Suits LA Recap: You’re On Your Own

We start in the middle of Ted’s sex dream. Why we start in the middle of Ted’s sex dream is as much your guess as it is mine. It reaffirms what we already know about the man; he’s drawn to Amanda, still thinks about his ex Samantha, and fantasizes about threesomes with the women he works with because he’s a bit of a prat.

It’s the day of Lester’s trial, which means everyone is ready and raring to go, including Amanda, who views this as an opportunity to bury the district attorney she’s hated for so long. The Suits-verse loves a grudge, and so far, hers has been the only compelling one the show has given us. Amanda and Ted are our dynamic duo for most of the episode. She acts like his glorified secretary while he tries to figure out how to stop being one step behind the slimy prosecutor at every stage.

The DA’s opening statement is compelling in its inference of the producer’s guilt: his wife was having an affair with the dead man, a dead man who was also stealing money from Lester, with there being proof that he knew. There was also blood found on Lester’s person, with police finding his fingerprints all over the shotgun they took into evidence on the scene. Shit, by the time she was done with her opening, even I was starting to side-eye the man. Matters are made worse when Ted doesn’t get any time to counter with his own blowjob-worthy opening statement (we learn from the sex dream that Ted’s idea of foreplay is being complimented on his oration skills as a lawyer) because the DA has a card she’d like to play, interrupting proceedings. The judge adjourns the session and asks the lawyers to join him in his offices so that they can deal with her interruption in private.

The DA says she’d like to subpoena Lester’s ex-wife because of an article that came out in which she defended Lester and argued his innocence. The DA argues that the ex-wife is essentially testifying without her being able to cross-examine her statements. The judge grants her the subpoena, letting her have access to those client/attorney records detailing the divorce, promising to revisit the issue the following day. Amanda’s job is to find out what is in those files that could harm their case. Ted’s job is to figure out how the DA even got her hands on the records in the first place, essentially looking for a leak. He goes to confront Stuart because he’s the resident snake on the show and the two argue about their ruined friendship until finally Ted punches him in the face. The two get into a scuffle that makes me want them both to lose and are pulled apart by Samantha, who kicks Ted out of her firm.

Flashback time, we start at a diner, where we find out that Ted is going to propose to Samantha on a lunch date with Kevin. Later on, we get a different flashback, also set in a diner, this time with Samantha telling Kevin she would marry Ted if he asked her right then. It would be cute if this was a couple that made sense to start with, but since they aren’t, all you’re left with is a sense of annoyance that they keep interrupting the events of the main story just to cut away to their relationship drama. The most interesting of these, though, comes toward the end of the episode. Ted is running a rehearsal of his proposal in their apartment, all candle-lit and cheesy, when he gets a knock on the door. It’s not Samantha but rather Kevin, who seems to always be the bearer of bad news. Turns out the impersonator they used to trick their suspect in episode two — Samantha’s corny comedian client — was murdered by the mobster they’ve been hunting. Big yikes.

While Ted and Stuart were wrestling in his office, Amanda was busy using her brain. She figured out that without that news article citing the divorce, the DA wouldn’t have been able to move for a motion to include those documents in the case, so she started digging into the article and who wrote it. Another piece was published at an opportune time for the DA on a different case (the one that resulted in Amanda’s client being killed in prison and put her on the warpath to begin with) also by this same journalist, which means this was a planted story meant to force the judge into accepting the divorce paperwork as part of the evidence. Team Ted needs to prove this in court, which means Kevin has to be shady to figure out how to pressure the journalist into admitting that the DA is the one who sent him those records.

Rick calls Erica, asking to go out for dinner because he saw Mommy and Daddy fighting (he got a front-row seat to Ted and Stuart’s little office spat), and he wants to talk about it. Rick is absolutely suffering from buyer’s remorse, very obviously regretting the ugliness he and Stuart’s break from Black and Associate has caused between the two firms. Erica is clear, though; you made your decision, Ricky. Live with it.

It’s the following day, and Kevin has found the phone records (obtained from illegally hacking into the journalist’s phone), but there’s another problem: Lester is nowhere to be found. I’ll pause here to express my deep disdain for how the writers use Kevin to be Ted’s little morally grey, sometimes explicitly criminal errand boy who slinks off to do as master says whenever the plot calls for it. It’s as lazy as it is degrading and strips the show of a character that could otherwise be really interesting. Kevin is joined on his blackmail excursion by Amanda, who tells the reporter if he doesn’t confess that the DA has been leaking him information, she’ll march upstairs into his workplace and tell his boss he let a sitting DA sell him stories with no verification or reliable sources that resulted in the killing of an innocent man.

