#liveblogging suits

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having gay sex would be less gay than whatever harvey and mike have going on in suits. btw

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mike ross is a fuck up and a hypocrite and a fraud and a liar and a sanctimonius asshole who thinks he's better than most other people. he has catholic guilt and while he does genuinely want to help people, he also cares a lot about feeling that he's a good person regardless if he is. he is incapable of not making bad decisions. he thinks all the bad things that happen to him spiraled from one traumatic event in his life and not because of a combination of systemic problems and bad decision making. he is loyal to a fault but he's also always leaving people behind. he is demanding and petulant about other people showing they love him because he cannot deal with emotional unavailability. he cares about everything too much. he rapidly gets attached to people who show him scraps of affection and elevates these people to the highly regarded position of "family" because he'll never get over being an orphan. if harvey puts people in the position to feel betrayed like he felt with his mother (as his therapist puts it), mike puts people in the position of feeling abandoned, like he felt with his parents, even if that was never his intention in the first place

despite all these traits being the reason people don't like him (and understandably so!) believe it or not these are his charm points to me. mike is such a flawed character. everyone in suits is. the writing in the show has many, many flaws but the character work is pretty fun

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HUHHHHH why is harvey "I have the biggest infidelity trauma everrrr" specter encouraging someone to get back with their ex who cheated on them. what in the character assassination is this

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suits could have been so much better if the writers knew what they wanted to do with mike's character and didn't chicken out of actually tackling mike's history with poverty, the american health care system, and basically being an actual 99 percenter frauding his way around a world of 1 percenters because he wants to survive and help the little guy so that the little guy doesn't feel abandoned and powerless like he felt when he was a kid

that's what early seasons mike ross was. but because the show refuses to examine that aspect of mike's character beyond surface level (because suits is supposed to be, mostly, a light-hearted show centered around corporate law people; and also, it was made in the 2010s), mike's righteousness, which earlier was grounded in empathy and actual lived experience, turns into this kind of. vain, sanctimonious narcissism

which, listen, on any other character, I wouldn't even mind watching that kind of character arc. I can see how mike gets to that point. it would have been compelling as well when he said towards the end of S5 that all this time he was being a fake lawyer, he was making money for people who already have loads of them, and that he promises to make things right after the trial. jessica wanted someone to teach harvey how to care and have compassion and mike was that person!

but somewhere along the way, that compassion turned to vanity, and I was kinda enjoying it for the drama because I do like seeing characters spiral, but now he's being annoying and not even in a deliberate way, which is the worst way to be an annoying character. it doesn't seem like the writers know what to do with it, or more like they kinda wrote themselves into a corner and have no choice but to commit to it now, and it sucksssssssss

like, it would have been a compelling arc to have mike ross go from underachieving orphan trying to make ends meet so his grandmother can afford hospital bills, to someone who finds a solution in defrauding the justice system while trying to use his position in said justice system to help other people like him, to someone who gets so lost in the sauce of corporate law and trying to keep his secret from being found out that he becomes the person he hated when he was a kid (hotshot lawyer who's careless about the power they hold over people), to someone actually deciding to be a better person and to go back to his roots but now with more experience and expertise in his belt -- he can help people, and he's now in a position to do so without fumbling (which is a BIG improvement because mike ross is the number one fumbler of anything), and so he will

and make no mistake. mike has always been whiny and needing of validation and attention and just plain demanding since S1, but also, so much of his kindness and empathy felt more genuine than in later seasons. so you can't help but be endeared. because he was still the scrappy underling trying to help people, in a world that's not built for that. but by like... idk, I guess S4 with the investment banker arc (plus grammy died by then), mike made it so far in life that he's no longer that kind of person. and I guess it just sucks a little bit because I'm watching S6 and for the past two-ish seasons, harvey has been getting some nuanced character development and mike is kinda just... not? and I think that's because harvey's issues are mostly personal while mike's issues are more societal, and the show kinda skirts around writing societal stuff over personal stuff. so it ends up with harvey improving as a character while mike... almost looks like he's in his own corruption arc lol, except it doesn't feel deliberate in the writing, but more like a flaw that I just have to live with because the writers don't know what direction to take mike's character anymore.

if suits was written in 2026 maybe mike would achieve some semblance of class consciousness or something, but alas. all that empathy and kindness gets twisted up in... whatever he is right now

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this is totally not why he's written that way, probably, but knowing that suppressing emotions can make it harder for your brain to record or recall memories, it makes perfect sense that in exchange for his eidetic and photographic memory, mike ross is like. incapable of ignoring his emotions. to the point that a lot of the messes he makes or finds himself in is usually a direct result of him feeling too much

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the fun thing about marvey is that mike will go to prison to protect harvey but harvey is still the one who's more devoted to mike. mike will always prioritize harvey over everyone else and that's extremely non-negotiable, but he still loves rachel more. S1 mike was like a kicked puppy annoyingly asking harvey for attention and validation 24/7 but by S5+ they switched roles so harvey is the one who needs mike to be with him at all times, but by then mike has learned to get the affection he craves from someone else

they trust each other like no other but they can't communicate well (harvey hates being vulnerable and open with his emotions which puts the burden of mind reading on everyone else, mike is extremely reckless with emotions which leads him to bad decision making that burdens everyone else) and they each have deeply-rooted loyalty traumas (harvey tends to make people feel betrayed in the process of trying to protect them, mike tends to make people feel abandoned in the process of trying to protect them; harvey has extreme infidelity and abandonment issues, mike trusted someone so much he was an anchor in his life and betrayed him over and over)

they are always on the same wavelength but never on the same page. it's a really great dynamic

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oh of course mike counts cards lmao

mike ross loves movies and presumably trevor must have watched some with him. in my mind, they probably watched watched 21 (2008) and from there, trevor had the brilliant idea to push mike into card counting to make money. or actually, that's probably something mike could have done all by himself; apparently "he can't help it" because his brain just automatically counts cards

"[the client] has a [gambling] problem. I do not have a problem," lol okay mr specter. as if you're not always doing high risk high reward unethical lawyering and dancing around the law taunting everyone to disbar you (they won't) to get your fix

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mike had to have had a weird situationship with trevor and jenny. it wasn't a polycule and he wasn't third wheeling it was like a secret third thing nobody wanted to acknowledge or talk about (they both kinda have their own thing with him behind each other's back but didn't actually prioritize him. well, jenny didn't until trevor left for montana. meanwhile mike is like, "I'm just happy to be here man" because he's loyal to a fault and has like, zero other friends his age or even a support system outside of grammy, who is dependent on him)