
Pilot Pt. 1
Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast- 528 views
- 24 Sep 2024
This week, Patrick and Sarah are discussing the first thirty minutes of the Suits pilot episode. They dive into why they are making this podcast, their first impressions of each other, the things that distract Patrick when he's watching, Sarah's first-day jitters, why Donna is responsible for everything that happens on Suits, and more. Feel free to email us a voice memo of your questions about Suits at sidebarpodcast@siriusxm.com. We may use it on the show! Follow us on Instagram & TikTok - @suitssidebar
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Give me an S.
I'm doing a ta-da.
Give me a U. Give me an I. T, S.
I pulled a muscle. I pulled a muscle giving you the T. Hi. Hi. Hi, friend. How are you?
Do you want to introduce yourself?
No, I'm too excited. My tail is wagging so much. I can't even speak, which doesn't really work in this medium.
First of all, let's actually introduce ourselves. Hi, I'm Patrick J. Adams. I played Mike Ross on the show Suits.
I'm Sarah Rafferty. I played Donna Paulson.
Sarah, can you tell us what the name of this podcast is that we're doing?
The name of this podcast is Sidebar.
What a great name. Love Why are we calling it Sidebar?
We are doing Sidebar, specifically inviting our listeners into Sidebar with us. But in the courtroom, it's something that's out of earshot. We're in earshot.
That's what it means in a courtroom is I want to do this not for other people to hear.
Where the jury can't hear you.
And yet we're doing it for the entire world.
Well, we would like everybody to join us. We're like, Hey, let's tuck over here all together.
We're having a Sidebar with the world.
Yeah. It's like a group hug. It's like a huddle.
I mean, that's what a podcast is, isn't it? To be more quiet, away from the maddening crowd. So welcome to Sidebar. This is our Suits Watch podcast. A watch podcast because we've never watched this show. We want to. I'm scared to, but I'm also excited to with you.
Yes, I think since we're doing it together and since we're doing it with our listeners, it's a safe space.
This is a safe space.
Do we need a safety worship?
Until we read any internet comments whatsoever, wherever. And then it becomes not a safe space. Keep it to yourself, Internet.
You know what? That's what we have our friends for. We have Kimi Cassi and Kristen, who will read those things and then tell us only the good ones. And gently steer us.
Actors protected from the world's opinion. I love it.
Anyway, I'm so excited to be here with you, Patrick. Me, too. To sidebar our way through 134 episodes.
It's daunting. Of suits. Looking up that mountain right now. Yeah.
Right? Well, it forces us to be present to each one. It's a good exercise.
Yeah. Take our time. One step at a time. One day at a time. One episode at a time.
Why did you decide to do a podcast? What made you come up with this idea?
If you want to know the truth, well, this was a thing. This is a thing. These rewatch podcasts.
This isn't the first one?
We're not breaking new ground here. I thought you made it up. It turns out we are not pioneers because I have avoided for so long watching suits. I'm one of those actors. I think we share this, which is if I've just directly worked on something or shot it, I can't watch it right away. I just couldn't do it. It puts me in a spiral. I've avoided this thing that was ultimately the largest job I've ever had in my entire life. It's changed the direction of my life and my career in every way, and I've just avoided it. I did notice I had caught clips of it online. That was a big thing that was starting to happen on the old TikTok, which was, I think, responsible for this renaissance that we'll talk about in a second. But I noticed that when it came on, I was suddenly able to watch it and be like, Oh, my God. That was a really remarkable thing that happened.
You could look at the younger you with kinder eyes? Yeah.
You know that thing when someone takes a picture of you and you look at it right away? Do I. You're just like, I can't believe that's what I look like. Then you could look at that same photo in two or three weeks, even maybe longer. Maybe for me, it's a year. Two or three years. You can look at it and go, Why am I being so unkind to myself? I look great. I think that's the same thing that started happening with suits. And so I got excited about the idea. I'm still nervous to do this, but ultimately, it felt like an amazing opportunity to get to the bottom of what this whole experience was for me and what's clearly captured the attention of the entire planet. What about you?
I think one of the reasons why I'm excited to do this is that this was also just a wild privilege, just an amazing thing that happened to all of us. I didn't have time while we were doing it to be present. I didn't have the skills. I'm not saying I have the skills now, but I didn't have time to be really present due to the madness of it all. I feel like, well, now, if I want to feel the depth of gratitude, the place to do it is in connection with you and hopefully with Aaron and the directors that come on and our cast mates and the fans and the people who watched it and made it so that we could do what we love. To be able to actually connect with them in a real, meaningful way, I feel like this might be a great route.
