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S08.E07: Sour Grapes


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Suits doesn't really have the best record of dealing with issues of race and ethnicity, but this one was....decent, I think.

Even though I'm still tired of Louis and Sheila stuff generally, here they weren't bad. It seems a little late in the game for the two of them to only first be having the discussion about how their child might be raised. It was also nice for Sheila to do perhaps the first non-selfish thing in their relationship by extending a potential olive branch over Louis's mom's kugel. And I was touched by Louis's sadness over the bump in the road. 

With the Zane plot, I actually blame Zane a good deal. Presumably, he had a contract that the barrels were to be delivered by X date. If he didn't, then he is a way worse lawyer than he is supposed to be. And when he not only didn't get them by X date, he probably should have said "I'm going to get barrels from someone else and sue him for breach of contract." That he apparently did nothing about this until he lost his entire harvest means he's again a suckier businessman/lawyer than he's supposed to have been. Especially when it's clear that some combination of racism/hatred of the nouveau riche outsider was causing the barrelmaker to do this deliberately. Surely his spidey-senses should have said something? I would have preferred it if Zane took a calmer more measured approach to the racism he was facing. After all, he has been facing it all his life, this is one of the less personal ways he can face it, and the barrelmaker was clearly in the wrong and at a minimum was going to likely cover Zane's losses. 

I still can't believe Donna made the deal to require Harvey to do a year's worth of legal work for Fox, because the value of that is probably greater than the overtime backpay that Fox owed the woman. But on top of it, I can't believe that Donna didn't tell Harvey (or presumably Robert or anyone else) that she was going to be tying up one of the firm's top earners to Fox. The desire to purchase the building plot didn't really make much sense to me. Fox has vast real estate holdings and is willing to subsidize the mentor guy. Why not just move him into one of Fox's buildings? Why would Fox's rival ever sell the building to Fox if he hates him? 

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2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Suits doesn't really have the best record of dealing with issues of race and ethnicity, but this one was....decent, I think.

Even though I'm still tired of Louis and Sheila stuff generally, here they weren't bad. It seems a little late in the game for the two of them to only first be having the discussion about how their child might be raised. It was also nice for Sheila to do perhaps the first non-selfish thing in their relationship by extending a potential olive branch over Louis's mom's kugel. And I was touched by Louis's sadness over the bump in the road. 

With the Zane plot, I actually blame Zane a good deal. Presumably, he had a contract that the barrels were to be delivered by X date. If he didn't, then he is a way worse lawyer than he is supposed to be. And when he not only didn't get them by X date, he probably should have said "I'm going to get barrels from someone else and sue him for breach of contract." That he apparently did nothing about this until he lost his entire harvest means he's again a suckier businessman/lawyer than he's supposed to have been. Especially when it's clear that some combination of racism/hatred of the nouveau riche outsider was causing the barrelmaker to do this deliberately. Surely his spidey-senses should have said something? I would have preferred it if Zane took a calmer more measured approach to the racism he was facing. After all, he has been facing it all his life, this is one of the less personal ways he can face it, and the barrelmaker was clearly in the wrong and at a minimum was going to likely cover Zane's losses. 

I still can't believe Donna made the deal to require Harvey to do a year's worth of legal work for Fox, because the value of that is probably greater than the overtime backpay that Fox owed the woman. But on top of it, I can't believe that Donna didn't tell Harvey (or presumably Robert or anyone else) that she was going to be tying up one of the firm's top earners to Fox. The desire to purchase the building plot didn't really make much sense to me. Fox has vast real estate holdings and is willing to subsidize the mentor guy. Why not just move him into one of Fox's buildings? Why would Fox's rival ever sell the building to Fox if he hates him? 

Maybe Robert didn't act immediately because he wanted to be wrong about the racism/hatred component, we are supposed to have made so much progress after all. But once he started to get the sense of what was going on I can see why he was pissed off and wanted to take a sledgehammer to the problem. People always want to tell black people how we should deal with racism but sometimes you want to stomp the racist and put your foot on their neck.

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I like Donna but even I got sick of all the "Donna is so great" in this episode.

Sam is back to wearing white or black again. Boring .....  Are they trying to show that she's Jessica but not Jessica?

On plus side, I like that the show is continuing with parallel themes this season, in this case community family for Zane and blood/marriage family for Louis.  I wish they had dropped the law firm as family though, it's just too much given how bitterly they've been fighting each other.  I had a hard time with Louis' dilemma though because to me, as someone whose spouse is of a different religion, the solution seems to me to raise the child in both cultures.

Also, here it takes four years of college including practica so I doubt Louis can be certified in his space time. Nice motivation though.

