5x15 and 5x16 of Suits is just Mike and Harvey fighting their girlfriends(or in harvey’s case eventual girlfriend) to protect their boyfriends(each other). Mike refusing to rat out Harvey, sending himself to PRISON, negotiating with Gibbs so she can‘t fire a bullet at Harvey later. Harvey running to throw himself on a(metaphorical) sword for Mike even if it means going to prison and never getting to practice law again. Them wanting to protect each other with such ferocity, it‘s just <3
So after a rollercoaster ride of emotions and plot twists and a secret that has hung over our characters heads for five seasons, we finally came to the season five finale. I have to say going into this episode this was the most excited I've been for an hour of television in a long time. Love or hate this plot, it was brave of the writers to tackle something that was the basis of their entire premise of the show. This is the sort of storyline you can't dial back the next season. This is the very definition of a game changer because the show can never go back to what it was before. And this episode was the episode that gave us our final resolution to the biggest question of Suits, what happens when Mike gets caught? It was a big question to answer and one that defines and redefines the relationships between all the characters. A lot was resting on this final episode and the resolution to this plot. Where do the characters go from here? What happens to their different relationships? What happens to the firm? That's a lot for any show to tackle in one episode and after the stellar penultimate episode that came before, an even higher bar to try to reach. So did this episode deliver?
Yes and no, in my opinion. There were some great moments and some moments that left me a bit cold. But more on that and my other thoughts on Suits Episode 5x16 - 25th Hour below the cut.
Before I just dive into each character, let me say that this episode, while hard to watch our favorites broken down so far, did one thing really well. It drove home the point that none of them are innocent. Mike was the fraud but he didn‘t do this by himself and all of them crossed lines and broke laws to protect him or to protect themselves. Mike was paying for all their collective crimes by taking those two years and this episode didn‘t let any of the rest of them off the hook but especially not Harvey, Jessica or Louis.
The other thing I really loved is that this episode really explored the idea of what is the honorable thing to do and are you capable of doing it at great cost to yourself? Mike was doing the honorable thing by taking a deal that protected them all from going to prison. Even if he had been found innocent, Gibbs would have kept coming after the rest of them over and over again. That wasn’t up for debate. Mike traded two years of his life to make sure no one else ever paid for the crime he committed. Even though all of them were guilty of accessory. Even though he could have walked away with immunity for trading just one of them in. This episode wasn’t subtle about making it clear it considered Mike’s actions honorable and Mike to be the one who was the most honorable among them. The rest of the episode held Harvey, Louis and Jessica up to that same standard and showed why they hadn’t reached it. This episode really explored to different degrees of success how morally corrupt all these characters have become. Let’s be brutally honest, we root for these characters because we love them and we excuse them because of it but Gibbs and the show didn’t make those same excuses in this episode. This episode broke these characters down and stripped them raw which places it in an exciting place to build them back up again but I’m getting ahead of myself.
For now, let’s get on with this review. I’m just going to do the main six because the others like Robert Zane, Katrina Bennett and Gloria Danners fold into their sections too much. The only question I have is, where was Gretchen? Does Robert Zane have a new secretary now?
Donna - Donna’s role in this episode was to be supportive. And that’s fair, as much as she loves everyone involved, this was really Mike, Harvey and Rachel’s main story and Jessica and Louis’s b plot. Her character didn’t have as much of a direct impact as the others did, not that it wasn’t going to be upsetting or that she didn’t care but there wasn‘t a bigger function for her to really play in this episode beyond support.
The one moment I really loved for Donna was her as Rachel’s maid of honor and her being there and supporting her. Their friendship has always been something I loved for both of them and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it next season when Rachel is really going to need her.
Donna knowing when to give Harvey space and when to give him advice was nice and it was sweet that she was willing to give herself up to try to help Mike but there was no way that was happening. Harvey never would have let her and if she’d tried the same thing with Mike he never would have let her either. Her paying for something they did wasn’t going to happen. Harvey and Mike couldn’t even handle each other paying for it. Harvey certainly wasn’t going to let Donna risk going down for a crime they already protected her from and he wasn‘t going to jeopardize the other person he cares about the most on the eve of losing Mike to prison. Donna’s offer also served the function of driving home the point that in the end the main guilt of this crime rests on Harvey and Mike equally. They were the only ones who could pay for it and this episode was going to end with one or the other going to jail.