I think that's a great way to put it, the gratitude. I love that. I'm so happy to be here with you.
I'm so happy to be here with you.
Are you ready? Should we do this? You want to talk about suits?
Should we do this?
Let's talk suits. Okay.
Tell me stuff.
Can I tell you things? Yes. The pilot, the pilot, aired on June 23rd, 2011.
That was my wedding anniversary. Thank you so much. Is it really? Yes.
Wow. Look at this. Fun facts already right from the beginning. Aired on USA Network. Who are some of the heavy hitters of the cast. We got Gabriel Mock as Harvey Specter.
We have you.
We have Patrick J. Adams as Mike Ross. We have Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt. We have Sarah Rafferty as Donna Paulson. We have Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson, and of course, Megan Markle as Rachel Zane, among many other cast members.
We have the best guest cast and recurring cast in the world.
We can't wait to bring them onto this show and talk to all of them. Let's talk about what we're actually going to be doing week to week here.
Well, we're going to watch the episode every week, right? Wait, what?
Hard, no. Yes, we are going to watch the episode every single week, and we are going to come in here ready to talk about it, armed to the teeth with not only our opinions and our ideas and our questions and our memories, but also our friend Kristen here, and our amazing producers here at Sirius are going to help us with facts from the week. We're going to have guests.
We're going to talk to all of our collaborators.
We're going to have as many collaborators.
In front of the camera and from behind.
We're going to have everybody on the show as much as possible.
We really can't wait to speak to our viewers.
And maybe answer some of their questions. Yes. We really hope you come with us on this journey, and we're excited to see where it takes us. Let's get a fan question. I know it's so early, but We're organized here.
Well, that's what we're here to do. We really want to engage with our listeners.
I have a question from Kiana. What was your first impression of each other? I love you guys so much, and Sarah is a literal goddess. Taylor, Anissa, Jamie, and Agatha also asked about first impressions of each other. We've got a lot of questions about first impressions. What do you got for me?
Hi, ladies. Thank you for sending us your question. I think my most vivid memory in New York, outside of the trailers, I remember Rick was there, and I remember going, Oh, my God, that guy. Oh, I know that guy.
Where do I know that guy from? Did you know his work?
I was like, That guy. He's so good. Then I was a little intimidating. Wait. You were intimidating. I'm so intimidating. I laid eyes on Rick and I was so intimidated because I was like, Oh, him. Oh, my God. I'm going to be in a thing with that guy.
Interesting. I didn't know Rick Hoffman, and then I got intimidated when we started working together I was like, Oh, this guy's on a whole different wave of length.
Yeah. He was so friendly because I think I had seen him on that Wall Street show or the- The street. The street.
Remember, he used to talk about all the time. When I was on the street- And I think he was a jerk on that show.
I think he was playing his jerk. I think so. I think when I met him, I was like, Oh, my God, he's so nice. He has such a warm smile. He's so funny. Gina was there. I was crossing the street with her, and I was just like, She's a goddess.
You all felt like that to me. Because I was the young one. I was the kid. That goddess vibe you just described, which is very much a… Gina Torres. Gina description, but it truly was all of you. You were all Titans. You were like the older people. You were the seniors, and I was the freshman. That's what it felt like.
I would like you to always refer to me as a senior.
Yeah, you're just a different senior now. We're going to help you to your car, so don't worry about it. Okay, so that's your impression impression of Gina and everybody else. What was your first impression of me? I mean, not that I want to talk about myself or anything.
I don't remember you.
Standard.
I don't remember you.
You know who I am now, right? I don't. Can we get her some water? Sorry.
My first impression of you was how hard you were working. Not efforting. Was your focus, your presence, your joy, and your gameness. There were just some blips because basically, I did the whole scene at the Waldorf in the hotel room. You just came in for a second before Donna winks and unkeeps the gate.
You had a bunch of other moments.
I had other things to do. I had that quick bit with you there. Then there's the very quick moment when Harvey tells you to go get some suits, and I'm there. It's late. We're going to get to it pretty soon, but it's later in the season where we have our first scene together, and I remember it really well. I remember being really excited. I'm excited to get there. Listener, I hope you'll hang with us till we get to the first real Donna Mike scene. Here we are. Wait, your impressions.
