Suits review, season 7, episode 11: Hard Truths – A great screaming guilty pleasure and Markle is the best thing in it
"The wedding is going to be here before we know it," said Meghan Markle toward the end of returning New York legal romp Suits. She was referring to the impending nuptials of her character Rachel – a wise-beyond-her-years lawyer shortly to be hitched to the show's slick anti-hero Mike Ross (Patrick J Adams). But real life is also about to intrude on this cheerily cheesy workplace drama, with Markle departing – you may have heard about that other wedding she has up-and-coming – after the latest run of episodes.
Curious newcomers tuning in to see what Markle gets up to when not accompanying Prince Harry may have been slightly baffled. Suits, a huge hit for the USA network and for Netflix in the UK, is shallow and silly – we're very much in the Law and Order tradition of office-set soap opera – but there's a lots to keep track of. And though Rachel, a former "paralegal" lately promoted to full attorney, had a small but significant part in the instalment, the bulk of the action revolved around departing senior partner Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres) and the firm's fight to give her the payoff she deserved following her disbarment for covering up Mike's dirty secret (he originally faked his way in without any qualifications).
A screwball caper with bells on played out as head honcho attorney Harvey Spector (Gabriel Macht, with even better hair than Markle) plotted to do right by Pearson. That required the sign-off from mercurial former partner Stanley Gordon – and was complicated by romantic tension between Harvey and his legal secretary-turned-chief operations officer Donna (Sarah Rafferty), who had planted a smacker on him in the mid-season finale (girlfriend Paula, played by British actress Christina Cole, was not chuffed to find out).
Amid the sign-posted storyline and lumbering dialogue ("if we can't tell each other the hard truths then what are we doing?") Markle stood out, with her earnest delivery and emotive glances (her bright, expressive gaze is perfect for this sort of broad affair). She isn't given much to work with in Rachel – a heart-of-gold litigator unobtrusively smarter than everyone around her. But she was a driving force in the hour's strongest storyline, as she and Mike outsmarted a corrupt shipping company deliberately allowing grocery consignments spoil (or something – the plot didn't make much sense and existed simply to underline Rachel's acumen).
Suits is a great screaming guilty pleasure and it isn't a huge compliment to describe Markle as the best thing in it. But that she is and fans will miss her when – in a twist yet to be unveiled on screen – she departs for adventures new at the end of the season.
Suits season seven episode 11 will debut on Netflix tomorrow (Friday)