Having lost his partner on the inside, Mike moves to a hostile takeover of Gillis Industries. Harvey and Louis pull out all the stops to make sure they win this fight, and things take a personal turn. Meanwhile, Jessica and Jeff come face-to-face with Sean Cahill.

The SEC story just works so much better because it's an outside agency that is threatening the way of life of the workplace we have come to love for four years now. It's a justifiable threat as the lawyers have done some questionable motives in the past in order to come out on top. If it were the main story this year, it could have done a really great job with showcasing these people rallying together unlike any time before in order to keep this makeshift family together. They all have a ton of respect for each other. Instead it's largely a story for Jessica and Jeff to awkwardly flirt and work through. Harvey comes in from time to time but he's not actively working on this - even though it should be much more pressing business than the takeover of Gillis Industries. I'm not quite sure how Mike and his new job venture would have fit into that story but I'm sure it could have been done. Perhaps his investment banking firm could have been one of the Pearson Spector clients to get a subpoena from the SEC and then been approached to bad mouth the firm. That could have been an interesting moral quandary for Mike. Instead we get this hostile battle where no matter what people are going to get hurt and we are going to hate the tactics the various characters will do. So it all seems like one big missed opportunity for Suits.
But I gotta say that I'm really enjoying the casting this season. D.B. Woodside, Michael Gross and Brendan Hines have been interesting additions to the season so far. But "Leveraged" brings back Zeljko Ivanek as former U.S. attorney Eric Woodall as well as introduces two important new players in Neal McDonough's SEC prosecutor Sean Cahill and Eric Robert's businessman Charles Forstman. Those are all stellar actors for whom I'm hoping the show has big and important plans.
Some more thoughts:
- "Leveraged" was written by Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman and directed by Kevin Bray.
- I loved that Donna didn't just let Mike get away with the stunt he pulled in the last episode. However, I'm still uncertain with just how Donna-esque Mike's new assistant actually is.
- So, Rachel and Logan almost kissed which I didn't think was an earned moment at all. The show just wants him to get in the middle of the Rachel and Mike relationship. Actual feelings be damned!
- Lastly, Jessica ends up on Jeff's doorstep yet again. They had a nice back-and-forth throughout the hour but I don't think enough was done with the personal side of their relationship to realistically lead to her ending the hour in that position.