I told you. I get to get this similar-Beautiful.
That I was like, hot.
Stunning. I was like, Oh, my God, how am I going to work under these conditions?
Yeah. Okay, well, enough of that silliness. We are going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we're going to talk about the pilot episode.
Okay, we're hydrated, we're medicated, we're educated. Let's get into it. Our first segment to describe the episode, I think we're calling The Brief because we're clever and we're using legal words on our podcast. This is The Brief. Today, we're going to break down part one of the very first episode of Suits titled Pilot. Imagine that. Great title. This episode was written by Erin Korsch and directed by Kevin Bray, and it originally Tired on June 23, 2011.
In this episode, Brilliant Young College dropout Mike Ross slips into a job interview with one of New York City's best legal closers, Harvey Specter. Tired of cookie cutter law school grads, Harvey hires Mike on the spot after recognizing his raw talent and his photographic memory.
It is pretty raw talent, I got to admit. This pilot was shot September 29th to October 23, 2010, which is interesting to see. That was a long shoot for a pilot. We were remembering it, but that's almost a month. By my math, I'm an actor, but when I'm looking at those dates, I'm seeing almost a month, which, listener, is rare for a pilot. You usually get, what, 10 days, 14 days, top?
Well, yes, but that's because our pilot was especially long. Yeah.
Any 50,000-foot view impressions of this episode? What it was like? What it was like to watch it? Yes.
I want to hear what it was like for you. I know for me, Patrick, I thought that I was going to sit down with this time-lapse, with this many years going by, that I was going to sit down and be able to just watch the episode all the way through. But immediately within the first few frames, I had to pause and I was going back and I was looking at it because I was so excited to see my friends. I was so distracted by how good everybody was and what it meant in everybody's life. It was like I was this proud mom of the baby versions of ourselves. I realized, even before there were actors in the frames, I realized that every frame is populated with somebody who's dear to us. It's like, Oh, my gosh, Kevin Brae shot that moment. That's so cool. Erin wrote that. I was really moved by the whole thing because this strange time warp of watching it is really doing a number on me. There's nothing that makes me more emotional than the passage of time. Watching this is like a fold in time. It's like both going into the past, but also being in the present.
And in a strange way, I almost feel like I have my future self there. I feel like, I don't know if you feel this way. Do you feel like we're all Russian dolls? Like all the versions of ourselves are packed away inside us? Maybe even some, this is going to sound really woo, but like, yeah, okay. Sorry. No, it's good. Maybe we're not ready to go for it yet.
Did you smoke pop before you came in here? You got your little, you took a gummy before you came in here.
I feel like it's a good time to start doing that.
Anyway. I hear, actually, no, I don't want to... I hear exactly what you're talking about. I had the same exact experience, and I think you described it really well, which is time folding in on itself. I thought that when I started watching this, that I would not remember things. I was worried. I was like, Oh, my God, I've agreed to do this podcast. But as soon as I started watching it, I was there. I am there. I don't remember all of it. I mean, obviously, years have gone by, and it was a long time ago, but something about watching it actually did feel very like it is happening to me now. I can put myself in these rooms. I can put myself back into the feelings of shooting some of these scenes and being with these people. I feel exactly the same way. It's the past, present. I don't know if my future self is in there yet, but maybe I'm just not stoned enough. I don't know. We'll find out. For me, while we have not, I have not watched most of this show, this episode I have watched. For me, this is the episode I have seen multiple times.
I'm super proud of this pilot. I think this was a great pilot, and I think that's why. I think it is a great episode of television, and watching it now all these years later, I think it's still great. I think it holds up, and it's not a surprise to me that Suits is enjoying this second life, and hopefully third, and fourth, and fifth life, and will continue to be a show that people come back to because there is a timeless quality and excellence to this pilot. I think it's just done so well. I think I can see everybody working so hard. I can see everybody bringing their A game in front of behind the camera. I just see a lot of love and passion, and that is really hard to do. I mean, we've both done a lot of pilots, and it's so easy for them to go wrong, as they often do. I think the fact that this is as good as it is, and I still enjoy it, is such a great representation of so many people working so hard and caring about it. Yeah.
We were also not tired. We looked so not tired.