I didn't understand about the discount for the barrels.  If the community resented Zane so much for coming in and buying up that property, why did they all chip in and give him a 5% discount on the barrels?

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I have a new rule for watching Suits:  I turn it off after the 4th "goddamn" of the episode. I am not religious, and I don't object on the grounds of taking the Lord's name in vain-- it's just so overused on this show. Nothing screams "learn my script word-for-word" like hearing people talk in a way that I just don't hear people talk.  I almost never hear that word used in real life. It just takes me out of the story, it's used so much!! Hence, my "4 times, turn it off" rule. I haven't seen a full episode this season.

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On 8/30/2018 at 9:55 AM, mommalib said:

Maybe Robert didn't act immediately because he wanted to be wrong about the racism/hatred component, we are supposed to have made so much progress after all. But once he started to get the sense of what was going on I can see why he was pissed off and wanted to take a sledgehammer to the problem. People always want to tell black people how we should deal with racism but sometimes you want to stomp the racist and put your foot on their neck.

I can get that he might have wanted to give the barrel dude the benefit of the doubt, but even if it was an innocent error, at some point he has to get his barrels to avoid losing his harvest. Barrel Dude is not the only person selling barrels. Robert being even a tenth of the lawyer that he's supposed to be would have ordered replacement barrels and sued Barrel Dude for his failure to deliver on time.

I empathize with Robert, because he's essentially a slightly older, way way richer version of me. Also angrier. I couldn't see my losing it over racism on the level of the barrel stuff in public. Privately, I'd be pissed off, but obviously it would not make the top 10 percent of things that happened to me personally, or the top 100 of big-picture injustices like redlining, employment discrimination, politicians dog-whistling, police profiling, etc. etc.

28 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

I like Donna but even I got sick of all the "Donna is so great" in this episode.

Sam is back to wearing white or black again. Boring .....  Are they trying to show that she's Jessica but not Jessica?

On plus side, I like that the show is continuing with parallel themes this season, in this case community family for Zane and blood/marriage family for Louis.  I wish they had dropped the law firm as family though, it's just too much given how bitterly they've been fighting each other.  I had a hard time with Louis' dilemma though because to me, as someone whose spouse is of a different religion, the solution seems to me to raise the child in both cultures.

Also, here it takes four years of college including practica so I doubt Louis can be certified in his space time. Nice motivation though.

I didn't understand about the discount for the barrels.  If the community resented Zane so much for coming in and buying up that property, why did they all chip in and give him a 5% discount on the barrels?

I'd guess that if someone wanted to learn midwifery just to help their spouse, they wouldn't have to go through the same level of training that someone who wanted to become a professional midwife to lots of people.

From what I gathered, Barrel Dude offered his wares to Zane at whatever discount, planning to be "unable" to deliver and wreck Zane's entire first harvest. As I further understood it, the community of vineyard owners were also in on it and apparently offered to cover Barrel Dude's losses when Zane eventually was like, "Hey, I never got my barrels! You owe me."

Which again, seems like a stupid plan. 

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A false positive with a pregnancy test is very unlikely. False negative is the most common wrong result.  A positive result followed by a "period" is an early miscarriage. Or Sheila was just lying. Or, the writers are dumb.  Also dumb, Louis and Sheila for never discussing something major like the child's religion in the months they have been actively trying. I don't know why I care. 

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Some women have spotting during their pregnancies, especially in the first months. Unless Sheila is heavily bleeding, she should go to a doctor and have a better test.

3 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I'd guess that if someone wanted to learn midwifery just to help their spouse, they wouldn't have to go through the same level of training that someone who wanted to become a professional midwife to lots of people.

Those are called pre-natal classes.  Midwifery is a medical profession, like a nurse or physiotherapist.  I don't ask much realism from this show but that was a step too far.

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here's a question: if USA doesn't allow the use of 'fuck' why are the writers putting it in the script? Of course the use of it is ridiculous. I can curse with the best of them but I've never heard anyone use it as often and in so many situations, as SUITS.

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So David Fox isn't a complete asshole after all.  In fact, he has a soft spot, a compassionate side, but he doesn't want people to know it because he'd rather they fear him as a ruthless businessman.  But before we got to that, we had to see him being a complete asshole first, multiple times.  Now he's okay.

Robert Zane is learning to trust his people, even listening to them against his (not) better judgement.  But before we got to that, we had to have him be all "I'm running this goddamn firm now, so all of you have to goddamn do what I goddamn say goddammit" first.  Multiple times.  But now he's okay.

