Suits season 7, episode 12 recap: There's a Bad Man in the building

Suits pulled more skeletons out of Specter Litt’s closet, but did it help the firm’s future? Here’s what happened in Suits season 7, episode 12.

With Jessica Pearson technically in the rearview mirror, USA‘s Suits powered forward Wednesday while her former colleagues continued to try and build their future by cleaning out Specter Litt’s closet. It’s still not entirely working, but it is entertaining TV.

“Bad Man” begins in the immediate aftermath of last week’s midseason premiere, as fans find out that Harvey Specter’s (Gabriel Macht) confession to his girlfriend Paula Agard (recurring guest star Christina Cole) only made their situation worse — now she’s decided she needs space. And Harvey decides to go and hit something.

Afterwards, he takes a call from Jessica (guest star Gina Torres), who wants two million dollars of her payout in an untraceable account, and she’s not going to tell him why. No, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all.

But Harvey is still ultimately loyal to Jessica, so he tells her that he’ll get it done. For someone who doesn’t let anyone else push him around, Harvey still folds pretty easily when it comes to her. The power of all those years of mentorship and career support.

He returns to Specter Litt and finds Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman), who reacts even more adversely to Jessica’s request. But once he calms down, Louis says they’ll have to take the two million from a source of money that hasn’t been paid to the firm yet. And guess what? No such client exists.

"Harvey: I don’t give a s–t about your emotional bandwidth."

Elsewhere, Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) is meeting up with his old law clinic colleague Oliver Grady (guest star Jordan Johnson-Hinds, Blindspot). Oliver has a case against a company called Hudson Mills, which is one of Specter Litt’s clients. He’s sure that Mike can convince the company to do the right thing. Mike is good at that, but he’s playing another dangerous game here.

And speaking of dangerous, Louis needs an emergency meeting with his therapist after Sheila (recurring guest star Rachael Harris, Lucifer) has decided their one-night fling shouldn’t be just one night. This is a Bad Idea with capital letters, but Louis doesn’t heed the warning and decides he’s going to get Sheila back “100 percent.”

Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) suggests that Harvey can get Jessica’s money by selling his father’s back catalogue of music to a record label. Harvey is understandably cagey about giving up one legacy to protect another. He’s even more annoyed when Donna tells him about Mike working on the Hudson Mills case, especially without disclosing his history with Oliver to the client.

"Harvey: You better be right. Because the last time you involved that kid, he almost tore us apart."

Suits then brings back Louis’s assistant Gretchen (Aloma Wright), who has figured out that her boss is out to wreck Sheila’s engagement. She’s not stupid, and she looks at his bills and all of his appointments. Gretchen points out that the least painful way to accomplish his goal is just to tell Sheila the truth, rather than hiring a whole armada of people.

This leads us into our first flashback of the second half of Suits season 7. In 1986, a teenage Louis is madly in love with a girl named Mitzy Goldfarb. Oh my gosh, they’re adorable. But she’s going to break his heart, right?

Segue to a decade ago, when Harvey meets record producer Vic (that’s Glynn Turman from House of Lies). Vic can’t afford to pay Harvey’s billables, and urges him to start a tab. Ten years later, they pick up the conversation again, with Harvey saying he can’t carry Vic anymore. He’s calling in the tab. Vic agrees to sell his company to the aforementioned record label, which would erase his debt and get Harvey the money that he needs to send Jessica.

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Suits makes it even worse for his protege. Mike is frustrated when Oliver says he’s not happy with the compromise Mike worked out on the Hudson Mills case. It turns out Oliver isn’t in this for the greater good; he wants to win the case to restore his name with the clinic. Now the former friends are officially enemies, and Rachel (Meghan Markle) appears to help Mike win.

The next morning, we get a rare moment of Suits censorship when Harvey sees the sales contract and drops an F-bomb. It turns out the record label has changed executives over the last 10 years, and the new guy is a hotshot kid who thinks he knows best. He’s willing to make a deal, but it isn’t the one Harvey wanted.

This is followed by a not so rare moment of heartbreak when Sheila turns down Louis’s offer to change, so he tells her that he’s not going to be her side piece and that she shouldn’t call him again. Then he’s scheduling another appointment to tell his therapist what happened with Mitzy. She was cheating on him with another guy, using Louis because he was the boyfriend her parents approved of, and he let her do it. Now it all makes sense.

Back at Specter Litt, Oliver’s deposition of Mike’s client takes a hard right turn when Oliver goes on the attack and mentions a damning commercial that Hudson Mills recorded. His ego inflates even as Mike tries to warn him not to put that ahead of his client. But that night, when Mike finds another key piece of information that would allow him to fight back against Oliver, he’s reticent to land a killing blow because he can see himself in the other man.

Harvey needs another stiff drink, having negotiated the sale with the record label anyway, thus allowing Vic to retire and Jessica to get her money. But it came at a high personal cost, knowing his father’s music is now in the hands of a label that will let it wither and die. Plus, Paula isn’t calling him back. But at least he and Donna can play one of Dad’s records while Harvey deals with the latest wound in his heart.