The one problem I had with Donna was actually in front of the courthouse with Rachel when Donna tried to get Rachel to go back and support Mike. Look, I know there has been a lot of dislike for the way Rachel has been handling this versus Donna, but I don’t agree with a lot of it. Here’s why, their situations aren’t comparable. Donna can support and love Harvey and be there for Mike because at the end of the day, no matter how upset she is by what happens, it doesn’t change her world the same way it changes Rachel‘s. Mike proposed to Rachel, they are engaged. They have a life together, they go to bed every night together and get up together and they have dreams of little mini Mike and Rachels running around and Donna isn’t in that situation. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t devastate Donna if Harvey had gone to jail but it also wouldn’t be the same. Donna and Harvey aren’t together (sorry Darvey fans, I swear I‘m not trying to be mean) and Rachel and Mike are and no matter how much you love someone there is a difference once you enter a relationship that changes things. I wasn’t a fan of Donna asking Rachel to put aside some very valid feelings she was having for Mike making a huge decision about their future without even giving her a heads up and I know Mike didn’t have time and I don’t blame him and once he explained it, Rachel didn’t either but Rachel didn’t know that in the moment she was reacting to it outside of the courthouse. Granted, if Mike had been going to prison right that second, I’d have felt like Rachel should have done what Donna said but that wasn’t the case and I wish Donna had been a little more supportive of Rachel in that scene. Like Rachel said, her heart had just been ripped out by Mike and she deserved a moment to grieve that. Donna trying to parallel her and Mike’s situation to her feelings on what she would have done had it been Harvey didn’t work for me. It was a weak comparison because of the differences in the nature of their relationships as current canon stands.
Other than that, Donna didn’t have a lot to do in this episode and going forward she had the least foreshadowing of where her character will be headed next season. I’m assuming she will be doing a lot to help rebuild the firm and trying to support both Harvey and Rachel who are both going to struggle more than the rest of them with Mike being in prison. I hope that Donna is also going to maybe take away from this that life is unpredictable and short and that might spur her to go after her own life a little more and be less attached to her position at the firm and to Harvey. But those are just my personal hopes, like I said, this episode didn’t leave a lot of foreshadowing for her character’s future path.
Louis - I was so proud of Louis in this episode. He has finally grown up. A lot of this episode was showing instead of telling the impact Mike has had on their lives and Louis’s was one of my favorite examples of that.
Bringing Katrina back into the story worked so well in this episode and Robert Zane masterfully used her against Louis by getting Louis to confess on tape that he knew Mike was a fraud in order to break Pearson Specter Litt‘s non compete clauses. Katrina, Louis’s protégé and someone he considered a friend, stabbed him in the back because that is what he taught her. That is the impact he made on her life. That is what he molded her to be. To get ahead, to use whatever means necessary, even if that meant stepping over a friend to do it. Why? Because that’s the attitude Louis has displayed over and over. She even said it to him in this episode, that anyone would have done it, she was just looking out for herself.
But that wasn’t true, was it? Because Louis knew someone who wouldn’t stab someone in the back to get ahead. Louis was front row to watching someone and their protégé fight so hard to protect each other and keep each other safe it was breaking them. Louis saw what Harvey and Mike were willing to do for each other and more importantly, Louis saw what Mike had done for all of them. Katrina, a lawyer and his protégé stabbed him in the back without pause and Mike, a fraud, took two years in prison to keep them all safe. Mike protected everyone who ever knew his secret by not turning on them. He could have. Anita Gibbs would have gladly traded up to Harvey, Jessica or Louis and let Mike go. But Mike couldn’t do that and that was what Louis realized fully when he stood there with Katrina telling him that anyone would have backstabbed someone like she did to get ahead. Louis knew that wasn‘t true. Mike showed him and Harvey showed him how much that wasn’t true. Jessica showed him that too.