What was that like? I had Kiki, the firm's best researcher, pull up a couple of reviews.
Oh, dear.
We're not supposed to look at reviews. I think it's fun given that here we are at the end, not at the end, but 15 years later, and Suits has been what it is and continues to be what it is. I think it's fun to go back to the reviews of the pilot. La Times critic Robert Lloyd called Suits Impressive Out of the Gate. Kelly West of Cinema Blend says, Suits fits USA like a glove. The characters are fun, surprising, and intriguing, and the writing is smart and consistent. The New York Times, Gina Belafonte says, Suits carries the banner of populism and wears the wardrobe of the elites. Oh. Love the New York Times. They brought it. This is the one I wanted to read. This one's good. Robert Bianco at USA Today wrote, It's not dark, mind you. That's something the Blue Sky Network is yet ready to embrace, but it does count as partly cloudy. Unfortunately, it also counts as ludicrous, ill Passed and ill-conceived with a premise that's idiotic, even in a medium used to skimming past idiotic premises. Robert, we're going to send you some flowers. Anyway, I thought that was fun.
I think it's really interesting to me when the issue that's taken is with the premise, because why are we saying that series television or cable television from the early 2010s is trying to be realistic?
I guess, what does he mean by ludicrous? I think people would find the concept of anyone being able to fake out such a major thing, right?
Yeah, but Marvel movies are a ludicrous premise.
Oh, yeah. We ask people to suspend I understand. Disbelief all the time. I think it's just an easy way to say, I don't like something. You don't like something, then you're just going to say, Well, the premise is bad. That's why I don't like it. But it's like, You just don't like it. That's okay. Anyway, let's dive into this episode. Act 1. In the first act, we meet Harvey Specter, star lawyer at Pearson Hardman, and we see him get a promotion. We also meet Mike Ross, who agrees to deliver drugs in exchange for the cash to pay for his Grammys care.
Okay, can we talk about this, Patrick? I know we're going to talk about this opening sequence more extensively with Aaron, but first of all, I was really surprised to learn that these particular images are not exactly on the first pages of the script.
No, I think the first scene of the script is actually Mike in the LSAT.
It's this first intro is flip-flops. What was really interesting for me to find out is that in our case, these first images of a TV series haven't necessarily been agonized over and written and rewritten and white-knuckled, but rather they're emerging while we were shooting it, and they were discovered in collaboration because that idea to switch something that came later to the beginning so that Kevin, the way he pans down the building, then he zooms in. We discover Louis. Louis goes slow motion from the conference room down the hall to Jessica. Then we rise up from behind Jessica. We see Louis come in. They have an almost wordless scene, and we're off. I just thought that that whole thing was so incredible. Now that I look back on it, knowing Kevin the way I know him, he does work so organically. He finds something. It's like a dance.
I remember that... I'm not obviously in this whole sequence, but we were shooting shooting that night, some other scene. That shot across to the building was figured out in real-time. That wasn't planned. He was, I believe, standing in that conference room at night shooting the scene, and he went, Someone go to that building over there and shoot this.
How did they get up into the building and do that?
I think they literally sent a camera crew over. I don't even think it was with the real camera because I don't think we had more than one. Again, we'll have to ask Kevin this. I might be making it up, but I seem to remember it was like, Go take a Canon 5D. Oh, wow. And go over to that building and go talk to someone and get up and find out if you can get into a window shooting this way. It was that random. That's so Kevin. It was that guerrilla moment, which I remember watching it happen and thinking, That's cool. We've got the right team of people here. To see it as the first shot is great for me just knowing that because it establishes like, Oh, this was a show where we were right from the beginning running and gunning, and we were making things up as we went along. It's the thing we never got to do with the rest of the show because it's a practical set. We are actually in a conference room, dozens of stories up in the air in Manhattan. For the rest of the show, we're on a set.
We are never actually shooting in a real conference room at Pearson Hardman. That's Kevin being brilliant, going, All right, well, we're in New York. We probably won't be here again. Let's shoot this. If we're in this room, somebody go shoot it from a distance so we get all that production value of like, Here we are. It's like we own this building.
So incredible.
