Suits LA (2025)

“See the money want to stay, for your meal, get another piece of pie, for your wife…” Yes friends, The Greenback Boogie is back, but not in the original Suits (2011-2019, 2023) set in NYC, but in its stylish west coast spin-off in LA. Like its predecessor, this legal drama meshes the professional and the personal, but this time with the focus on the law firm of Black Lane, named for the white partners Ted Black (Stephen Amell) and Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) whose complicated friendship began at Columbia University Law School in the early 2000s. Much like Harvey Specter and Louis Litt, Ted and Stuart’s history is part bromance, part knock-down-drag-out competition. But while their relationship is a central pivot of the storylines, a major difference is that Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres), Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman), and Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) mainly handled corporate cases. Ted and Stuart are experts in entertainment law which means that they manage the careers and egos of Hollywood stars (many of whom play themselves) – like Yvette Nicole Brown, Brian Baumgartner, Patton Oswalt, and the late John Amos – as much as they negotiate contracts and vet screenplays. They also do a hell of a lot of handholding, like when Ted tries to talk the middle-aged and diminutive Oswalt out of doing his own stunts in his bid to transition to action films. Alarmingly, they also grapple with the criminal element with which Hollywood studios are entangled to handle their “problems”.

Although Harvey Specter, longtime friend and past colleague of Ted Black, makes several appearances, most of the original Suits’ gang is, sadly, nowhere to be found, except for Louis Litt who makes a hilarious return in episode 12. (Louis’s wife Sheila Sazs [Rachael Harris] and two children are mentioned, as is Harvey’s wife Donna Paulsen [Sarah Rafferty] and a son.) So, who is Ted hanging with? The answer is a bit complicated because many episodes oscillate between 2010 NYC and present-day LA. In the earlier, sepia-toned flashbacks, Ted’s older brother Eddie (Carson A. Egan) is still alive and Samantha Railsback (Rachelle Goulding) is still in Ted’s life as his devoted girlfriend. The flashbacks also reveal Ted’s broken relationship with his ethically challenged businessman father, Edward “Teddy” Brooks (Matt Letscher). Thus, while Harvey Specter had “mommy issues” instigated by his mother’s philandering ways when Harvey was growing up, it is clear that Ted has major “daddy issues,” caused in large part by his dad’s moral lapses, both familial and professional. As we come to find out in a trial sequence in which Ted, Eddie, and Edward all appear, Edward’s illegal business dealings land him with a three-year prison sentence. But his appalling lack of character is revealed when Ted, who only attends the sentencing hearing at Eddie’s request, confronts his father for what he sees as his manipulation of Eddie. You see, Edward wants Eddie to speak at his sentencing in the hopes of a lighter sentence. Worse still, we learn that Edward refused to bestow Eddie’s intended name when he understood that he’d be born with down syndrome. But as we come to find out, Edward’s betrayal of Eddie is not just unethical, it’s lethal.

But Ted is also, for the most part, not hanging out with Stuart (Josh McDermitt) with whom he has had a catastrophic falling out after Ted’s obsessive pursuit of a case back in NYC led to the death of a witness and his big brother Eddie. Thus, Eddie’s presence in the show is in flashbacks of NYC and as a ghost (and Ted’s conscience) in present day LA. The fallout also costs Ted his girlfriend, the beautiful, poised, and successful lawyer Samantha and all of this on the verge of his marriage proposal. You see, the witness who got killed was Samantha’s client and despite her clear warnings, Ted had refused to acknowledge that his strategy was far too dangerous.

