‘Suits’ Midseason Premiere Review: ‘Buried Secrets’ Come to the Surface

Tonight, Suits returned to our screens after being away from almost six months. The episode picked up right where the midseason finale left off and it was practically like we’d never left our favorite fictional law firm. But “Buried Secrets” contained some big changes and the promise of even more as the rest of the season unfolds.

Let’s jump right into the big stuff: Louis knows Mike didn’t go to Harvard or he at least knew something when the episode began. Louis wasn’t sure what to make of his file room fiasco and he couldn’t ask Sheila and risk her wrath so after considering that Mike was either a CIA operative or worse, a graduate of a lesser law school, Louis decided to do some fishing and headed for Queen Donna to get some information.

Louis had pulled the interview list from the day Mike was hired and noticed that he wasn’t on there. Donna told a version of the truth – Mike hadn’t been on the list, but he’d talked his way past her and impressed Harvey. Louis isn’t completely convinced and Donna suggests that he call Harvard and ask for Mike’s transcripts. She also promised to help Louis personally escort Mike out of the building if they weren’t there.

Donna warned Harvey about Louis, but he wasn’t too concerned once he knew Donna was handling it (plus he had his own problems – more on that later). Louis received the transcripts and apologized to Donna, but she had another bone to pick with him when she realized that he’d bribed IT to get to the list from her computer. Donna went through a range of emotions from anger to hurt to betrayal and back again and sent Louis into a panic before she pointed out that if this was how she was reacting – imagine how Sheila would feel. And this is why we call her Queen Donna. She knows how to get the job done.

Unfortunately, Louis wasn’t quite over it. After having some performance issues with Sheila and forever ruining The Dark Knight Rises for me, Louis apologized to Donna once more and said he was never going to talk about the file room incident with Shelia. The problem would have been solved, but Louis was mocking Mike’s transcripts and discovered something that did not add up: he received an ‘A+’ in Professor Gerard’s legal ethics class, but the professor is infamous for never going higher than an ‘A’. Uh-oh…

In a rare turn of events, Harvey’s storyline was the least interesting part of the hour for me (and again I blame the show for showing us we could have Harvey and Donna and then yanking them away). Instead, we’ve got Harvey and Scottie making a go of things or trying to, but she’s worried she’s going to end up jobless if things don’t work out between them. Jessica isn’t too keen on getting left in the lurch again either and she wants Scottie to pay her partner buy-in upfront instead of in six months after a standard trial period.

Scottie wants a commitment from Harvey before she’s willing to put up half a million dollars, but he has another idea: if she lands a big client, Jessica will be impressed and let the money go. That’s where Michael Phelps comes into play. He’s not a fan of Harvey (although we never get the full explanation why), but he agrees to give Scottie his business. That’s still not enough for Jessica so Harvey puts up the money so Scottie can stay.

He sees it as a romantic gesture, but she sees it as a manipulative one. She also feels a bit like a prostitute since he’s paying for her to stay around and have sex with him. It’s kind of an icky thing when she puts it like that so I had to side with her a little. This led Harvey and Scottie to have a conversation and be super honest with one another, something that was long overdue for them. Will their relationship work? This is a good start, but again, I’m not rooting for them.

Normally, I’m not a fan of Mike and Rachel’s relationship, but I really loved them in this episode. It started out with a typical cutesy scene with both of them mostly naked (and that’s appreciated because they’re both hot). Rachel was surveying Mike’s furniture and trying to decide which pieces of it she could live with – Mike was ecstatic that she was accepting his offer to live together, but the only furniture of his she agreed to was a panda painting that he said Grammy had given him (fair enough).

Mike had something much bigger on his mind than furniture. There was a case that he wanted, one Harvey had planned on settling, but Mike told him the lawyer was Nick Rinaldi, the same lawyer who showed up after his parents’ accident and forced his grandmother into taking a settlement. Mike was determined to get the case dismissed and prove that he was better than the man who made it his job to decide how much Mike’s parents’ lives were worth.

It wasn’t easy for Mike to sit across the table from Rinaldi and Harvey had to bail him out during the first deposition. Mike wanted more time and Harvey gave him one day to find the evidence or he was going to have to take the settlement. Mike got to work and Rachel showed up to bring him dinner, but Mike was struggling emotionally. These scenes were so good as Mike relived the night his parents had died and how he’d been angry that they were going out and he had to stay with his grandmother – so angry that he’d refused to hug his dad and hadn’t bothered to say goodbye to his mother.

Patrick J. Adams was fantastic and so was Meghan Markle as Rachel did what she could to help from just listening, offering some words of encouragement and then diving into the work so Mike could finish on time. For maybe the first time ever, I finally understood the appeal of this pairing and what the characters see in one another and they shared some beautiful moments in the episode, including a recreation of their first date. It might have been cheesy under different circumstances, but here, it was perfect.

As for the case, Mike learned that there’s more to one side to the story and the real reason Rinaldi was able to offer such a low settlement was because his father had had two drinks that night. That doesn’t absolve the drunk driver who killed them, but it does question whether there was negligence on his part. The details of the case weren’t exactly the same – this one involved a surgeon who made a mistake – but Mike finally got the message and he actually helped Rinaldi find a way to help his client.

This was a solid return episode and I can’t wait to see what happens now that Louis knows something is very wrong with Mike’s transcripts. So many people are on the hook for this secret. Everyone has gone along with it so far, but will Louis if he finds out that Mike doesn’t have a law degree? I’m not so sure about that. As much as Louis has always wanted to sit at the cool kids’ table, he has a high regard for the law and he might not be willing to sit on this one.

Now it’s your turn. Did you enjoy the episode? Were you surprised that Louis didn’t figure things out faster? Do you think he’ll put the rest of the pieces together? Will Harvey and Scottie make it six months? Do you want them to? What about Mike and Rachel? Will cohabitating work well for them? Hit the comments and share your thoughts with us!