Suits - Pilot

Suits is one of the new slate of shows USA Network has premiering this year. The "Pilot" shows promise, but also quite a lot of room for improvement.

The basic setup is simple. A remarkable young man (Patrick J. Adams) with perfect memory, a strong understanding of the law, and poor choice in friends, finds himself through a series of coincidences in front of New York City lawyer Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), who finds himself looking for an associate on the edict of his boss (Gina Torres). Despite the firm's policy to only hire Harvard graduates, and despite the fact  Mike (Adams) has never attended a law school of any kind, Harvey decides to give the kid  a break.

His new boss immediately puts him on a pro-bono case of sexual harassment, the outcome of directly effects both of their further employment. Contrived? Yeah, a bit, and it shows. Still the show does show some promise when it isn't getting bogged down in Mike's drug connection and best friend (both of which I really hope are written out of the show as soon as possible).


Sadly this looks like a near thankless role for Torres who is mostly wasted in this role. Rick Hoffman stars as the show's resident asshole. Wings' Rebecca Schull has a small role as Mike's infirm grandmother. Meghan Markle stars as the firm's best paralegal, and possible eventual love interest for Mike.

Suits certainly isn't as well polished as some of USA Network's other shows were right out of the box. It feels more than a little clunky in places and with far too many storylines jammed into a single first episode. There's a fine line between complex and convoluted, and the Pilot goes too far in the wrong direction. Given enough time I think Suits good turn into a solid show. The question is, how many will have the patience to wait around and find out?