Suits: Whale Hunt (8x12)

Aww poor Katrina!

Cons:

Nobody mentioned Mike this week and that makes me grumpy.

On a more serious note, I don't like the way that Gretchen has basically just taken over Donna's old role of fixing everybody else's emotional problems. I like seeing her put Harvey in his place, I guess, but the power dynamic is the same as it's always been, and it really shouldn't be the job of a secretary to tell name partners of a big law firm to stop being babies. It bothers me that she has to do that.

Pros:

Mostly, though, I thought this episode was outstanding. Let's start with Harvey and Louis, who both behaved really poorly this week. The thing is, though, this is still a big improvement from Louis' past screw-ups, or Harvey's past cocky machinations. They both got a little too heated, and they very well may have lost the opportunity to secure a new client. But you know what? The fate of a current client, or the firm, wasn't at stake here. And both Harvey and Louis were partially wrong, and partially right. They got steamed, they were harsh with each other, and then after only a little outside prodding, they cooled down and made it right. This is the type of conflict that makes me believe that these two could realistically be good attorneys. They have personalities that are always going to clash, but Harvey has learned to respect Louis' authority, and Louis has learned not to treat everything with Harvey as a competition. I loved that.

I like Donna and Thomas. It's early days yet, but I'm happy to see her pursuing a healthy romantic relationship. I liked that Gretchen put her foot down and told Donna to put herself first for once. Thomas and Donna's interactions seemed really genuine and sweet, so I'm excited to see where this goes from here.

Sam teams up with Alex's wife on a case, and when the two disagree, Alex gets stuck in the middle. I really liked all of the complex alliances and difficult decisions that this scenario invited. Alex doesn't want the two women to work together at first for exactly this reason - he knows he'll get caught up in it. And when he does, he agrees with Sam over his own wife. But later, he changes his mind, and Sam is forced to back down. As the episode ends, it seems like everyone is in a tentative truce, but obviously Sam and Alex are going to have a challenging partnership moving forward. I think I'm actually pretty intrigued by how it's all going to go down.

I've saved the best for last - Katrina and Brian. Oh man, these two are making me a little emotional! Obviously infidelity is bad, and we don't know Brian's wife, but we have no reason to believe that their marriage is unhappy. But the wonderful thing about this scenario is that neither of them is doing anything wrong. Brian and Katrina work well together. They have a good professional rapport, and they are genuine friends. Neither one of them has done anything inappropriate, except for the fact that they clearly have feelings for each other. And nothing has happened, they haven't crossed that line, but they're both aware that things can't continue. When Katrina said that Brian couldn't be her associate anymore, I was genuinely upset by that. They make such a good team, but they're making the right decision to put up boundaries.

That's where I'll stop for now. I liked this episode quite a bit, although again, this show is only a shadow of its former glory...

8.5/10