It’s universally believed that we are lucky enough to witness the golden age of television shows. With Netflix and HBO leading the pack, it has become extremely difficult for us to pick our favourites and follow them through different seasons. Now that the new season of TV shows are upon us, we are back to doing what we do best – watch TV shows and then endlessly discuss and debate whether it’s time for it to hang its boots.

One such show is Suits. Suits is, more or less, pretty good for how bad it is. Great actors, bizarre movie references, witty dialogue; it has a lot going for it. Except one thing – a coherent plot with characters who haven’t popped out of a Vogue catalogue and who are genuinely good lawyers. Suits is a show that is more about glamour and less about substance.  

If you like the show, good for you. It’s absolutely great that you’ve found refuge in a show with pretty people and good-looking clothes. Great! I am here to call out the bullshit Suits serves to its audiences in the name of a law-firm drama.

Here’s the thing, the show is about Harvey and Mike, and their misadventures. These two characters have always been the centre of the show, and every seasonal arc thus far has revolved around them. Other characters have held the limelight, briefly, but their sub-plots were then either scurried off hurriedly when the writers remembered what they wanted to do with Mike and Harvey, or these sub-plots eventually went from transpiring concurrently with Mike and Harvey’s doings to coinciding with them, at which point the focus would once again shift to the latter. 

All the characters are fucking bulletproof and their actions have little to no affect on the overarching storyline.

Louis gets fired? He returns next episode. Donna is being charged with intent to commit felony fraud? Harvey does some very questionable things to get them her out of it, Donna is safe by the end of the episode.

I just wish the writers actually had the balls to do a storyline that actually had long term consequences for the characters instead of reverting back to the status quo every episode.

While the show tries boasting about its strong female leads, it makes a horrible job out of it.

If there’s a single episode of this show that passes the Bechdel Test, I certainly can’t think of it, and I’ve seen every episode. Rachel and Donna are supposed to be good friends, but all they ever talk about are Mike and Harvey; Jessica is the badass head of a law firm, but God knows she could never talk to another female character. And Scottie’s skills as a lawyer are never as relevant to the story as how much she loves/does not love Harvey.

A strong female isn’t the one who is snarky or one who literally kicks ass. The understanding of strong females is so construed in our society that we tend to take every half-decent female character and call her powerful if she is anything more than a prop.

Donna is the saving grace of an otherwise annoying line-up of characters but even her awesomeness can’t salvage the show.

Speaking of Harvey’s helpmate Donna, she is probably the most underserved character on the show, and her loyalty to Harvey doesn’t seem valorous and special; it often seems a little pathetic and emotionally dangerous. Donna’s smart and capable, and we learn that every week when she waltzes into a conversation, drops mad wisdom, and then prances away while her better-paid, higher-ranked co-workers stare on in wonder. Give Donna more to do, please. She deserves it.

Suits is extremely formulaic in its approach.

So much of the show is about secrets, especially the big secret that Mike did not go to law school, let alone Harvard Law School, nor did he pass the bar. But any two characters also have some other secret between them, or some secret they’re keeping from one another that they’re trying to leverage. Also, why is everyone so mean to Louis? It gets repetitive.

And what’s up with Rachel anyway? Really, she’s been nothing but a pain. Always miffed about something. It just takes focus away from the story lines so often, their relationship almost becomes the main plot. Like someone else already pointed out, we want long term consequences. IMO I still cannot forgive her for what she did to Mike, and then having the nerves to ‘offer’ him an ultimatum.

There are far better legal dramas out there that way surpass Suits.

Before falling in love with a below-par show, people should actually make an effort to try a few more TV shows of the same genre. Much like the FRIENDS argument where people have only stuck to that one show, Suits fans are generally unaware of the brilliance of The Practice and Boston Legal. They are absolutely amazing legal dramas. 

Suits, on the other hands, is practically a show about rich attractive people doing their own things and the workplace just happens to be a law firm. 

And what the hell is up with these random lightbulb moments in the show?

Every single episode has this lightbulb moment to figure out the whole case.

“What did you just say?”

I agree that Suits was amazing during its initial seasons but it has become a drag now. It’s time for a fresh coat of paint.

Much like other shows that exceed their expiry date by a few seasons (Supernatural *cough*), the writers of Suits have now forgotten where they should have stopped the show.

While fans might argue that this show is excellent and what not, have no doubt that Suits is a terrible legal drama. In fact, it’s like the Grey’s Anatomy of the legal drama genre. It’s just a guilty pleasure for those who are desperately looking for something to watch but when it comes to the genre itself, it does no justice to it. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to the House M.D. of legal dramas – The Practice.