No, I’m not gonna explain what the show is. I’m not even going to link to the IMDB page. If you don’t watch the show, why the fuck would you bother with the thread? Anyhoo…
Lawyers: Harvey & Mike’s central scam believable? I have to show my licenses to get a job as an insurance producer, and those are a lot easier to get than a law degree. Wouldn’t the firm have wanted to see Mike’s credentials rather than just taking Harvey’s word?
Related to the above: Assuming Mike’s chicanery never goes any further than Harvey, Mike, Donna, & Jessica, will Mike ever be able to get a job anywhere else–say at the DA’s office, something Harvey took on for his professional advancement?
What do you imagine Harvey & Jessica’s bizarre pre-trial ritual to be?
Am I alone in thinking that Louis comes off as more sympathetic than not, more often than not?
Is the stylized dialogue charming or annoying?
You know, as it happens, I could only think of five questions. Ah well. I guess I’ll just link to a picture of Sarah Rafferty winking or something. Wait, that brings up a question. Donna: charming cutie or manipulative bitch?
I enjoy this show a lot, definitely the best on USA since Burn Notice started feeling old a while ago. And I think the second second has actually been a big leap forward in quality. There’s less focus on the case-of-the-week and more focus on the character dynamics and power struggle within the firm.
IANAL, but on other boards I visit, actual lawyers have stated that the show’s premise would be virtually impossible to pull off in real life. Checking and double-checking credentials is SOP, and once Jessica (the managing partner) found out about Mike, it would all be over. She would never risk the firm for some random associate, no matter how much her favorite employee liked him. There’s a serious chance of jail time for everyone involved, not to mention lawsuits out the wazoo.
They occasionally have to really stretch to justify Mike’s presence at Pearson Hardman, so I have to think that the writers know that letting Mike be a fake lawyer at yet another place would be a bridge too far.
You mean Harvey and Donna, right? Since we only knew that it involved a can opener, I used to think that it involved them opening a can labelled “whoop-ass” or something. But then they brought thumb tacks (?) into it recently, and now I’m at a loss.
I don’t know if Louis is more sympathetic than not; he really does act like a total dick a lot of the time. But I do think he’s his own worst enemy, and he genuinely doesn’t seem to understand that by acting like a dick, he’s only hurting himself, even though he really wants people to like him. I think there is something unfortunate about people with that kind of personality.
I absolutely love the dialogue, and the cast pulls it off with total panache. I’m a sucker for good dialogue, and it’s probably my favorite thing about the show.
The premise of the show is probably it’s weakest point, which is why I’m happy that they seem to be spending less time on it in the second season.
Regarding Louis, probably my favorite part about the show, is that most of the characters are fairly unsympathetic. I’m tired of lawyer shows where the protagonists are always defending the little guys and are super ethical (except when it’s fun). But everyone on the show backstabs and cheats and are willing to pound someone into the ground if necessary. So Louis is pretty unsympathetic, but he’s had some redeeming moments (like after the mock trial a couple episodes ago.)
As I understand it (and I could be wrong), you don’t need a law degree to take the bar exam. Mike has taken the bar (in someone else’s name) and could and maybe has taken it in his own. Of course he’d pass. So if he’s passed the bar in his own name, even if there was the Harvard lie, couldn’t he be a lawyer?
You need a law degree (JD) to sit for the bar exam in all but seven states. These states will allow someone to take the exam after studying and working (called “reading the law”) for a required period of time under the supervision of a judge or licensed attorney.
But since New York isn’t one of those states, Mike would have had to get a law degree before sitting for the bar in his own name.
New York does allow reading the law, but the person has to have at least one year of law school under his/her belt before taking the exam. So Mike is still out of luck.
Agreed. This is the sort of thing that needs to stay in the background. That along with last season’s focus on his inability to handle simple lawyerly tasks. He can’t figure out how to fill out forms? Ugh.
Louis was setup to be an unsympathetic jerk, and now he’s a sympathetic jerk. I’m very glad that he isn’t some sort of comic relief punching bag, he’s a skilled lawyer that gets jabbed by Harvey because of his poor interpersonal skills.
Can’t Donna be a Charming Cutie and a Manipulative Bitch? Why limit her?
