‘Suits LA’ Is 3,000 Miles and Light-Years Away From the Original – Rolling Stone

By

Alan Sepinwall

Remember the Summer of Suits?
The hottest show in the warmest months of 2023 was, improbably, Suits, a slick, mostly lighthearted basic-cable legal drama from the 2010s. To the surprise of everyone — including its own stars, as well as its creator, Aaron Korsh — Suits went viral that summer, first in clips on TikTok, then dominating the Netflix home screen and top 10 rankings for months. 
Why Suits, as opposed to a half-dozen other similarly breezy shows from its era, like, say, fellow USA Networks drama White Collar? Some of it is the randomness of life in the algorithm era, and some of it was specific to this show and that moment. At the time, for instance, old White Collar episodes were available on Hulu rather than Netflix (right now, it’s on both), and no other streamer has the power to make something feel omnipresent in the way Netflix does. Plus, the Suits ensemble included Meghan Markle, who would go on to be substantially more famous as a divisive addition to the British royal family; it’s not hard to imagine some of those early TikTok clips being accompanied by amused commentary about how this used to be the Duchess of Sussex’s day job. 

Mostly, though, it felt as if viewers with decision fatigue from the later days of Peak TV, or viewers burnt out on dark and intensely serialized dramas that release six new episodes every two to three years, wanted some TV comfort food — or a lot of it. And this show and its 134 episodes over nine seasons fit the bill. Suddenly, Suits went from a half-forgotten series from the before times into a brand. And because the entertainment industry’s favorite idea these days is to bring back popular brands by any means necessary, last night brought with it the debut of Suits LA on USA’s sister channel NBC. 
The new show, unfortunately, seems unlikely to have a huge viral moment like its predecessor, much less stick around for close to a decade. Korsh is back as creator, but he either fundamentally misunderstands the appeal of his earlier work or is trying much too hard to avoid being accused of repeating himself. The result feels unlikely to satisfy anyone with affection for the original, whether they watched it on USA a decade ago or binged it much more recently. 

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(What follows has spoilers for the debut episode, which is now streaming on Peacock.) 
Suits LA isn’t really a revival like the new Frasier (RIP), or even the most traditional form of spinoff, but is more of a new entry in a familiar franchise. It features none of the original characters as regular members of its cast; Gabriel Macht will eventually turn up as original-recipe Suits hero Harvey Specter, but he’s not in the premiere or either of the next two episodes. As the title suggests, the setting is 3,000 miles away from where Harvey and Patrick J. Adams’ Mike Ross plied their trade in Manhattan. Until Macht appears, the only real connection is Korsh, and that both series involve smug lawyer bros in well-tailored outfits making bold declarations about their own awesomeness in offices with floor-to-ceiling windows. 
Our new hero, Teddy Black, is at least from New York, a fact we have drilled into our heads through frequent glimpses of his days as a Big Apple prosecutor circa 2010, back before he headed west to set up a high-powered private practice with best friend Stuart (Josh McDermitt, with a far fancier wardrobe than he had as Eugene on The Walking Dead). Teddy is played by Arrow star Stephen Amell, once again cast as a rich guy whose tragic backstory is revealed through gradually expanding flashbacks each week(*). There are various bits of old business involving Mob hits, Teddy’s shady father (played by fellow Arrow-verse alum Matt Letscher), and Eddie (Carson A. Egan), Teddy’s adorable younger brother, who has Down syndrome. Eddie appears to live with Teddy in his swank Los Angeles home, but the end of the premiere reveals that, in fact, he was killed back in New York as a result of their father’s crimes, and now Teddy imagines he’s still here as a way to feel less sad for a few minutes. 

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(*) Even the show he did in between Arrow and this, the Starz pro wrestling drama Heels, periodically flashed back to sad moments in his character’s past. There is typecasting, and then there is this extremely specific thing Amell keeps being hired to do.
It’s a very different and altogether darker take on the legal formula than the one Korsh used the last time, where the gimmick was that Mike wasn’t really a lawyer — just smart enough to fake it — and Harvey impulsively hired him despite knowing this, then had to spend years helping to keep his secret. There were times when the phony lawyer premise felt like more trouble than it was worth; the original’s primary appeal was the banter among Macht, Adams, and their co-stars, and the contortions required to hide the truth sometimes got in the way of that. But tonally, it was of a piece with a show that was all about characters who liked to skirt the edges of the rules to get what they wanted. Here, the New York scenes are far too glum to coexist with the breezy maneuvering that’s happening in the present, and giving the lead an illusory disabled brother to talk to from time to time feels like the worst version of a wannabe Shyamalan twist. 

But even if you can ignore all of that and just focus on the present-day action, that’s not much fun, either. The series begins with Teddy and Stuart celebrating the impending merger of their firm with another one run by Teddy’s ex-girlfriend Samantha (Rachelle Goulding). There’s some jockeying between associates Rick (Bryan Greenberg) and Erica (Lex Scott Davis) about who will be placed in charge of the firm’s entertainment division, but for the most part they seem to be a happy bunch … at least until Teddy arrives at the office to discover that Stuart decided to do the merger without him, and has taken at least half the firm’s lawyers and clients along with him. 
This is the kind of plot a legal drama saves for its third or fourth season, after viewers have had the time to get to know all the characters as individuals, and in relation to one another. Doing it partway through the first episode, when everyone is a complete stranger to the audience, and the interpersonal dynamics have only been hinted at on the most superficial level, robs the idea of whatever impact it should have. It’s just a hollow, meaningless move in a show full of them. Over the three episodes I’ve seen, clients keep wavering over whether to jump ship from one firm to the other, various characters shift back and forth between seeming faithful and duplicitous, and all of it seems not to matter in the slightest. It’s pieces being moved around a board at random, in ways that aren’t satisfying because we have no idea why anyone is doing what they’re doing, and where most of the dialogue is pure posturing, like when Teddy tells Dylan (Victoria Justice), a movie star he’s trying to land as a client, “You play a badass in the movies. I’m a badass in real life.” 
Teddy also assures Dylan, “I can walk away from any deal, at any time, which is where the power in this world comes from.” This is the ethos of Suits LA as a whole, thinking that its power comes from its ability to have everyone keep crossing various lines of loyalty, rather than making any of them matter as people. The late John Amos, in one of his final performances, plays himself in a couple of scenes in the premiere, and this fictionalized version of him comes across as a far more well-rounded character than everyone else on the show combined. 

Maybe some of this would work better if Korsh had saved Stuart’s betrayal until at least midseason, or if the gamesmanship scenes with Teddy weren’t always brought down by his dour demeanor, or if the supposedly ass-kicking Erica wasn’t so clueless that she constantly needs to be schooled by junior associate Leah (Alice Lee), or if … well, a lot of things would need to be fixed. 
At times, the Summer of Suits seemed to be less about Suits itself than the audience’s desire for the kind of show Suits was. There are plenty of other entertaining but nontaxing options out there across various streaming libraries. Suits LA seems unlikely to become one.  We want to hear it. Send us a tip using our anonymous form.Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/suits-la-1235273327/