Netflix is a weird place. Out of nowhere, you can find a new movie to watch or a show you’ve binged a hundred times. Or in the case of USA’s “Suits,” you can come across a decade-old series that has suddenly become one of the most watched shows in the history of the streaming platform.
Thanks to a lot of chopped up clips all over TikTok and a now-popular fascination with the legal profession, “Suits” has taken over the television world 12 years after first being released. According to Neilsen ratings, it garnered over 3.1 billion minutes viewed in just a single week this past July.
Starring Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams, Rick Hoffman and Meghan Markle — yes, the Duchess of Sussex — the legal comedy-drama tells the story of a powerful corporate New York law firm that changes names so many times, it’s not even worth putting one down, and the constant legal battles that must be won at any cost.
We need to get one thing out of the way first. Everyone in this show is corrupt, shady and borderline criminal. The show does a good — no, great — job of making the viewers fall in love with the main cast of characters, seemingly watering down all the immoral and illegal things done over the course of nine seasons.
It starts off cheesy. A powerful lawyer, Harvey Specter (Macht), hires a college dropout, Mike Ross (Adams), to join his law firm as an associate. There’s just one problem: Ross never went to law school and will be committing a pretty hefty felony in the process. It is such a bizarre and unusual plot that despite being semi-popular when it first aired, it captured an entirely new audience on Netflix.
Now, as an enrollee of one singular law class in college, I am not an expert of the legal procedures and protocols surrounding subpoenas, depositions and clients. But, as someone with a brain, I know that half of the law rigmarole that goes on in the show is just for entertainment. A problem randomly falls on Specter’s desk? Good thing the firm is able to bend the law to their will to get their way.
It’s not realistic, but that’s why it’s grown on so many people who have binged all eight seasons that are on Netflix (and found a way to stream the ninth somewhere else). Every problem — minor or major — gets resolved, and the round and round soap opera continues to churn out more issues.
But past the chaos of inter-workplace drama and the witty comedic timing, is the constant trend of which character will fall in love with who (spoiler: everyone you expect to end up together, does in fact, end up that way). That ability to keep people drawn in and worked up over these relationships is why so many people are desperate to see if Mike and Rachel Zane (Markle) finally get married, or if Louis Litt (Hoffman) finally finds the right woman.
The writing is dumbed down for the viewers, so they don’t get lost in the mumbo-jumbo of legal talk. Everything makes sense and is easy to follow for those watching, plus when it’s put on the home screen whenever you open up the app, it is instantly eye-catching.
But it’s a silly show. It’s added the words like “goddamn subpoena” and “take this to trial” into my vocabulary that I do not use in the right context at all. I make jokes about drinking a glass of scotch at 10 a.m. and drinking prune smoothies for breakfast (prunies, as Louis calls them and yes, they are as disgusting as you can imagine) because that’s all the characters seem to care about. It’s a show about legal proceedings, but it’s relatable to someone who is so far from the legal system that my only court case was being selected for jury duty.
I’ve watched all 134 episodes and it’s a good enough show to watch again and again. “Suits” is a perfect binge-worthy show and maybe that’s why it’s so popular. If life as a lawyer was as exciting as portrayed on the screen, maybe I’d need to change my major.
