Here is a list of descriptions that are not usually compliments for television shows: “Slightly silly.” “Middlebrow.” “Not a great show by any means.” “A show I enjoyed 10 years ago but mostly forgot about.” “Watchable.”
Is it ever. This summer, the watchability of Suits, the erstwhile USA Network legal drama that recently hit Netflix, has been measured in the billions of minutes—as in 18 billion streaming minutes consumed just in July. Just months ago, my awareness of the series was limited to the fact that it was the pop culture origin of one Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex; since Suits first appeared on Netflix June 17, I have plowed through some 2,800 minutes of it, dedicating on average a little under an hour of summertime sunshine a day instead to the goings-on at a fictional New York law firm. I have been, as they say, “Litt up.”
What is Suits, exactly? The series follows Mike Ross, a brilliant college dropout—he was selling marijuana, for shame!—who poses as a lawyer at a white-shoe firm in New York City, a piece of treachery that viewers are repeatedly informed is illegal (for shame!) and immoral (he says that he went to Harvard when he did not go to Harvard, for shame!). At the firm, he meets a coterie of law-adjacent characters that includes, yes, Markle, who plays the paralegal Rachel Zane and generally does a lot of things that are enjoyable to imagine being gently described to the royal family.
(See: “I’m not wearing any underwear.” For the record, the simplest public accounting of Markle’s Suits-to-Sussex journey centers on Violet von Westenholz, the public relations director at Ralph Lauren who organized a Suits publicity day in London that Markle attended in 2016. Westenholz also posted a video with Markle around the same time, which was spotted by the Supreme Governor of the Church of England’s second son, who, to dabble in the First Amendment, hollered, leading to a date, a marriage, a fractious and extremely public familial split, a Montecito mansion, etc.—and an exit from Suits.)
But Suits is so much more than a legal drama, for the simple reason that it is perfectly, dazzlingly fine. I have spent whole sleepy afternoons sprawled on my couch, Suits humming cicada-like in the background. “Should we watch something else?” my husband or I will say. And then—well, why not—the next episode is already starting to play, its earworm theme song crooning the preposterous words “greenback boogie” in a tune that came to haunt even the show’s cast. What can you do? I have developed strong opinions about three-piece suits (no), Scottie (deserves better), and, most regrettably, my taste in indie rock music from the aughts (disastrously mainstream, if the show’s needle drops are any indication). Donna is my best friend, and I have come to expect the sudden appearance of beloved character actors: Justified’s Wynn Duffy and Quarles both appear, while a major arc turns on David Costabile; Markle-as-Zane’s father is played—improbably, sensationally—by Wendell Pierce. “That guy!” you will shout at your television. “He is definitely in something!” You will be right.
Suits, in short, asks very little of you. It is plentiful enough—nine seasons comprising 134 45-minute episodes—to render binge remorse irrelevant: Why savor it if you have such a bounty? And, with a case-of-the-week format that mostly leaves its characters back where they started in each episode, you can find yourself drowsing through an episode and awaking in the next to find nothing particularly changed.
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I say this because, well, I have. I have slept through it on my couch, in my bed, and sunburnt in hotel rooms (multiple). I have washed dishes and become Queen Bee while watching it. One recent evening, my husband walked in from a three-day work trip, slumped onto the couch beside me, and wordlessly put on Suits. It is the first show I can remember watching where neither of us pauses when the other gets up to use the bathroom. There is no guilt with Suits. It is your living room’s—or your hotel room’s—glue guy.
Many have wondered this summer: Why is everybody watching Suits? (See: my colleagues Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald.) The explanations have been myriad: Viewers run down by the glut of the peak TV era seek nostalgia and the lengthy seasons of yore; Netflix possibly tipped the scales by heavily promoting the series, which had failed to take off on other platforms like Peacock and Amazon Prime Video (where its ninth and final season still exclusively resides); morbid curiosity from even the most mildly royalty-intrigued about how the whole Duchess of Sussex thing actually happened. Together, these explanations yielded a frenzy, with various seasons of the show sitting in Netflix’s U.S. top 10 for nine straight weeks and counting.
I posit something else: Suits is a vibe, and the vibe is relax.
