Donna Gets Litt Up, But Will Louis Regret Burning Their Friendship?

In three and a half seasons, Suits has well established that Louis Litt is the last person anyone would want as an enemy. He's smart, resourceful, and exhales spite as effortlessly as the rest of us do CO₂. So when the midseason finale had Louis confirming his suspicions about Mike's fraudulent credentials, we knew the midseason premiere would put Louis on the warpath against everyone who had colluded to perpetuate the fraud and traded an (initially) accidental con artist like Mike for a valuable and legitimate asset like Louis -- though neither of those was, judging from Louis's actions in this latest episode, as offensive to him as was their not including him in their deception. Bearing the brunt of Louis's fury? Donna. And Louis may come to regret making her the stand-in for all who've wronged him.

As I wrote when the show left off before, one of the things the first half of Season 4 did so well was flesh out Louis as a character as opposed to Harvey's punching bag, proving that Louis could still be Harvey's opposite in nearly every way and still be a character we could root for -- and, for this commentator, root for over Harvey, a smug, fratty dick who, if he turned out to have Ted Bundyish proclivities, probably wouldn't surprise anyone. Now we know that increasing Louis's stature was the setup for his crash at the season midpoint, the better to maximize the impact as Louis now attacks each of his new foes in ways tailor-made to hurt them worst. If Jessica and Harvey undervalued him as a peer, he will repeatedly force them to acknowledge him publicly within the firm. If Mike has tried to build a career with non-existent credentials, Louis will prevent him from taking on anything but demeaning scut work commensurate with his legitimate skill level. If Rachel helps Mike through his punitive assignment, Louis will get back at Mike by giving voice to her worst insecurities and making her cry. If all of them try to ingratiate themselves to Louis in ways they never bothered to do before they had to, he'll call out the falsity of their friendly overtures. And when Donna appeals to Louis on the grounds of their friendship, he has no choice but to accuse her of having faked it.

We know Donna has been sincere in her friendship with Louis -- maybe not always, as in the early going of the series when he was more of a cartoon and she could get around his anti-Harvey assaults using her superior assistant/feminine wiles, but certainly when they bonded over her long-ago portrayal of Ophelia, as she reminds him this week. Surely even this Louis, if forced to swear to it, would have to admit he knows that what she's saying in that scene is true, but he's so deeply heartbroken that he can't admit it to her in the moment.

But it's their last scene together in the episode that's even more devastating, because it seems like they might be heading toward some kind of reconciliation. By this point, Louis has been outmaneuvered by Jessica, stripped of the leverage his knowledge of Mike's real status had conferred. His punishments of Rachel and Mike haven't pushed Mike any closer to quitting, nor made Louis feel any better. Even seeing his actual name on the actual wall has only made him happy for the most fleeting of moments.

When Donna attempts, again, to salvage their relationship, Louis has to be more receptive because the alternative is self-imposed solitary confinement: what's the point in achieving his dearest career ambition if the result is that he ends up surrounded by people who hate him for real? But the way Louis has interpreted Donna's crime against him suggests the basic misapprehension he's had all along: he thinks she owed him the truth about Mike because of her friendship with him, whereas she explains that she kept it secret because of her professional obligations to Harvey. In other words, Louis thought he had a connection with Donna that superseded the one she shares with Harvey -- and when he pushes his luck by asking her whether she and Harvey have ever slept together (to which she replies truthfully, a move Louis will almost certainly cause her to regret, eventually), I feel like he's still missing the point. Donna isn't loyal to Harvey because of the time they boned: it's because she's a fucking great assistant. None of her friendships can or ever will cause her to act against Harvey's interest, as Rachel or Jessica could tell Louis from personal experience. Louis can compete with Harvey on many fronts where he has a hope of prevailing; this really isn't one of them, and just because he was wrong about that doesn't mean he and Donna can't still get back to where they were. And he's going to have a very lonely life if they don't.