Which was why it was so important that Louis came in and defended Mike to Jessica. That Louis was the one who said they had to risk opening up the firm for a chance at keeping Mike out of jail. Louis backed Harvey’s plea to Jessica because Mike was family and he reminded her of that. Mike did what he did to protect them and like he said, who would they be if they weren’t willing to do the same for Mike?
Louis grew up and Katrina made him realize just how much by showing him who he used to be. I hope that this new Louis who values loyalty and family over himself sticks around next season because I really think he is the best version of Louis we‘ve seen yet.
Jessica - Jessica’s story this episode was about letting go. But not before she fought hard. She went into damage mode the minute she found out Mike cut the deal without even taking one second to consider what he just did. Her entire focus was on how to save the firm from Mike taking the deal.
So when lawyers began jumping ship and she found out Soloff was the first one ready to do so, she went after him. This episode was a lot about honorability and how morally bankrupt these characters have become. Soloff served to show how far Jessica had gone by throwing it back at her that she let two criminals work for her with full knowledge that they both were lawbreakers and she didn’t have a moral leg to stand on anymore. Zane also served that function. He wasn’t mad she hired a fraud. He was mad that he thought they had more respect for each other than Jessica had shown him. That she let his daughter date that fraud and jeopardize her whole future without so much as a second thought was what upset Zane. Zane was another mirror held up to Jessica to show how crooked she had become, how easily she had let her honor go. Zane drove home the idea that in Jessica’s desperation to hold on to her firm and her power, she stopped seeing people as people and instead evaluated them all as threats to what she had and what could be taken from her. Laura Zane pointed this out when Jessica asked why Zane would have been trustworthy and she answered the picture of his daughter on the desk because Zane cared more about his daughter than Mike’s secret. Zane is equal to Jessica but this episode made the argument that Zane had not lost his moral compass to hold onto that power.
Even with those two confrontations, Jessica still didn’t stop trying to hold onto her power and she would have kept going until Harvey stopped her by asking her to risk the firm to save Mike. Her excuse that Mike was doing this for the firm so therefore she couldn’t risk it to save him was weak and Harvey called her on it by correcting her. Mike did this for him and her, to keep them out of jail not because of the firm. But even that didn’t stop her. What stopped her was Harvey telling her that Mike would have been found innocent.
Those words stopped her when nothing else did. Why? Because the reality of what Mike did just hit her. Mike traded two years of his life and protected all of them from ever being tried and when Jessica thought he would have been found guilty anyway that was meaningless to her. Mike got a good deal, right? That’s how she was probably rationalizing it. He could have gotten seven and now he’d only get two. But when Jessica found out that he could have walked away free? And that the deal gave him time he didn’t have to serve, leaving the only good part of it being that it protected the rest of them, that made her stop in her tracks. Mike chose to protect the people he cared about over himself. That broke her for a moment and then Louis delivered a second punch by telling her they had to try to save Mike because he was family and siding with Harvey.
Louis and Jessica’s relationship this season has been one of the highlights. These two have really grown to depend on each other and even more so, they hold up a mirror and tell each other the tough things no one else will. They have grown to trust each other and it was nice that for once it was Louis telling Jessica they had to do what was right and loyal by Mike. That Jessica listened and agreed without question showed how strong their relationship has grown while they’ve worked to save the firm. She even said later that Louis was right. That said, I don’t think she realized everyone would leave so I’m not sure how she’ll feel next season but in the moment she did the right thing.
It was also a nice touch that she went to apologize to Zane and it was even nicer that she convinced him to go to the wedding for Rachel. She tried to show that she heard him and she chose speaking up in Rachel’s behalf as a way of offering an olive branch and doing right by Mike and Rachel.
Like I said above, this episode really explored how much guilt Jessica, Harvey and Louis had to own up to in everything that happened and Jessica was guilty. She was guilty not only of committing crimes but also of losing her connection to people in her attempt to hold onto her power and the firm and she lost her firm because of it. That last scene where her and Louis walked around the empty offices, even the receptionists jumped ship which was really harsh, until meeting up with Donna in the empty bullpen was nicely done. Jessica wasn’t innocent in all of this, nor Louis and while Mike protected them from jail time they are still paying a price.
