“You don’t send a puppy to clean up its own mess. Optimally you don’t even have a puppy.” – Harvey
Trevor is back to ruin Mike’s life, but Mike is doing a pretty bang-up job of that himself, so Trevor’s presence is really just icing on the fail cake at this point.
Which is to say: this is a pretty busy episode of Suits.
Mike shows up late for a meeting with Harvey and a client. While en route to the meeting, Harvey’s driver gets into a small fender bender with a taxi, thus making the dynamic duo even later for their meeting than they already were.
In an attempt to save face, Harvey sends Mike ahead to the meeting without him. He instructs Mike, “Just nod your head and look pretty.”
Does Mike listen? Of course not.
The client is a sweet lady who holds the reins to a multi-million dollar doll empire. Mike has tea with her (and her creepy dolls) and gushes about how much he loves his grandma. Speaking of which, this is like our second straight episode of Grandma-free storytelling. I don’t like it. FIX IT.
Anyway, the doll lady is touched by Mike’s starry-eyed grammy-love and decides that she wants to retire so she can spend more time with her own grandkids. Once she retires, she won’t really need the services of Pearson-Hardman. Apparently, Mike’s touching little story just cost his firm over two-million dollars.
And that is the story of how Mike became known as “The Puppy.”
Meanwhile, that little fender bender from this morning just turned into a full-blown lawsuit. The taxi driver is, apparently, an amateur attorney. He sued for his citizenship after 9/11 and won. He makes a compelling case to the judge to sue Harvey’s driver, and Harvey himself, as his employer, for damages.
And then sucky friend Trevor comes back. His call interrupts a Very Important Meeting between Jessica, Harvey, and Mike to figure out how to handle the doll lady’s decision to retire. Apparently Mike missed the no cell phones lesson during “Big Kid Job Etiquette 101.” Jessica is miffed. Harvey clearly wants to stab him. I pelted the TV screen with Doritos.
Trevor was arrested by the port authority for bus hopping while shitfaced. Good job, Trevor.
Mike empties his savings to bail Trevor out. I’ve mentioned that Mike is an idiot, right? Yes? Excellent. Mike further revels in his idiocy by agreeing to hit the bars with Trevor after work because Trevor owes him “the next 100 shots.” After a few shots of tequila, Mike whips out his shiny new Pearson-Hardman business card to show Trevor how much more awesome his life is without him. Trevor, in turn, pulls out the “I wish you trusted me” card. Ugh. Kill me now.
The demented duo leaves in the company of a pair of gorgeous ladies, fawning over supposedly-sexy-Trevor and Mike’s super-lawyer powers. Mike accidentally leaves his business card on the table and a posse of Shady Guys who have been tailing Trevor all evening pick it up. Trevor owes them a lot of money. Trevor sucks.
It’s ultimately Harvey who saves the day for everyone, deftly handling his own lawsuit (in an awesomely classy way), the doll lady, and the obligatory rescue of sucky-friend Trevor when he gets himself kidnapped by the League of Extraordinarily Shady Guys.
Like I said, there was a lot of wit, action, and fun packed into this episode. Here are a few quick and tasty leftovers:
- I love that the puppy euphemism was actually coined by Jessica, in reference to Harvey and that Harvey is just recycling it with Mike. Jessica calls him on it and he indignantly replies that he’s “not a puppy!” Jessica points out that she’s taller than him. I felt like they were only moments away from blowing raspberries and pulling each other’s hair. I can’t wait for more of their backstory.
- Donna, Harvey’s executive assistant, is amazing. When Louis wants to borrow Donna for the week because his own secretary is on vacation and he’s “bad with temps,” Harvey graciously says that if Louis can get Donna to agree to it, then sure, he can have her. Louis asks Harvey why he can’t just order Donna to do it. Harvey says, “I don’t order Donna to do anything. She just does… things.” And it’s true. It’s so true. What is it with TV assistants named Donna being amazing?
- The only intelligent thing to come out of Trevor’s mouth happens to come out in this episode, when, as he boards a bus bound for Montana, he tells Mike, “Harvey is a better friend than me.” Yeah. Harvey’s going to have a hard time downplaying his warm and gooey center after this episode.
Okay, maybe “warm and gooey” is an exaggeration.
It’s at least nougat.
Some stats and info about Suits, “Bail Out”
TV SHOW – Suits
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1, Episode 5
AIRED ON – July 21st, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – USA/Netflix
GENRE – Drama, Legal Dramas, Office Culture
CREATED BY – Aaron Korsh
CAST – Gabriel Macht, Rick Hoffman, Sarah Rafferty, Patrick J. Adams, Meghan Markle, Gina Torres
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.