hurting his and Donna’s relationship somehow? Would Harvey not be pissed off and storm her office if he and Donna were still just friends? I can’t decide if this is him being chivalrous or patronizing, but I’m leaning toward the latter if for no other reason than that this show has a bad history of some pretty sexist sub-plots and throwaway jokes.

Katrina summons Susan to her office to reprimand her for disobeying her direct order by contacting that family friend of hers, and yeah, Susan should’ve obeyed her because she’s an associate and Katrina is a senior partner, but I still think it would’ve been a good idea for Katrina to tell her tell her up front why she didn’t want her to do it. Too late now, because Susan tries to blackmail her into keeping her on by threatening to tell Faye why Brian really left (he and Katrina had romantic tension, that’s why). I’m getting shades of “You put your interests above mine. I mean, I’m just putting mine back up next to yours” (s01e01); I wonder if this show knows how to do partner/associate relationships that don’t mirror Harvey and Mike.

Fast forward a little: Gretchen offers to do Faye’s work for Donna so that she and Harvey can “get [their] smush face on,” which, what does that even mean; Louis goes to bitch at Faye for stealing his secretary and we learn that she immediately saw through Gretchen and Donna’s ruse; Louis goes to complain to Gretchen and vow to get Donna back; she tells him not to do that because it was her choice to take the work on, he asks her where Donna and Harvey are so he can make sure they’re keeping Donna’s promise not to let their relationship interfere with his need for support, and she says he shouldn’t bother them and then immediately tells him where they are. Because logic.

On said date, Harvey and Donna are having a hell of a time talking about anything other than work, even though the entire point of this date is to not talk about work; they resort to “Water is wet” (Donna) and “Have you read any good books lately” (Harvey) before Harvey realizes that Donna reminds him of Ricky Garfield’s mom, a beautiful redhead he had a crush on when he was a kid. This is obviously an implication that Harvey has a “type” (that neither Zoe nor Scottie nor Paula matched, go figure), but it feels weird to me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on just yet. Something about infatuation or obsession or idealism or…something. I don’t like it.

Minor interlude to Alex’s house, where he and Rosalie reprimand Joy for backing Alex’s car into a lamppost and then lying about it and Samantha tries to blend into the refrigerator for a minute until they all sit down at the table for takeout Chinese. No, this is actually a good scene; it’s realistic without being too cheesy and incorporates the awkwardness without letting it ruin the evening. I still don’t much care for Joy, but the effort is pretty nice overall.

Harvey and Donna seem to have settled into some pretty easy banter as Donna confesses that she once thought she’d been poisoned by a Szechuan peppercorn; Harvey asks her what she did to deserve being poisoned, she says that’s neither here nor there, and he accuses her of being a black widow, at which point she corrects him that if she were the black widow, she’d be the one doing the poisoning. (Hold onto this for just a minute.) They keep up their irritatingly scripted repartee until Harvey has a brainstorm about how to save Dan, but he won’t deal with it until tomorrow because “tonight is for [them].” Then Louis calls Donna for that support he mentioned to Gretchen, she contemplates picking up, and Harvey talks her out of it, at which point we see that Louis is in fact at the restaurant and saw them ignore his call, and I get another flashback to him standing outside of Harvey’s office holding a poorly-timed cake meant to celebrate his and Mike’s success at working together just as Mike and Harvey decide to team up again. Poor guy. (I’m not sure if this show loves to self-reference or they’re just low on new ideas. Maybe both.) Oh, then Harvey says they should go to his place where he can pretend to be young Harvey and Donna can pretend to be Ricky Garfield’s mom and I think I’m starting to figure out what my problem with this is. (It has to do with idealization and romanticism and Harvey needs to go to therapy.)

Katrina asks Samantha how she knew when to give in when Katrina stood up to her, Samantha tells her she gave in when Katrina was right, and I’m so confused, does Samantha suddenly have a sense of modesty? Her character is so arbitrary, it’s giving me a headache.