That said, to be honest, Jessica's storyline didn't hold the emotional resonance with me that the other's did. It was really hard to invest in the loss of the firm when you were watching Harvey destroy himself over not being able to save Mike or Rachel being left behind in her wedding dress.
Rachel - I already defended Rachel once up above and I’m not going to do it again other than to say that I felt for her in this episode and she had her right to be upset about what was happening to Mike. He was her future and she was losing him to two years in prison and their lives would never be the same. Mike won’t be the same person after having gone through two years prison and Rachel won’t be the same person either by the time he gets out. It’s the nature of time, things change. She lost what she thought was going to be her life and now she has to rebuild a new one, even if she does stay with Mike through it all. And no matter what happens, no matter how much she understands it or how much she loves Mike, she will always have to live with the knowledge that he traded away what could have been their future to protect Harvey. He chose Harvey over her and him and that will always sting just a little.
That said, Rachel’s willingness to throw everything away on Mike was sweet and incredibly naïve. Zane accused her of it once before and accused her of it again basically in this episode, trying to drive home how she would be destroying her future marrying him. Her choice to stand by Mike and marry him anyway was an honorable one. A naïvely honorable one made out of love. She was losing him and her one last attempt to hold on by putting a ring on it wasn’t the smartest of moves.
So clearly I’m glad they didn’t get married for her sake but that didn’t make me any less sad for how happy she looked in her wedding dress and how devastated she was when Mike told her they weren’t doing it.
Rachel’s function in this episode was really to stand in for the collateral damage of what Mike’s secret has done to everyone he loves. She was, arguably, one of the most innocent keepers of his secret and along with Donna one of the least morally bankrupt so this episode didn‘t tear her down the way it did Harvey, Jessica and Louis. Instead, Rachel was largely painted as the price paid for what they have all done. Rachel was left heartbroken and left behind but also in a strange way freed. Whether she waits for Mike or not, she has been freed by Mike to pursue her life without regard for him if she wanted. There were no vows made or any promises Mike expects her to keep and no guilt to really carry for Mike’s choice to go to prison. It’ll be interesting to see where she goes next season because she has a lot of places they could take her.
There is one place, however, this episode hinted at that I hope they don’t follow through on. When Mike and Rachel had sex on the couch and then Mike went to see Rachel’s mother and she told Mike he couldn’t understand because he’d never been a father I cringed at what I hope is not foreshadowing. I really hope that the show did not hint there that Rachel is going to be pregnant next season and that it was just a coincidence it came across like that. Of all the places Rachel’s character could go, seeing her pregnant while Mike is in prison isn’t one I’d like to follow.
Harvey - Following up on last week, Macht once again put in another stellar performance in this episode. Harvey was broken and on the verge of a breakdown. You could see Harvey physically struggling the entire episode to hold himself together. No one was treated more harshly by the writers in this episode than Harvey and no one was harder on himself.
The one case Harvey couldn’t win was the one case he cared the most about and the one he felt most responsible for, so it was fitting that they brought in the other case he carried the most burden from in the form of Gloria Danners as a reminder of how he destroyed Clifford Danners life by sending him to prison. In a not so subtle parallel they had Gloria herself hold Harvey responsible for making sure Mike could survive prison and reminding him that he was the one that sent her son away in a line that might as well have substituted Mike for Clifford because that is all Harvey heard. Harvey was responsible for Mike being in this position. He made the choice to hire Mike, to keep up the fraud, to keep Mike working with him because Harvey never really let himself think of what would happen when it all came crashing down.
He didn’t realize how much he would love Mike, how close they would become, how much he would give anything to protect him. He didn’t realize that one day he wasn’t going to be able to fix things and Mike was going to throw himself on a grenade to save Harvey and that Harvey was going to have to find a way to live with that. Something, from the looks of him in this episode, he is going to struggle a great deal to do.
