To my semi-cynical little writer’s heart, there are very few great characters in television. They’re the ones that stop being characters to us and start being people. The ones where we can see through their eyes, and feel as they feel, and start talking to them as if we think that they can hear us. It’s ironic that Suits reached greatness by breaking down my favorite character, but I’m going to point to this episode as the one that established Harvey Specter as a fantastic protagonist and Gabriel Macht as an even better actor.
One of my little sayings in life is that you don’t know who you are if you don’t remember where you’ve been. Having shown us where Harvey and Mike are headed with last week’s well-woven tale, the show did a crafty little thing — instead of rushing toward next week’s finish line, it took pause to flesh out the origin story. As much as we’re watching Harvey and Mike as a team, we’re also following them as individuals and in taking a step back, Harvey’s personal journey took a major step forward. Compare the Harvey of this episode to the one in the pilot — we now know he’s a lot more than the egotistical hotshot we first met. He had to be; attitude and one-liners aren’t enough to make a character worth resting a series on. We had to find what else there was inside him, and after a few weeks of glimpses, tonight we got our first major look.
Wow. There were so many things that went right with this play on so many levels. I would have been satisfied with a reveal that further fleshed out Harvey into a character I wanted to watch each week, but I came away with one that made me identify with him. As someone with a legal background, this was the first time I looked at this show and said, “That rings true.” As a person, I was wiping tears out of my eyes by the time it was done.
It was the perfect time for the show to give us this episode; it felt natural after the previous weeks of having a scene here or a scene there that gave us something to chew on. None of it felt forced, either. Many, many shows have done episodes where characters pop up from a hero’s past and a good number of them feel heavy-handed, melodramatic, or like they’re pulling revelations out of nowhere. With Suits it wasn’t hard to imagine any of the reveals — Harvey as a district attorney, or his loyalty to his former boss, or that he would hide such a thorny departure when he arrived at Pearson Hardman. Kudos to Sarah Rafferty and Gina Torres as well, as Donna and Jessica’s interactions this episode, both with Harvey and with each other, really felt like these people went back years together.
Everything we saw was consistent with Harvey’s established character, and that meant that it wasn’t easy either. Including putting the same question in front of the audience that was in front of him. It was easy to side with Donna and say that Cameron (Gary Cole) should go down, but could we really blame Harvey for being loyal to a man who had clearly been important to him? Wouldn’t we also want to be loyal to the people important to us? Haven’t we forgiven people in our lives for their mistakes? The episode didn’t make the issue simple for Harvey, and it didn’t make him suddenly simple to the audience. A complex character deserved a complex reveal. Not one of those happy endings where everything is easy to swallow. That’s not Harvey’s world.
This was the episode where Harvey really, truly cracked. This makes what happened in “Play The Man” look like nothing. When he snapped at Louis, we knew that wasn’t who he was really upset with. And in the final scene, we saw him break. We saw him completely vulnerable for the first time, and what made it more poignant was that we were able to empathize with him in that moment. To see a character in a tough spot is one thing; to understand that is another. We didn’t just feel bad for Harvey, we felt bad with him. I think it’s the finest scene of the entire season to date, because it was the punch that had to come out of such a messy situation, yet even though I knew it was coming, it still really, really hurt.
As much as I can talk about Harvey’s character in this episode, though — and I’m looking at the last couple of paragraphs and thinking I could still go on — we need to take a few moments to give some due acclaim to Gabriel Macht as an actor. I said before that I had a soft spot for him, but this week made me realize how perfect he is for this role. It’s one of those unique situations where a role just finds the right actor and there’s that union which can’t ever be broken. He is Harvey Specter. I was lucky to talk to him earlier this week, and I was really blown away by how articulate he was, and how much thought he’d put into his character. He gave a lot more than I asked, and he taught me a few things. That’s not just talent, but also real thought and dedication.
His hard work came through in every frame of this episode. When Harvey sees Cameron for the first time, you can clearly read a range of emotions in his eyes, which mean more because we know Harvey is the guy who keeps them hidden. What could have been an inconsequential shot instead says volumes about the character, and that’s completely on Macht. As a writer, you hope for the kind of actors who can bring those intangibles beyond what you can get on paper. They’re the truly great ones. As much as I love my other USA shows, I don’t know if there’s a character on the network now as complex as Harvey Specter, and that kind of character needs a whole other echelon of actor. It’s clear that Gabriel Macht is that actor. Forget soft spot — I’ve gained a serious respect for him.
So I’ll forgive Suits for doing some damage to Harvey. As much as I love the character — and I now must admit that love is the right word — sending him down a tough road turned out to be the best thing.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Sep 02, 2011 @ 02:29 EST5EDT
Excellent review and I agree 100 percent. As per usual USA Network, one of the few, was smart and renewed another show in its outstanding lineup of scripted shows.