The next day, probably, Harvey storms into Faye’s office and accuses her of having Johnson and Powell, which I guess is the name of her old firm, fire Dan during litigation thanks to a clause in Dan’s contract that allowed him to be fired during litigation. (Who the fuck would put that kind of a clause in their contract?) Faye denies it, asserting that a fifteen-minute phone call Harvey found record of in her LUDs (which he got…where?) was from Johnson and Powell rather than the other way around (which he should have been able to tell from the phone records) because, get this, they wanted to complain about what an asshole Harvey is. You know, in previous seasons, I might’ve taken offense at that, but at the moment, I think they’re really onto something. Anyway she invites him to subpoena her and points out that all he’s managed to accomplish thus far is getting Dan fired, so that’s gotta feel good.

Following up on the Katrina plotline, she escorts Susan to Faye’s office and boxes her into either disclosing the story about Katrina and Brian or dropping the matter completely; Susan ends up not ratting her out (for…not having an affair?) and Katrina admits that she was ambitious when she started out, too, but that can’t be all Susan has. I’m liking this dynamic, I hope Susan gets a redemption arc and sticks around awhile longer. (Not just for the overtones of Marvey, I also think it’ll be good for Katrina to have someone to mentor.)

Louis and Harvey have their final confrontation of the day as Louis declares that he’s taking that judgeship (that is not how that works), and Harvey clarifies that he and Donna ignored Louis’s call because they assumed it was about work, and also they weren’t laughing at him, they were laughing at some joke Harvey told right after they hung up on him. That’s all very well and good, but you know how earlier Harvey didn’t know what a black widow is? This time around, he’s unfamiliar with the phrase “tilting at windmills.” (It means to attack imaginary enemies.) I’m not saying that everyone has to know every idiom in the English language in order to be a functioning adult, but neither “black widow” nor “tilting at windmills” is especially uncommon, and the fact that Harvey doesn’t know them is…very jarring. Are they trying to make him seem dense? Out of touch? Socially inept? Did he entirely lose that part of his personality when Mike abandoned them? Is he faking it for some indiscernible reason? It feels to me like they’re trying to use these blind spots to make him seem more relatable somehow, or more likable, but for my money, it’s having the opposite effect as I’m finding it very irritating and out of character for him.

Samantha thanks Alex for bringing her over for dinner, declaring it precisely what she needed, kerfuffle and all, and confides that she’s been inspired by the fact that Joy is a perfect cross between Alex and Rosalie to find her birth parents. That’s nice, I guess? But…is she familiar with the concept of nature versus nurture? I don’t think this is going to turn out the way she wants it to. Also, I knew Samantha was a foster kid, but I didn’t know that she cared about her birth parents, and now she suddenly does with no buildup whatsoever, and I must say, I do not give a shit.

Donna shows up at Sheila and Louis’s place for a little bonding session, treating Louis to a “girl’s night” and promising him that tonight he’s “the most important woman in the room,” which is all very well and good but I can’t imagine it would’ve been any harder for them to say “tonight is all about you” and avoid making this into a whole gendered thing.

Finally, Harvey meets up with Faye yet again to cockily inform her that, as Louis reminded him, he’s the guy things always work out for; this time around, he convinced Kevin Miller (who’s apparently become the show’s official deus ex machina) to buy SensaTech, which I guess is the name of Dan’s company? And then rehire Dan because he built it from scratch. He seems to have also advised Kevin to allow SensaTech to keep Johnson and Powell as their legal counsel, thereby allowing Faye to save face (which I was unaware she had lost) if she’s willing to give Gretchen back to Louis. (Faye didn’t want Gretchen, she wanted Donna; it’s Donna’s fault Gretchen is working for Faye, because she wanted to skip out on work early to go on a date with Harvey.) Faye refuses, countering that he can resign if he wants to try extorting her; they each claim that they’re not going anywhere, and she closes out the episode with the line: “And for the record, you said you’d do anything to win this, but you haven’t crossed a single line. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing my job.” I guess she means that despite being resisted at every turn, she’s beginning to succeed at bringing them into line? But honestly, as a parting farewell, it really doesn’t have as much punch as she thinks it does.

I told you Louis wasn’t going to resign. Next time around, it looks like they’ll be going all in on the Darvey angle, so that’ll be…fun…

#suits usa #season 9 #s09e03 #analysis

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