She’s convincing enough in her threat that the journalist signs an affidavit admitting all while Kevin looks on, proud of her for going full I am vengeance mode. He takes the form to Ted’s house on her behalf, mostly because he knows that Ted’s shady ass has been hiding Lester in order to supposedly buy them some more time. They prep Lester for the trail, but all is not settled with Kevin who suspects something is up with their client. We get the first onscreen meeting of Erica and Kevin, who are delightful to watch together; he knows Ted trusts her, and he wants to run something by her because he can see she’s not as clouded in her judgment of Lester.

Kevin has found discrepancies in Lester’s police statement. He can’t tell Ted because if he has to put Lester on the stand and he suspects him of lying, it’ll jeopardize his chances. Erica — the entertainment lawyer who knows nothing about the world of entertainment and film because it’s the little quirk she’s been assigned by the writers — is meant to help him figure out what Lester is ripping off. She does what she always does when she needs information about everything Hollywood and asks her adorkable cinephile assistant, Leah, if the police report reminds her of anything. Leah says that it doesn’t ring any bells but presents a theory of her own to her boss; what if Lester’s whole story was inspired by a script for a film or show that was shelved? I must confess this was a fun way to merge the Hollywood work the firm does with the murder trial; the show has previously struggled to maintain these two battling tones, and so far, this is the most secure it’s been in itself, perhaps because it’s light on the comedy this week.

Though Ted can’t know about Erica’s little investigation, Rick, who also represented Lester, can, so she asks him for help. She needs access to his older projects to see if anything rings familiar which also gives her an excuse to see his office (the fact that we have two romantic pairings in the show and they both make me want to jump off a bridge isn’t a good sign for a spin-off of one of the most notorious office romance machines). Rick ends up being useful for once, though; when Erica reads him Lester’s statement, he immediately recognizes it as dialogue from a script he read through multiple times as part of a tentative deal with some streamer — which means that Ted seems to be defending a liar who has no qualms plagiarising himself.

We are back in court, and the judge asks Lester where he disappeared off to; he and Ted have cooked up a story about him having a health scare, with a signed affidavit by a health physician to corroborate this fake panic attack story. The judge accepts the doctor’s note and we are all set to get started. Ted presents the judge with a different affidavit, this time the one the greasy journalist provided them, and informs the court of the DA’s dirty tricks to strongarm those papers. The judge, though disgusted at her antics, still stands firm in his decision to give the prosecution access to those records because the reports about the divorce are still accessible to the jury.

Amanda is pissed off (rightly), and it seems all that bluster and blackmail was for nothing. Lester’s ex-wife is placed on the stand, and as ever, things aren’t going well for team Ted. The DA takes the “you’re an actress and thus a believable liar and opportunist who went from calling your husband a killer to saying he was a saint when he promised you a role in an upcoming film” angle, and it’s overwhelmingly convincing.

Rick and Erica go to Kevin with the script and confirm what he already knows (namely that Lester is a lying snake). Kevin makes it explicitly clear that Rick cannot, under any circumstance, tell anyone what he knows, and he agrees. I almost want Rick to break his promise just to see what the hell Kevin would unleash on him, but for the time being, he seems to be willing to play nice, at least for Erica’s sake. Do you know who isn’t willing to play nice anymore? Amanda.

She’s gotten a chance to see Ted’s flexible interpretation of the law firsthand, and she doesn’t like what she’s seen. Amanda’s a by-the-book lawyer, but unlike Rick, she doesn’t abandon those apparent morals when it is convenient for her, and that includes this battle with the DA. Rick and Erica are having dinner, and it’s very apparent that they will get back together at some point because Rick is like a dog with a bone; soft glances and soft words are exchanged, making me want to shut my laptop in protest. It’s 2025. If we are insisting on swirling, then can we at least give the Black female lead a white man who has something going for him?

The episode ends with Ted and Samantha bonding over the good luck bagels she brought him to commemorate the start of the trial, with her wishing him luck for the next day at court. He needs it.