Get Litt Up with Suits

If Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) is a regal, enigmatic legal eagle, his business partner Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman) is a legal weasel – cunning, duplicitous, deadly and able to take down prey several times his size. Yet he’s weirdly cute for such a bloodthirsty little monster.

So, while much of the buzz in Season 7 of Suits revolves around Harvey taking charge since big boss Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres) left the firm, Donna’s (Sarah Rafferty) quest to become a partner, and Mike (Patrick J Adams) and Rachel (Meghan Markle) getting married (because Meghan was off to become a real-life princess), we can’t let that overshadow Louis. He will settle for nothing less than our undivided attention.

Back to bullying

Unlike Harvey, Louis has a professional therapist, Dr Lipschitz (Ray Proscia), who isn’t into dating his clients and actually offers useful and necessary support instead. Boy does he have his work cut out for him this season. After being dumped via voicemail by Tara (Carly Pope) in the season 6 finale because she didn’t want kids, Louis is more viciously bullying than usual with Stephanie (Nitya Vidyasagar), one of the new associates. When she points out that they can’t book personal time a year in advance because babies happen kind of unpredictably, Louis snaps back, “Stephanie, maybe you don’t know how babies are made, because when people are trying, they know they’re trying. And just because no one ever wants to try with you doesn’t give you the right to tell me how to run my associates.” That is going to come back and bite him in later episodes.

Making frienemies

Louis not only has to process losing the chance of love, marriage and fatherhood, he’s also wrestling with his love-hate relationship with Harvey this season as Harvey seems poised to hand his buddy Alex (Dulé Hill) a partnership in episode 2 – something Louis had to fight and plot and backstab to get for himself (which we’ll get to see in detail during an episode-long flashback exploration of the origins of Louis and Harvey’s love-hate feud in episode 7). In episode 3, Louis has a nightmare about Harvey agreeing to go take a mud bath with him, only for Alex to interrupt them – and take Louis’ mud bath for himself. Dr Lipschitz recommends that Louis focus on friendship rather than potential rivalry though. But, just wait ’til Louis finds out that Alex is a fellow cat lover.

Sazs attack

It’s one step forward, one step back for Louis. In episode 8, Suits’ 100th episode, a hiccup in the associates programme brings Louis right back to former flame Sheila Sazs (Rachael Harris), who offers him a night of passion, leading to a hilarious Game of Thrones-style walk of shame and an intense discussion with Dr Lipschitz. Sheila will pop up again with more issues in episode 12 when she sexually assaults Louis during a mud bath and tries to set up another dirty rendezvous where she can use him to cheat on her fiancé. It’s a springboard for Louis to discuss the origins of his lifelong pattern of romantic rejection and humiliation with Dr Lipschitz, and in a flashback to 1986 we will see how Louis’s first love went disastrously wrong.

Essential Louis Litt

These are some of our favourite Louis Litt moments from seasons past.

Season 2 episode 3. Harvey tells Louis, “Louis, you the man!” which he captures on his ever-present recording device. This is also an amazing episode for watching Louis open the associates’ eyes about exactly what he’s doing to educate them.

Season 2 episode 6. Louis’s war against hapless associate Harold Gunderson is epic, but nothing shines like the moment in which Louis mounts a passionate defence of the art of ballet. “It embodies our emotions, it’s breath-taking in its beauty, and most importantly, it expresses what cannot be put into words.” The cherry on the top? Louis quietly practicing ballet positions in his office.

Season 2 episode 7. Louis gets vicious when cross-examining Donna during a mock trial, but afterwards in the bathroom he confronts Harvey with real hurt and anger about putting him in that position and forcing him to publicly tear Donna apart.

Season 2 episode 13. For sheer, smug glee there are few scenes to beat the moment in which Louis replaces the documentation in Katrina’s folder with images of himself photoshopped to look like different American presidents.

Season 3 episode 5. Louis keeps a photo of his beloved cat Bruno on his desk after Bruno’s death in season 2 episode 5. But it’s love at first sight when he meets Mikado, Nigel Nesbitt’s cat.

Season 4 episode 10. Louis confronts Jessica and Donna about being his friends but still lying to his face about Mike’s qualifications. It brings out all of Louis’s fears that his closest friends are laughing at him behind his back.

Season 5 episode 8. Mike and Louis get deeply nerdy over Game of Thrones references and exactly who each of them would be in the story. Louis tells Mike, “How dare you defy Game of Thrones by comparing Harvey to Jon Snow.” And justifies his latest weaselling by claiming that “it was for the good of the Watch”.

Seasons 1-8 of Suits are available to binge on Showmax.

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