“Bad Man” goes into its final act with Mike shutting Oliver down, telling him that his case is dead and he needs to take his medicine. Not only that, but he makes clear that Oliver was wrong about him, and serves him a big slice of humble pie before walking out the door. He might have seen a little of himself in Oliver Grady, but it was the young, reckless and myopic Mike Ross, not the man we know today.

Speaking of men who’ve come a long way, we get one last flashback of a young Harvey listening to his father play in the recording studio. In the present day, Harvey’s staring off into space before we see Mike walk in and admit that Harvey was right all along. He’s got new perspective, and because of that perspective, Harvey broaches the idea of making him a partner. But Mike doesn’t think it’s the right time.

Instead, he goes home and somehow finds Oliver in his apartment. While the two of them make up, Donna answers a ringing phone and gets a call from Jessica. She’s found out what Harvey did to get her money, and she wants to say thank you. Too bad he’s not there because he’s still trying to get through to Paula — and by “get through” we mean that he’s going to tell her everything she needs to know. But is it enough?

Yes, it is. But will it last, especially since she admits to being threatened by Donna? And more than that, does it matter if it lasts? And how much trouble is Louis going to be in when he changes his mind, again, and decides to rekindle his affair with Sheila?

We have four episodes of Suits season 7 left after “Bad Man,” counting the two-episode season finale. That’s not a lot of time, and this episode moves the overall story forward more than last week’s “Hard Truths” did, but it really feels like the second half of the season is going ahead by going back — that there’s a more introspective tone to this show than ever before.

Mike gets another case to fight that’s again solved by a smoking gun found near the end of the episode, and Rachel is limited in her screen time, so we still don’t have much of an idea what’s up with either character as we approach the finish line for both of them.

The idea of Mike having a mirror held up in the form of Oliver is interesting in theory — as if to say he’s reaching the end of his journey by showing us how far he’s come —but Oliver was never a particularly likable guy when he was introduced last season, so when Mike beats him it feels less like Mike teaching a lesson and more like we’re happy Oliver gets put in his place. But the idea is solid: Is Mike Ross reaching a point where his work will be done?

He could make partner, as is on the table, but it seems more likely he’ll face that ultimate choice between career and love and take the latter. After all, could anyone see any other way for Suits to write out Mike and Rachel than them riding off into the proverbial sunset together? The question is just what story the show is going to tell over the next four episodes to make that choice feel satisfying.

Fans do get some insight into Louis’s painful history with women, and why he keeps getting his heart broken over and over again. That’s useful for further fleshing out of his character, and Rick Hoffman is great with it (as is Esteban Dager, who plays the young Louis). And the ending look back at a young Harvey is adorable in its own way, because it’s always nice to see a Harvey before the world jaded him.

But we also have to ask where either of their personal storylines are headed. Suits put the whole Harvey and Donna idea to bed last week (at least for now), so we’re all-in on Harvey and Paula. But hearing her say she is actually threatened by Donna feels like we know where this is going to end up. And one of the good things about Paula was that she wasn’t threatened by Donna. So it both undercuts her character a bit and feels a little too familiar plot-wise to have her wind up in the same spot we’ve seen before. We’ll have to see if she handles this any differently, and maybe the plot will go down a different road.

And where is Louis destined to go except for more suffering? Sure, he’s stuck in a cycle he can’t get out of; that’s made very clear in this Suits episode. But as much as that’s true, there are points where as fans, you want to see something different. Something better. It was such a proud moment to see Louis take his self-respect back and turn Sheila down, then that all gets undone in the end. Like Stan Beeman in The Americans, you can’t help but feel like he deserves more, even as you understand exactly what Suits is trying to say with him.

The biggest critique of “Bad Man” is something that we’ve discussed a few times over this season of Suits: Jessica Pearson. Yes, she’s no longer a part of the firm, but she keeps reappearing to the point where it feels like she hasn’t left. It’s taken the wind out of her departure, as it feels like just as we’re getting used to the world without her, she either pops up or somehow is mentioned in the storyline.

If the firm needs to move forward without Jessica, then the show ought to do the same, letting us really see the world without her and feel her absence. However, that’s unlikely since we know that this season’s finale will also be used to set up the Jessica-centric spinoff. But what could’ve been one of Suits‘ biggest turning points has come to feel like it wasn’t that huge.

With so few episodes left, it’s time to re-orient Suits off of Jessica, Paula and Sheila, and get back to centering on Harvey, Mike, Donna , Rachel and Louis. Their personal lives are great, but what we need now — especially knowing we have limited time with two of those characters — is to step back from these outside characters and into their relationships with each other, not other people.

This would be a great time for another big, albeit short-lived, legal battle that would bring them all together and have the show focused on them against the world, instead of their separate battles and futures. Suits season 7 is the last ride for this original team, so it would be nice to send them out as a team and tell one final story for them before the show revamps next season.

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Suits airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on USA.

Suits recap: There’s a Bad Man in the building

By Brittany Frederick | Apr 5, 2018

Suits pulled more skeletons out of Specter Litt’s closet, but did it help the firm’s future? Here’s what happened in Suits season 7, episode 12.