We had a great fan question from Christine. The episode opens with Louis lit. My question is, why do you think Louis was the first character that we get to meet? Which is a great question. Again, in the script, I think Mike was the first character that we met at the LSAT, and I can't speak for Aaron. I think it's something that was probably just discovered in the edit, though. I think it works really nicely, as you just pointed out, as you meet Louis, he introduces you to Jessica. So now we've got a power dynamic, and then Harvey is the third. Even though Jessica is in charge, Harvey is inherently our hero because he's the third to be introduced. It's a perfect setup to him. Oh, I love that. While everyone's at the office dealing with the problem, this guy's so cool that he could be at a poker game and being the one to get the call. I thought that was a good introduction to him. We're in the poker game. Harvey Specter is winning the poker game, obviously, and he leaves after receiving a text, summoning him to the office. I have some nits to pick in this scene.
Look, and here's the deal. I'm going to do this sometimes, and it's obnoxious, and you're just going to stare at me. This is not me saying there's anything wrong. I'm just this television viewer. For me to not bring that version of myself to this process would be dishonest.
Are you telling me that you and Robert Bianca are going to be friends?
Look, there's some things that I might see eye to eye with Robert about. In this case, Erin, don't be mad at me, but in this scene, this guy who's asking Harvey when he's going to come work for a man, time's up on that guy. He says he raises $5,000, but he only pushes 20 chips into pot. You do the math, that's a $250 chip. That's not a thing in poker. I don't know if I can do this whole watch suits thing, actually.
I think the shot looked pretty, though.
It looks great. That's the thing. This is just so you have it. You're going to have to bear with me because when I watch TV, that's the thing. I go, What? It's so dumb.
Fair. I hear you. You know what I mean? But I also want to talk about in those moments at that poker game, I love that we're introduced to the toxic masculinity of the world. You were like, time's up on that guy.
This is the first time I know it because I've watched it a few times, and I was like, Did he really just say, When are you going to come work for a man?
Aaron's going to make some great points about why he developed that world and how I think it's developed so well because I love how Harvey just isn't playing. He's not playing into the toxic masculinity at all. It's such a great effortless setup of this world from Aaron that there's this sexist bro moment, and Harvey isn't going to take the bait. He's just going to rise above it, and he's going to win the game, and he's going to walk out. It's great.
What do you got, Keke? The Netflix cut is much longer than what was originally aird. The line about that you were just repeating, that didn't happen. When you would have first seen the episode. It's on Netflix, but it would have been in the aird version.
Oh, so that time's up line didn't air originally. Yes.
But the toxic masculinity of which you describe is present.
I'm really glad it's in the new cut that's on Netflix. I loved it. Yeah, it's great.
It definitely tells the story of the world. Anyway, we're back in Jessica's office. She introduces Harvey, the firm's best closer to client, Gerald Tate. Harvey closes the deal, but his tactics are questionable. I also noticed in this time, there's this great moment where he does the thing with the memo and pulls it out, pretending it's a different document than it is. Then Jessica afterwards walks up to him and just takes it right out of Harvey's pocket. It's very intimate. When she's calling him on it, and it's like, genius. I just see, I've learned so much about these two people and their level of comfort with each other with such a small, tiny action.
And how long they've known each other. Yeah.
That we are that close and physical. I'm in charge of you, and I already know that that piece of paper is total nonsense, and I'm going to pull it out of your pocket to prove it to you.
And there's a further bracket on that moment and exclamation point on it because Harvey says, You're the blue team captain. You to wear a fire hat. He just has his Cheshar cat grin, and they just have so much fun with each other in this lip. It's so perfect. Then this is where we cut into the other world. We cut into a classroom where a Proctor recognizes and chases Mike Ross out of the room, and Mike is able to evade him.
I love this sequence. I'm trying to figure out why I've always loved this piece. It's because this is so not suits in in a weird great way. I've never felt more like, this is as close to being Jason Bourne as I may ever get, is playing scenes like this, ducking in and out, running from the guy, getting into the stall, changing the thing. It's not a thing we ever really do on suits after this. Not to say that it doesn't fit. It's a great setup of the world. But it's this sequence in the hotel sequence. Actually, we don't. This was the one and only time I ever feel like I did anything like that.
Well, I I was actually technically wondering about that because you just said that we took so long to shoot the pilot, not only because it was a longer episode, it was almost two episodes. But these are complicated things to shoot. I mean, you've got multiple sets to rush through, so it's going to take longer. I felt like we had a mini-movie in the world of Pearson Hardman, and then the music picks back up, and then we have a mini-movie inside Mike Ross's world, where he's taking the test, he turns in, he runs into the bathroom, he changes, there's the crowd scene, he gets lost in the crowd, he goes and gets paid. All that happens, and it happens so quickly. Isn't that just really time consuming?