The desperation in trying to make peace with Mike’s deal came first in the form of trying to stop it and when Mike blocked that, finding out what the jury’s verdict would have been. The look on Harvey’s face when he realized what the jury foreman was saying, the broken way he requested for him to just say it was heartbreaking. Mike would have been free and Harvey had to live with that knowledge now. Harvey could barely hold it together and the scene where he kept telling Gloria Danners he couldn’t deal with her right now showed how little control he had left. Then he came up against Mike in his office, asking him if he did the right thing and Harvey tried to make peace with it by lying to Mike. By carrying the burden of knowing Mike would have gotten off himself and keeping it secret as an act of mercy so Mike didn’t have to live with that knowledge and he could repair things with Rachel.
That act of mercy didn’t work either and Harvey turned gears and instead desperately pulled out every act to stop Mike from going to prison and every single move he made only came up against another reminder of how corrupt he was, how much he‘d broken the law and how he was going to be free when Mike was going to jail for something that he was just as guilty of as Mike. Evan Smith threw his desperation and willingness to break the law in his face and more importantly Anita Gibbs threw it in his face when she refused to take the deal, The Liberty Rail Case for Mike’s freedom. Not because it wasn’t a good deal but because Harvey shouldn’t have needed that to motivate him to turn murders in. She correctly called him on the fact that he had kept his knowledge of The Liberty Rail Case in his back pocket to trade when he needed it. He’d let the murders go to protect Donna after she broke the law and then tried to turn them in to protect Mike. Either way at no time was Harvey doing the right, honorable thing in that case for the victims. Every move he made with The Liberty Rail Case was for his own gain somehow and Gibbs, although only knowing the Mike part of it, pointed it out. Harvey bent and broke laws all the time and Gibbs, though guilty of it too, defended it by saying at least hers were for the right reasons, to uphold the law, something Harvey couldn’t say the same for. It begs the question, if it had been anyone else coming to Gibbs with that trade, would she have made it? Possibly but not for Harvey because of who Harvey is, because of Harvey’s reputation, because of all the laws she knows, even if she can’t prove it, that he’s broken or bent. Because Harvey is guilty and she wasn’t going to let him win this one. Even Harvey’s insistence that he would take Mike’s place if she let him but she wouldn’t forced Harvey to face yet another unpleasant truth. He had his chance. He could have cut a deal any time during the trial and saved Mike. He knew that Gibbs always wanted him more than Mike but he hadn’t done it. Mike had been the one to cut the deal, the one to protect him.
But she offered him one last hope. Convince Mike to let him go in his place and she would take that deal. Harvey for Mike. That she would accept. Which led to the most heartbreaking and incredibly well acted scene of the night and the most powerful when Harvey came home and found Mike sitting on his couch. It’s endlessly amusing to me, by the way, that Harvey’s apartment is basically an open door policy for everyone. Mike, Donna, Jessica. One of these days Louis is going to figure out how to get in there and Harvey‘s really going to throw a fit. But enough of that, back to the episode. That scene, which starts out sweetly with Mike asking Harvey to be his best man and quickly devolved into violence. First anger, with Harvey upset that Mike was even thinking of getting married when he was about to go to jail, then an attempt to use the truth about the verdict to get Mike to trade on him and finally violence when Harvey threw that glass at a retreating Mike’s head when all else failed. He claimed he was toughening him up for jail but Harvey was trying to break him and he was trying to do it so Mike would let him take his place. And he was trying to get Mike to punish him. He wanted Mike to hate him. He wanted Mike to hit him. He wanted it because he felt so guilty, he felt so destroyed and because he hated himself for not taking the deal before Mike in that moment, like Gibbs said. He was just as responsible and in Harvey’s eyes, even more so because he was the older of them. He was the one in power and he let Mike risk his life by hiring him and now he had to live with Mike going to jail. And Harvey got what he wanted. Mike broke. Mike hit him repeatedly, admitted that it was because of Harvey his life was ruined and even then, shocked that Mike had it in him and bleeding on the floor when Harvey requested they go to Gibbs, Mike was still the better man of the two of them and wouldn’t let Harvey take the fall.
