Suits: Spain (6x06)

This show, man. It does not pull its punches. Let's dive straight in.

Cons:

In subplot news, Louis and Tara's relationship is just gross. Louis gets the house he wanted, but Tara wants to see it before the closing is over, meaning that Louis has to find a way to get her in there to look around before the previous owners have officially vacated. Louis gets Donna to help him out, and they go to look at the house. But the previous owners come in while Tara and Louis are there, ruining the plan. At first, Tara is pissed off, and rightfully so... but then she seems to think it's romantic that Louis bought a house just to spend time with her, and it looks like she has feelings for Louis, too. Ugh. Stop romanticizing deceit 2k16. I really wanted to like this relationship, because I'm a fan of turning Louis from a bumbling annoying failure to a competent adult worthy of his wealth and power. But alas... I can't get behind this relationship. Tara finding the whole thing romantic was really annoying to me. Wasn't she just the least bit creeped out? This plot thread also didn't do any favors for Donna, as she spent the episode supporting Louis in his crazy plans and acting like she deserved a medal for it.

The main plot continues to focus on the delicious mess between Mike, Kevin, Harvey, Cahill, Sutter, et. al. I really like where everything is heading, but I do have one complaint. Mike is struggling to handle the fact that Kevin was arrested for drunk driving, since Mike's parents were killed by a drunk driver. I like the idea of exploring this tension, but the episode started off with Mike having a dream where Harvey came to tell him that Rachel was dead, and that Kevin had killed her. This was just a little on the nose to me. The whole sequence didn't feel like a dream at all. It felt awkward and forced. Usually, even if my dreams are manifesting as a result of my current life circumstances, it's not quite as cut-and-dry as this. There might have been a cool way to have Mike dream about his parents' death, and Kevin's arrest, and even Rachel being in danger, without having it be so spelled out for us.

Pros:

While I was not at all a fan of the Louis/Tara stuff, I will admit that Louis' unintended "wood" innuendos were pretty funny. I always love when Louis unintentionally makes really sexual comments. But while Louis' bit was funny, it was Donna's reaction that had me laughing out loud. She goads him in to making more wood-related jokes, all while barely holding back her own laughter. At least this plot thread had something to enjoy!

The other subplot is Rachel's. It's moving along at a rather slow pace, but that's actually kind of nice. I like the slow build. This week, Rachel pushes to help Leonard Bailey by trying to discover something new so that the case can be reopened. She tries to track down an alibi in the form of a woman named Maria Gomez, but learns that she and Bailey were high the night of the murders. However, Bailey tells Rachel that although he made mistakes in his past, he's not a murderer. Rachel will keep going forward with trying to help him. The only problem? His execution date has been set! The clock is ticking.

I love Rachel's resilience and resourcefulness. She doesn't let Jessica or her law professor put her off, and she gets things done at a quick pace. I don't feel much of a personal connection to Leonard Bailey, but I do feel a connection to Rachel's passion for the case. There's this moment where she tells her professor that Bailey has missed out on so much of his life. He has kids that he doesn't see, a wife who has given up on him... and all he needs to get his life back is a half hour of somebody's time. That's a pretty powerful indictment of our legal system and of human nature, if you think about it. The thought that an innocent man might die just because nobody would sign a couple of documents and go to a couple of meetings is really hard to swallow. In a way, Rachel's subplot is the most thought-provoking we've ever had on this show.

In main plot news, stuff is getting pretty intense. I will try not to get into too much detail, but there's just so much going on! Basically, Harvey finds out that Sutter's successes in trading are supposedly due to an algorithm created by Kevin. Cahill suspects that Sutter is guilty of insider trading, and wants Kevin to come forward and say that the program he created doesn't work. Harvey finds out that Sutter's biggest money-making trades are not discovered through the algorithm, although he says this is just because he's good at what he does, and not because of insider trading. Jessica goes to Sutter and basically forces him to agree to give PSL all of his business, thus further solidifying the messy tangle of allegiance going on here. Harvey wants Mike to turn on Kevin and thus Sutter, but now his firm represents Sutter's investment business, and not just his personal affairs. Cahill tries to get a hold of the algorithm, but Harvey blocks him in court. And then... Harvey crosses a serious line.

Sutter tells Harvey to get Cahill's whole case against him dismissed, which would be good for PSL, and for Jessica, who just got Sutter's business... but bad for Mike, because it would be a knock-out for Cahill, and kill his chances of taking down Sutter. Without a shot, Cahill can't get Mike out of prison. So... Harvey tries to collude with Cahill. He offers him the algorithm on the down-low, but Cahill says no. Harvey is sure that Cahill has more at stake in this case than just advancing his career, and he's right - turns out, Cahill's mother got screwed over by Sutter, and died before she could take her dream vacation to Spain in her retirement. In the end, Cahill agrees to collude with Harvey, asking him to hand over the algorithm.

Meanwhile, Mike is having a hard time acting normal around Kevin after finding about about his drunk driving. He goes to Julius to ask for help, but Julius wants to talk about Mike's feelings of guilt over turning on Kevin. Mike is in denial that his actions have consequences. Julius eventually opens up to Mike that when he was a kid, his learned that his father was a criminal. Julius acted out and was heading down a bad path, until he went to a therapist who helped to turn his life around. Julius wants to help Mike, and he opens up to him to try and get closer.