When the show lifts off, all concerned have relocated to LA, but Stuart has unceremoniously left the firm he built with Ted to join Samantha’s firm which, happens to be across the cul-de-sac….awkward! At Ted’s side is another longtime friend, the black detective Kevin (Troy Winbush) who has a playfully competitive disdain for Harvey, Ted’s loyal and astute Afghan-American secretary, Rosalyn (Azita Ghanizada), Black Lane’s reticent new head of criminal law and Ted’s potential love interest the white Amanda Stevens (Maggie Grace), and the quirky Asian paralegal Leah Power (Alice Lee). While the white entertainment lawyer Rick Dodsen (Bryan Greenberg) also left to join Samantha, the loyal Erica Rollins (Lex Scott Davis) remains as Ted’s new head of entertainment law. But she soon ascertains that Ted has, as she puts it, changed the title on her business card but not made her a true partner because he has not disclosed any of the crucial (and very messy) details about the complex histories that bind him to Stuart and Samantha. Furthermore, Ted undermined Erica’s bid to land Nicole Kidman as a new client by giving Samantha the notice needed to retain her. Clearly, there are unresolved feelings at play and Ted’s divided loyalties jeopardize Erica’s career and his own firm.

Erica is black, beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious, the last to the point of neglecting her personal life and pushing away people she obviously cares about, like Rick with whom she once shared an intimate but uncommitted relationship. What’s clear is that Rick did not and does not want it to end, but that Erica sees a continuation of the relationship after the breakup of the firm as untenable. While Rosalyn keeps Leah honest by encouraging her to align her effort, contributions, and expectations, Leah’s authenticity and heart slowly break through Erica’s aloof chilliness (think Suits’ driven Katrina Bennett [Amanda Schull]) when she demands that she recognize her dedication and input. Erica eventually does, and Leah is rewarded with her own office – much like the first-rate mixed race paralegal Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle) in Suits.

Like Suits, Suits LA is a drama with a lot of comedy mixed in. It’s filmed on a sound stage and on location in a similar fashion to the original and even uses the same impressive soundtrack. But where it falls short of the original is that it is too imitative and never established its own unique path. For instance, while Suits had a slow burn and took its time transitioning Louis Litt from obnoxious, mean-spirited villain to heartbreakingly insecure, high school nerd trapped in the body of a legal financial wiz, the scripts of Suits LA fall short of the seamless camaraderie and easy in-jokes of Suits by trying too hard to present the characters’ fully formed relationships without letting the audience in on the much-needed background of their dynamics.

An episode that embodies the promise and problems of Suits LA is # 12, “Angry Sylvester”. In it, Stuart and Louis meet for the first time at a retreat to partake in a hostility mitigation program (formerly known as anger management). Unsurprisingly, the first encounter of the two high-strung men is a petty battle over a luggage rack. As the retreat unfolds and they compare notes about difficult peers in a group session, Stuart reveals that an unnamed colleague once punched him in the face, Louis, that he has been thrown into a table, Stuart that the unnamed peer made his wife cry, and Louis that his workmate slept with his sister. Their tit for tat is interrupted by another participant who demands to know if Louis’s sister is “a 9 or a 10?” to which they respond in unison “stay out of it”. What their battle of the humiliating facts unintentionally disclosed is that Ted is to Stuart what Harvey is to Louis, both best friend and nemesis. So, it is fitting that Stuart and Louis eventually bond and partake in one of Louis’s favourite pastimes, mudding. (If you recall, Louis’s passions are taking mud, drinking prunies, and cats). By the end of their encounter, the pair has committed to be each others’ “Federale friend,” meaning a friend who would drop everything to get you out of a Mexican prison.

After John Amos passed in August 2024, Suits LA celebrated him as “America’s father” in episode # 7, fittingly entitled “Good Times”. In it, they had Ted and Stuart and Erica and Rick pause their feuding long enough to meet up in pairs to watch an episode of Normal Lear’s Good Times in which John Amos, as the character James Evans, Sr., bemoaned his weakness for feeling sorry for a wayward black youth who had tried to harm one of his sons. Powerfully, the love and respect directed at Amos was extended by one black female and three white male characters, making the profound point of Amos’s universal appeal and that his depiction of fatherhood transcended race.

Suits LA is entertaining and full of promise. Like many past legal dramas, the potential cases, defendants, clients, and conflicts created endless possibilities for engaging plots. But the show was missing strong scripts that provided the connective tissue that the audience needed to feel emotionally drawn to the characters and that would have allowed the talented cast to shine. Unfortunately, the series was cancelled after one season. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy streaming all 13 episodes and dreaming about what might have been.