I’m with you there, especially as the premise is simply unnecessary. They could just as easily have Mike be a graduate of some no-name law school who impressed Harvey with his brilliance.
That’s my thought too. Not only that, some states allow you to take the bar exam w/o law school. Why not fly Mike to one of those states, just so he can at least be a real lawyer?
As I pointed out earlier, in those states, you have to study and work under a licensed attorney or a judge (called “reading the law”) for a certain period of time before taking the bar. So Mike still wouldn’t be qualified to take the bar. And even if he took the exam now, after working with Harvey for about a year, the bar association could still find out that he’s presented himself as an attorney and tried cases in court, which they probably would not be thrilled to hear.
Because then he won’t be working for Pearson Hardman, obviously. Patrick J. Adams is second billed in the series, not first. While he and Gabriel Macht are sharing the lead, the series is easier to imagine without Mike than without Harvey.
ETA: Anyway, it’s my impression that the hacker from the (much inferior) first season created fake files showing that he’d passed the bar (under his own name) and attended Harvard Law. Honestly, they should just quietly drop the fake lawyer thing. Mike, Harvey, & Jessica are all better off never mentioning it again. That includes Jessica paying Mike bonuses like a regular associate.
Not quite. All the senior partners are required to hire and mentor an associate. But all first-year associates are overseen by Louis, no matter which partner they are studying under. Thus even though Mike was hired by Harvey and Harvey is the one who could directly and arbitrarily fire him, he, Mike, also reports to Louis. This was made clear in the first few episodes, when Harvey considered firing Mike to save his own ass, and also when Louis tried to force Mike to take a drug test just to be a dick.
Possibly but not necessarily. It may have been that Mike had been saving up for that apartment for months but was counting on the bonus to take him over the top.
Skald the Rhymer - I know that Mike technically works for Louis, but I think it’s pretty well established that Mike is Harvey’s possession. If Louis really wants him, he goes to Harvey and asks. Harvey would cement that bond by personally giving Mike his bonus check, like he gave Mike his old suits in the first season.
If [del]Zoe [/del] Jessica really had a problem with Mike not really being a lawyer, she’d’ve canned his butt. If she’ll fire Donna, who Harvey worships, she wouldn’t think twice about booting Mike. Yeah, she complained about it and blustered, but she sees Harvey in Mike (and who couldn’t?) and she wants him there.
Um, that’s what I said. But not quite. He works for both of them, though primarily for Harvey.
:: shrugs ::
If I recall aright, the reasoning for Jessica not firing Mike was that Harvey threatened to quit if she did. While I still don’t completely buy that (Harvey couldn’t have gone to work for anyone else, given the non-compete clause in the partners’ contracts), it was a reasonable way to brush the issue aside.
It’s really hard to believe that Harvey and now Jessica tolerate Mike pretending to be a lawyer, as that’s a huge offense. Mostly his skills seem to be in legal research, and he could just as easily do that stuff as a paralegal. So I agree that it’s best if they abandon the fake lawyer storyline. I also find laughable the idea that this firm only hires from Harvard Law, as there are other law schools at the same level (or higher, in the case of Yale).
It’s hard to believe in Jessica’s case, surely. Harvey’s a different story. The original concept was that he was an amoral rogue who cared only for Donna, Jessica, and himself (and mostly the latter). But they’ve moved toward emphasizing his odd sense of honor, which makes the essential lie of the premise problematic. It would be best I think to ditch Mike entirely and make the central myth-arc about the Harvey-Donna-Rachel love triangle.
Jessica didn’t decide to get rid of Mike because doing so would inevitably lead to the whole not-an-actual-lawyer secret coming out right when she was getting ready for a bruising fight with Hardman and couldn’t afford to have any egg on her face. It makes me wonder what she’s going to do with Mike once Hardman is out of the picture. She can be as merciless as anyone, but she also seems like the type of person who will scratch your back if you scratch hers. Mike’s willingness to side with her in her time of need might buy him a free pass. I wouldn’t mind if the whole not-an-actual-lawyer thing vanished, but they’ve clearly set it up so it will rear its ugly head at least once more when Mike, having finally gotten together with Rachel at some point in the future, admits it to her in a fit of honesty.