Now, we get to the climax - Harvey brings Kevin, Sutter, Mike, and himself into one room to try and act out the deposition that Cahill has planned for Sutter and Kevin. This way, Sutter and Kevin will get to talking, and hopefully they will let something slip that Harvey can use to sabotage his own client. Mike is hesitant about this plan, because he's still weird around Kevin, but he agrees. During the fake deposition, Mike plays the part of Cahill and gets Kevin and Sutter all riled up. It's clear there's no love lost between father-and-son-in-law. After this little blow-up, it finally happens: Kevin tells the truth. Turns out, Kevin found out that Sutter wasn't using his trading algorithm, and had been insider trading the whole time. When he told his wife about it, turns out that she already knew, and was in on it. That's why Kevin won't turn on Sutter - his wife would get jail time, too, if he took a deal.

So... there's a lot to unpack here.

First off, I really enjoy what this season is doing for Jessica. While Louis is distracted with Tara, and Harvey is distracted with Mike, she is all alone in trying to save PSL. Her decision to go after Sutter's investment business was so interesting, because she is in effect rooting against Mike in acquiring Sutter as a client, but she has to do what's best for the firm. The hope is that by the time Sutter goes down, PSL will be back on its own two feet, but Jessica is playing a risky little game here. No wonder she didn't have much time to help Rachel with her death row case.

The big thing this week is that Harvey is crossing some serious lines. He tells Cahill that he made peace with the fact that he'd do whatever it took to get Mike out of prison, but... wow. Straight up colluding with Cahill? In a strange way, Harvey is turning in to Mike. His intentions are pure. He just wants to save his friend. But the means to that end are getting more and more dicey as we go further along. Of course it's sweet that Harvey would be willing to go to such lengths for Mike, but it raises some serious questions about Harvey moving forward. If he does collude with Cahill, and if it all goes according to plan and Mike gets out of prison, what then? Will Harvey get caught?

Over on Mike's side of things, I'm really enjoying the developing relationship between Mike and Julius, the prison counselor. I think that Mike's time in jail is, in a strange way, mirroring the time we spent with Harvey last season in therapy. Harvey's character development has been stellar, as he opened up about his feelings and allowed people to get close to him in a whole new way. Now, Mike needs to learn his own lessons. Just because his intentions are pure, doesn't mean he can get away with whatever he wants. Julius really does seem to want to help Mike, but Mike doesn't really like what he has to say. This proves to me more than ever that Mike is in denial about his own actions.

Before I get to the big reveal, I'll talk briefly about Mike and Harvey's relationship. In some ways, episodes like this showcase their relationship better than the big, angst-filled ones. They are so in-tune with each other, and trust each other so much. When Harvey finds out from Cahill that Kevin was arrested for drunk driving, he's really upset on Mike's behalf. He's sensitive to Mike's pain. Later, during the fake deposition, when Sutter makes a disparaging comment about Mike, Harvey shuts him down. Every time anybody refers to Mike as a "kid," Harvey always swoops in to defend his brilliance and competence, despite the fact that everybody knows Mike is a fraud. And then there are little things, like Mike telling Harvey: "I'm with you," and the silent head tilts as Mike leaves Harvey and follows Kevin out of the room. They don't even need to fully articulate themselves to know what the other one is thinking. It was so strange seeing Mike and Harvey work "against" each other in the practice deposition, because the fact that they're on the same side shines through every moment. They are in lock-step with each other all the way.

So, the big reveal of this episode is one that I sort of saw coming, but I didn't understand the full implications of it until now. Kevin really did make an algorithm for Sutter. He was totally ignorant of his father-in-law's wrongdoing. I sort of assumed that Kevin wouldn't turn on Sutter because he didn't want to tear his family apart, and that's true, in a sense. I had not guessed that Kevin's wife was in on it. Suddenly, Kevin and Mike's situations are paralleled. Mike could have taken a deal to save himself that would have put Harvey behind bars, and he didn't. Kevin could have saved himself at his wife's expense, but he didn't. Even Kevin and Mike's courtships of their women are parallel - Kevin talks about how his wife was a Sutter, an important person, and he was just a really smart nobody. Sutter never approved of Kevin, and he worked hard to be worthy. Sound familiar? Mike worked hard to gain Robert Zane's favor, too, and look where that got him!

However, while all of these parallels are cropping up, we've still got the fact that Kevin nearly killed somebody drunk driving. I'm thrilled that this episode didn't shy away from how hard this is on Mike. Mike even uses some of his pent up feelings to attack Kevin personally while he's pretending to be Cahill. And now, Mike actually has what he needs from Kevin to move forward and get himself out of prison, and I'm not at all sure of what Mike is going to do next.

In the end, all I can do is praise this episode for being really intricate, and opening up a ton of new problems all while keeping the character work intriguing, and balancing in some great subplot stuff with Rachel. I will say this, though - there was no Frank Gallow this week, and I didn't miss him at all. I really liked his character and the direction they were taking it in the early weeks, but the stuff with Sutter and Kevin has outpaced it by far. I can't wait to see what's next!

8.5/10