The more I watch Suits, the more I realize how small the cast is. While there are name-ish actors in meaty, multiple episode arc guest roles this season, the series is no longer all about Batman and Robin – Harvey the mentor and Mike the protégé. It’s become much more of an ensemble show, with the six series regulars – Harvey, Mike, Jessica, Louis, Rachel and Donna – sharing the stage, the drama, and the great clothes.

The episode begins with Rachel – who gets a lot of on-screen minutes this week – coming home in the morning after an all-nighter at the office as Mike is preparing to leave for work. Mike would obviously have known where she was (they may not want the Gillis takeover case to come between them but surely they would text each other about little details like where they’re sleeping at night). He asks her whether she was working or studying anyway as well as a few more questions, including whether she loved Logan Sanders back when she had the affair with him, and by the way, who ended it?

A tired Rachel admits via a crazy amount of close talking that she did love Logan then, but not anymore, and she ended it, so leave her alone, she needs to nap.

Donna and Mike meet for coffee on a bench. Donna is trying to keep Mike and Harvey from being like Ali and Frazier (friends turned enemies) and mentions that Harvey has recently located the master tapes of his dead father’s jazz saxophone playing, also known as the Chekhov’s gun of this episode.

Logan drops into Rachel’s office and wields his softened eye expression to tell Rachel that he’s no longer the wuss she knew who has petty things like emotions and he means to play dirty in the takeover battle with Mike. When she says she can take it, he hardens his eyes and face and goes to tell Harvey it’s time to shoot Mike, whom he scornfully refers to as Harvey’s “surrogate son” – ooh, burn – in the back, and hit him below the belt while he’s at it.

Sidenote: After I remarked last week that Brendan Hines, the actor who plays Logan, resembles Veep actor Reid Scott – see evidence here, that’s Reid on the left, and Brendan on the right:

                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brendan Hines tweeted that he attended Reid Scott’s wedding this past weekend! I called it first: they’re actually brothers. Maybe even twins who were separated at birth.

 

 

Back on Suits, Harvey decides to strong arm a banker into cutting off Gillis’s company over brussel sprouts, but Mike, wise to Harvey’s tactics, swoops in and threatens to have Harvey up before a grand jury since said strong arming is apparently not legal. Can anyone ID which Toronto restaurant this might be? I can’t.

 

Logan next threatens to hire a private dick to uncover dirt on Mike which prompts Harvey to go to Walter Gillis and tell him Mike was once a drug dealer who did drugs. This upsets Gillis because his son’s death was drug-related, as Harvey knew, so Gillis later fires Mike but only after telling  Harvey he’s a piece of shit.

Mike and Harvey shout it out in Harvey’s office, where Harvey says he’s a saint for deflecting Logan from finding out about Mike’s whole lawyer-impersonation fraud thing with the (true) drug story. He also says he ‘made’ Mike, and “without me, you’re nothing.” As in the song “You’re Nothing Without Me” from the Broadway musical “City of Angels” sung here by my boy Santino Fontana with Greg Hildreth.

Mike says nyah-nyah–nyah-nyah-nyah  and tells Harvey he has Specter Sr.’s master tapes, so there. And he doesn’t care that Gillis fired him because he bought more stock and will save the company with or without Gillis being his client.

After Donna, wearing a surprisingly flattering high-waisted skirt with a top that allowed for much distracting boob-bouncing when she walked, piles on and tells Harvey he’s an asshole, Harvey asks Rachel to convince Mike to give up the takeover bid. Before Rachel can bring up the subject though, Mike reveals he hired a P.I. to investigate Logan, and found out that Rachel lied for Logan when she testified in his divorce proceedings that he had dumped her after their affair. Rachel assures Mike that it was she who did the dumping, and the reason she turned down Logan’s marriage proposal (!) was because she didn’t want to spend her life with Logan, she wants to spend it with Mike. Awww.

The next morning, Rachel goes over to Logan’s apartment, and has a flashback to a time when they were lovers and she dropped in and the wife was there and it was super-awkward. Luckily, the wife is not home in the present, and Rachel convinces Logan to back off on Mike because Logan owes her for that lie she told when he decided to try to get his wife back in the middle of his divorce proceedings, which like, huh? Whatever. Logan goes and apologizes to Mike and says he doesn’t want to “win dirty” but really he doesn’t want to hurt Rachel. Maybe he is still capable of feeling an emotion or two.

Victorious, Rachel tells Harvey she got Logan to back off , and returns the master tapes to him from Mike. Does this mean Harvey and Mike are friends again? Or only that people can take a brief break from telling Harvey he’s an asshole and a piece of shit?

In other news, a brief rundown of the Louis-Jeff Malone-Jessica story line this episode, which got significant minutes but was more comedic and less prone to exchanges of insults and true confessions than the Mike-Harvey-Rachel one: Louis makes friendly overtures to Jeff via tickets to the ballet. In an attempt to spend more time with Jessica, with whom he would like to have sex despite her insistence they keep their relationship strictly work-related, Jeff plays Louis on a variety of levels: he gets Louis to ask Jessica to work with Jeff on the SEC case, compliments Louis on his fit physique, and gives him an invasive shoulder/chest massage that leads Louis to believe Jeff is gay and in love with him.

 

Jessica, in a gorgeous but impractical white suit, gets in a good line to Louis, that, “I’m glad you two are going to be walking to school together from now on,” refuses to work with Jeff at first, but ends up doing so when he turns serious and explains that he doesn’t delegate to associates since that one time he did, someone made a mistake and someone else got killed as a result (long story). Jessica and Jeff work well together, but she does not weaken on the no-sex rule even after he promises to make sure no one will ever know, because she knows there are no secrets on primetime drama.

When Louis, wearing a nicer than usual for him purplish tie, figures out Jeff is not gay, is trying to get into Jessica’s pants, and was only pretending to befriend Louis to advance his own agenda, he is hurt and mad and vows never to let down his guard again. Poor Louis.