Harvey and Samantha, and even Donna and Samantha, are developing respect for each other, working together, actually listening to each other.  But before we got to that, we had to have them all hating each other and backstabbing each other first.

And so on.

I get that with the merger, all these folks from formerly different firms have to learn to get along.  And it makes sense that it wouldn't happen right away, so I suppose I should give the writers some credit for planning it out like this, if this was indeed the plan all along.  But did we have to sit through so many truly painful episodes of people hating each other and backstabbing and yelling and not listening to each other?  I would have been fine with about half of the crap we had to get through to reach the almost-one-big-happy-family we seem to be moving towards.  Or maybe not.  Maybe if they got there too quickly, it wouldn't have seemed realistic either.

Oh yeah, Louis and Sheila.  Almost tolerable when dealing with actual issues that normal people have.  But for highly educated, highly intelligent people, they're still both idiots.

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On ‎9‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 1:26 PM, Sake614 said:

here's a question: if USA doesn't allow the use of 'fuck' why are the writers putting it in the script? Of course the use of it is ridiculous. I can curse with the best of them but I've never heard anyone use it as often and in so many situations, as SUITS.

In the late night repeats, I think they can say whatever they want. I watched a few minutes of one of their shows (the Rami Malek one) at like 1 am and they were dropping 'fuck' like this show does 'goddamn'.

Put me down as another one who couldn't follow the Zane plot. The one good thing I can say about it- at least Alex got the chance to not be the fit throwing ass for once. I even actually liked Alex in this ep. Part of my issue with the plot was Zane. I get that he was being screwed over and racism was behind it. But the man throws a fit over something every week. Instead of this being a compelling point to understand where he's coming from, it came off as just more of Zane being Zane. Different place, different costar, different argument- same response, same behavior. That's very much a missed opportunity. This could have really brought all those details we've learned of his past into focus. Instead it got lost in the yelling.

I'd been warned about the overflow of Donna ass kissing so I was prepared. It didn't bother me though. This was earned IMO. Zane treated Donna like shit a few eps ago. I know he's her boss but he was still out of line in my book. He's a perfect example of it's not what you do, it's how you do it. She does her job and does it well, and she's not some worker bee ten rungs down the ladder from him. I don't care if they ever become friends or not but making up some ground in relationship building with her was both called for and just smart business for Zane. Similarly I was glad to see that Donna still seemed to be giving Harvey the cold shoulder at the end. I really wanted someone to remind him why that deal with David Fox was required in the first place. You don't get to blow something up while everyone around you begs you to stop then ask someone else to fix your mess, with express permission to do whatever it takes on your behalf, then throw a hissy fit because you don't like how the agreement affects you and thereby throw your negotiator under the bus. He was just ridiculous, and that's even without his asshole line about him giving Donna her job like he'd patted her on the head and bought her a pony. If that's really how he thinks of her and them professionally, that's a serious wrench in my book in whatever thing the writers have going with them.

Samantha and Donna are really clicking for me as friends and not in a 'Rachel replacement' way either. I never really understood what Donna and Rachel had in common other than proximity. These two amuse me though. As the granddaughter of a woman who literally has an entire closet full of gifts still in the gift bags, when Samantha said she was going to give the books to Robert again as a retirement gift I laughed out loud.

It was nice to see Louis' sister again, which surprises me to say. Louis and Sheila are so caught up in themselves all the time that it didn't surprise me at all that they never discussed religion for their child. I'm fully expecting a version of this every episode. I'll deliver the baby! I don't even want you in the room! It's time for vaccinations! NEVER! Time for the Easter bunny! I will not lie! Want some candy? A speck of sugar will rot teeth! And so on. This was more enjoyable to me than most of their recent storylines however. From Louis' happy dance to how crushed and tentative Sheila was at the end, they hit the right tone and I felt for them. If I ignore Sheila at their celebration dinner I can even almost say I fully enjoyed them.

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On 8/31/2018 at 6:33 PM, dahling said:

A false positive with a pregnancy test is very unlikely. False negative is the most common wrong result.  A positive result followed by a "period" is an early miscarriage. Or Sheila was just lying. Or, the writers are dumb.  Also dumb, Louis and Sheila for never discussing something major like the child's religion in the months they have been actively trying. I don't know why I care. 

Thank you for pointing this out! It drives me nuts when shows try to tackle infertility or pregnancy issues and get it wrong. I’m going to put my money on dumb writers who didn’t do any research.

And yeah, it seems unlikely for someone like Louis, who has to talk about everything with everyone all the time, to have not mentioned religion before. Especially since they were previously engaged. It just doesn’t go with Louis’ character for it to not have been mentioned. 

Edited by ishcabibble
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