Which is what Harvey is going to have to live with now. He’s always thought Mike was a better person than he was, a better man and has said so before. Mike was the one who made Harvey try to be a better man himself and now he’s losing Mike to prison and all Harvey can do is watch which isn’t going to be easy for Harvey. He might not have let Mike go to prison alone but once he was through those doors they both know that Mike is on his own for the next two years. All Harvey can do is try to make peace with it and try to be better. This episode said goodbye, in my opinion, to the Harvey of the past and is going to force some big changes on this character. There is going to be a need for him to honor Mike’s sacrifice of taking the jail time for a crime they both committed and there is going to be a shift in him losing Mike and how that is going to impact him going forward. More than any of the others, he is going to have a lot of self examination to do and a lot of choices to make in who he is, where he’s going and what his path going forward will look like. His journey looks to be a rocky one next season and I‘m sure part of that is going to be continuing to search for a way to get Mike out of jail. Harvey isn‘t going to give up on Mike.
Mike - In an ironic twist an argument could be made that Mike, who ended this episode going to prison, is the most free of them all going into next season. That by no means is me saying his journey will be easy but this episode drove home that at heart, Mike is a good man who did the honorable thing at every turn this episode.
He took the deal to protect Harvey and the rest of them. And also because he needed to take responsibility for his actions. I made an argument a few reviews back that Mike does seem to think he needs to pay and this episode only made that clearer for me in what he said to Gloria Danner. He did what he was accused of and now he just wants to serve his time and find a way through to the other side where his being found out will no longer hang over his head. Mike said it again to Harvey when he thought the jury found him guilty, there was something freeing in the word because it was the truth. He was guilty. I think an argument could be made that even if Mike had known the jury found him innocent, he still would have taken the deal if it meant no one else paid for his crime. He took the deal because of what that client last episode said, no matter what they’ll go after my friends and Mike knew that was the case for him as well. Gibbs would have kept coming for Harvey and Jessica even if Mike had been found not guilty. This deal was a way to end it, a way to protect everyone and a way for him to sleep at night knowing he finally made peace with paying for a crime he did commit.
Mike did the honorable thing again when Harvey tried to force him to trade his freedom for Harvey taking his place. Even provoked and even admitting something he never would have said otherwise, that he did secretly blame Harvey, he still never thought for one second about turning Harvey in or letting Harvey be the one to go to jail. Patrick J. Adams, like Macht, turned in a heart wrenching performance in that scene when Mike attacked Harvey and then crumpled to the floor, sobbing and whispering that he couldn’t when Harvey asked him to go with him to Gibbs.
Then Mike did something that showed he had not lost his moral compass at all by going home and telling Rachel he would have been found innocent and she was right, he should have had faith but that he couldn’t marry her without her knowing. Mike could have kept the secret, Harvey would have never told her, but he didn’t want to marry her with a lie between them.
But Mike’s most honorable and biggest moral acts came in the last scenes he shared with Rachel and with Harvey, the two most important people in his life.
That scene with Mike and Rachel in the church was the greatest act of selfless love we’ve seen either of them commit in this relationship. Mike wanted to marry her, it would have been a way to keep her tied to him for those two years because one of Mike’s biggest fears is losing her but Mike loves her too much to do that to her. So instead he set her free and told her they weren’t getting married. He doesn’t want to stand in her way and he doesn’t want her to lose out on her life or any of her dreams because of him so letting her go was the most honorable thing he could do. He also was honest and didn’t try to push her away or lie about why he wasn’t marrying her. He gave her the truth and said in two years if she still wanted him then, they could get married but he doesn’t expect it from her. Given that since the first day they met Mike has wanted Rachel it was a testament to his character that he let her go right when he could have married her. Mike gave Rachel a chance at her future and her dreams and that was the best he could do to do right by her in this situation.
