This article contains spoilers for the premiere of Suits LA.
For a show called Suits LA, the premiere episode of the new spinoff series, titled “Seven Times A Week and Twice On Sunday” spends a fair amount of time in New York. That’s because that’s where Ted Black (Stephen Amell) is from, but perhaps more importantly that’s where his father is from. And in a moment meant to be extremely serious but is, in fact, unintentionally hilarious, Amell’s character flies cross-country to, essentially, tell his dying dad to drop dead.
To jump back and give this a little bit of context, we’re told right at the top of the episode that back in 2010, Ted Black was a criminal attorney known for putting mob bosses behind bars. There are multiple flashbacks throughout the pilot as we slowly fill in the details of how Ted went from champion of the people to the callous center of the world he is in the present day, running a firm that deals almost exclusively in sports and entertainment law.
At least one of the reasons? Ted’s father, played by actor Matt Letscher, who is an otherwise nameless character.
It’s hard not to watch the pair […] while imagining that it’s simply the Green Arrow and the Reverse Flash having a moment
Here is where our troubles begin. Not only is Letscher a mere 11 years older than Amell – which is par for the course for actors in Hollywood, but usually with a male actor playing the son of an actress who is two years younger than him – they look essentially the same age. Then there’s the fact that, if you happen to be a fan of The CW’s Arrowverse, it’s hard not to watch the pair and their lack of age gap while imagining that it’s simply the Green Arrow and the Reverse Flash having a moment.
The Letscher casting is a symptom of what happens when you set a production in Vancouver, which Suits LA did (the show was moved to LA proper after the pilot): you end up with the same five actors from Vancouver in every single show. So while it’s pretty funny to see Oliver Queen tell Eobard Thawne that he’ll never be like him without having Arrowverse flashbacks, it’s mostly a mental bridge you can traverse if you want… Even if Letscher’s character was trying to lure Amell’s character to the dark side of the law. All we’d need is Ted shouting “You’ve failed this city” and we’d be right back in vintage CW circa 2015.
Casting and age aside, though, Amell’s Ted spends most of the present scenes in the episode with characters helpfully reminding him that his dad is dying back in New York. An 84-year-old actor named John Amos, played by none other than veteran actor John Amos, sits around the law offices demanding they get him an audition for, possibly, a Hpnotiq ad, despite them not being agents. It’s somewhat unclear (and even confusing for the characters on the show), but he is mostly there for a later scene where he provides advice to Ted about seeing his father and forgiving him before he dies.
Stephen Amell’s Ted Black in Suits LA“You created the dynamic you had with your father at work,” Amos says, noting that Ted treats fellow lawyer Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) the same way, to which Amell hilariously replies “Stuart isn’t my son, he’s my age,” which is funny because Amell is 43, McDermitt is 46, and as a reminder, Letscher is 54, so they’re all around the same age.
Amos’ capper, though, is that Amell needs to forgive his father to move on. “You’re not doing it for him, you’re doing it for yourself.”
And that clinches it. Convinced by Amos’ heartfelt plea (we never find out if he got that Hpnotiq audition), Amell takes the five-hour flight from Los Angeles to New York City, stops briefly by an old friend’s house, and then goes to see his father in his hospice bed. Letscher looks like he’s lost a bad fight in the Speed Force, and is asleep the entire scene, which consists of a monologue Amell delivers to his father’s dying body.
While there’s still more to be revealed (Ted’s father was convicted of something), he talks about how on the day Ted’s father was supposed to go away to jail, he let someone kill Ted’s brother, Eddie (Carson A. Egan) to save Ted’s life. The ultimate conclusion? Ted will “make it up to” his father in one, specific way: “You’re going to die alone.” And then Ted flies the five hours back to LA.
There’s so much to unpack here, not least of which is that Amell’s character is Ted, he keeps calling his brother Ed, and Ted’s father does not seem to have a character name other than “Ted’s father.” So it’s nearly impossible to follow this story because two characters have virtually the same name, and one has no name.
Second, Amell delivers this impassioned monologue while Letscher’s character is asleep the whole time and reacts in no way. So even after Amos told Ted that he needed to forgive his father, Ted flew five hours, told his sleeping father he was going to die alone, and then flew back another five hours. Hope you got a lot of money for that Hypnotiq ad, Amos, because it seems like your advice isn’t worth shit on Suits LA.
There’s one more detail here that makes the whole scene wildly hilarious: already in the episode, we’ve seen Eddie living at Ted’s house. Then in a flashback scene, Eddie is the same age, but Ted is a teenager, which seems to be a confusing artistic choice. But this scene reveals that Eddie is dead… In fact, at the end of the episode, it turns out that Ted has been hallucinating the ghost of his dead brother Eddie the entire time, a detail that in no way is clear from the action that’s come before, as well as the fact that otherwise, this show doesn’t seem to be about ghosts being real.
The issue is that on top of everything else (the general lack of age gap, Letscher taking a nice nap on set, the 10 hours of flight time for a one-minute monologue), there is no logical way to understand the emotional impact of what Ted is talking about because we’ve thus far been watching a Secret Ghost, who up until this point could also be immortal and/or a time traveler.
Amell, for his part, gives it his all – as he always does – putting his heart and soul into really laying into Letscher (and by extension, Amos’s advice). He’s certainly not to blame here for what is supposed to be the emotional turning point of the episode actually being one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments on TV this week. But maybe on the next episode of Suits LA, instead of traveling 10 hours by plane, Ted’s emotional catharsis could be more of an email.