And all that was left before Mike went to prison was to give some sense of peace to the other person in his life he loves the most, Harvey. Their relationship has always been the most important in this show and that final scene between them was a beautiful show of how much they love each other. They could have said a lot of things but they didn’t need to because they know each other so well. That Harvey came with Mike and shared that last moment with him was all Harvey needed to do to let Mike know he wasn’t alone and Harvey would always be there for him anyway he could. And that Mike told Harvey they were both guilty and he wouldn’t change a thing was his way of letting Harvey know he doesn’t blame him. The cute throwback line of Harvey looking for another him and finding Mike was a nice call to their first meeting and Mike’s one last movie quote before going in from The Shawshank Redemption was a nice nod to their bond over the years. If I could have asked for anything from this scene or the one at Harvey’s loft it would have been a hug but I understand why they didn’t. Both of them were barely holding it together. A hug would have broken them and they had to be strong for each other and themselves. These two men love each other so much and if there was any doubt to how much, these final episodes put that to rest. They both would have done it all over, even knowing how it all turned out because it gave them each other in their lives and that was priceless to them both.
Mike goes into prison knowing that serving his time protects those he loves on the outside and knowing that he’s finally free of the lie that has dictated his every day and hung over his head threatening to crush him at any moment. The worse happened. He’s going to jail and yet he does so with his own sense of honor intact and now he just has to find a way through the next two years, which I’m sure won’t be easy nor will it be two years because something will happen to get him out unless this show does a major time jump which it seems to be against.
So those are my thoughts on this episode. Let’s be honest. Last week’s episode was a lot to beat. It was probably one of the best episodes the series has ever had and definitely the best of the season. There was only one place to go in the finale and that was down. Do I think the episode crashed? No. I don’t. Despite some scenes not really having as much emotional resonance as they were suppose to, all of the cast turned in excellent performances. The strongest scenes were between Harvey and Mike and I think the show could have trimmed some of the other scenes out to focus more on them together since their relationship was at the heart of this story. I also wish they had managed to compact the storyline about what was happening to the firm and focused more on just the relationships in this episode between everyone but I get they were trying to bridge the gap to that scene where everyone was gone at the end. All in all though I think it was actually a good episode. I’m also satisfied with the way it ended. Did I want all our favorite characters to be left depressed, broken and in Mike’s case in prison? No, of course not. Emotionally I wanted them to pull a rabbit out of a hat and win in the last few minutes like they always do. BUT creatively, I wanted the show to go where it did. At the beginning of Mike getting arrested I never would have imagined he’d actually go to jail and I’m still a little shocked the show had the balls to do it and I’m hopeful and tentatively excited to see where this leads. This show broke everything down to basics and left the characters at square one and that’s something this show has needed to do because it had gotten too predictable and too repetitive. They always win, they always stop the firm takeover, they always beat the other lawyer (a lot of times not legally). I’ve been saying since this storyline started that for it to mean anything it had to be a game changer for the whole structure of the show and that is what this show did in this episode. They destroyed the premise of the whole show and now it can be rebuilt from square one. Them suffering such a blow as both Mike going to jail and the firm collapsing left them the room to make the show over and make us root for these characters even more because everyone always loves the underdog and they all just became underdogs in a big way.
And maybe this is an unpopular opinion but they also needed to do this because the characters were guilty. There was a definite set up this entire season that this was leading to a judgment day of sorts and that happened in this episode. There is a saying that the truth shall set you free and these characters have been buried under so many lies, so many illegal moves, so much corruption that they were drowning in it. Mike gave all of them a fresh start by taking a deal that protected them all from being gone after by Gibbs. He didn’t do it to save the firm. He did it to save them as individuals, his family. He traded two years of his life to go to jail for something they all did and were guilty of and in doing so gave them a fresh start. A chance to be better, a chance to do better, a chance to start over clean and in the clear. What they choose to do with it, whether they go back to their old ways or not, that’s up to what happens next season.
Wherever this show goes, it won’t resemble the show we left when it comes back. It can’t. This show just got a makeover and I’m really excited and scared to see what that means when season six starts. There are a lot of challenges to be met with having Mike isolated from the firm in prison and I’m curious as to whether or not the show can pull it off and how they are going to keep the connection between Mike and Harvey alive since that will always be the relationship at the heart of this series, no matter how much other things change. I’m looking forward to season six!
In parting, just let me say that I really appreciate all of your who have read my reviews, liked or reblogged them all season and all of you who added your own thoughts or sent me questions. It was a crazy back six episodes and it was fun discussing (and disagreeing sometimes) with everyone on where things were headed.
As always, thanks for taking your time with reading this extra long review!