It's a lot of scenes and a lot of setups.
Yeah, for little blips. They're cut together so well, and it just gives so much pace to the whole beginning of this thing.
Yeah, it really makes it move. Again, we're in practical sets again. Not that we weren't in practical sets when we shot Suits, we'd be out in the world and find locations. But a lot of times, things like this would be on a set that we built. It just has a different energy. Here we are in these places and running around. Whenever you see an apartment, it's a real apartment. We're moving around New York City and having to be pretty nimble as a production versus when you become sedentary and you're in a studio and you have your sets, it's a little more intentional and you can plan things. You're right. When you're shooting a pilot, you're like, We're here today, we're We're there tomorrow. We're here tomorrow. We got to get it here. We got to get everything here. We got to move pretty fast. We don't have the chance to come back here and do it again. You can feel that energy in the pilot. Mike shows up at his client's place, and we learn that Mike has been paid to take the exam on this guy's behalf. We get the impression this is probably not the first time Mike's done such a thing, and he walks away.
And he doesn't get all his money.
He doesn't get paid. Or Mike, he's looking for money in all the wrong places. Mike needs money is what we learn.
Then we see a cut to the title card, and it's time for us to take another break.
All right, welcome back. We're in Trevor's Apartment is where we are. Mike and Trevor, played by Tom Lepinsky, are smoking weed together, believe it or not. Trevor's girlfriend, Jenny, played by Vanessa Ray, arrives mid-conversation. We realized that she thinks her boyfriend writes code for a living. I love this scene because I love these two actors so much. I also just love getting to see Mike in his life before because Suits becomes about Suits. It becomes his new family. It's really fun and cool to see, A, these two actors who I just loved working with. And to remember this version of Mike's life, which is much more present in the first season than it is as we go on.
You guys had a lot of fun behind the scenes. You guys had a lot of play time in Toronto. I remember.
I remember you guys. Again, I didn't... You You guys are seniors, as we've already talked about. These were people my age at the time. In so, there was an immediate like, Oh, there's a thing that happens when you're all the same age and you're all in that zone of racing for the job and you're like, Am I going to be an actor? Does this get to work? So once Vanessa and Tom and I got into scenes together, there was just a fun understanding of how lucky we were, how good this material was, and how much fun it was to play.
You guys have a really special connection. I have to ask you, since have that amazing handshake at the end when you're saying goodbye, which one of you had the courage in the moment to say to the other, Hey, bro, can we make up a handshake with each other? I don't know.
It's a good question. I wish I remembered. I feel like I was full of my whole energy in this pilot was just like, All right, there's a little piece here. Let's do something with it.
Let's make it a nugget.
Let's make it more, and they'll cut it. If it doesn't work, then I just didn't want to leave anything off the field. Is that how that's saying? Off the field? I wanted to be on the field. I wanted to be on the bench, but not on the bench. I wanted to make sure- You wanted to leave it all on the dance floor. I wanted... That's it. I wanted to leave it all on the field, dance floor. There were things like this, which I was just, I think I probably would have said to Tom, what's our... If it said handshake, or it probably just says they say goodbye. But I wanted to really establish these relationships. For me, it's also the same as I kiss her on the way out.
With Both of your hands on her hair, either side of her head.
Which is such a like... I love that moment. Again, this is not me clapping myself on the back, but I love that moment because I'm like, Oh, again, I know these people know each other. They are so close that he can kiss his girlfriend on the way out the door, and it's normal. This is how these guys have been in it together. Or is it? Or, well, we'll find out later.
Anyway. Then we got to Jessica and Harvey, who are celebrating in a bar where Harvey hits on Lisa, played by Chloe Brooks, the waitress, Who turns him down?
A charging bull always looks at the red cape, not the man with the sword.
That's something that Jessica says?
No, that's something Harvey says. It's a real, it's a fire line. That's classic. Harvey coming at you.
Wholehog. How did you feel about this scene? What were your feels?
I find this a bit of a weird scene. I mean, look, it's great. I love seeing these two people together. I love seeing them celebrate a win. I like seeing Harvey be his debonair self. There's just a weird moment when he's sitting on this. Let's walk through what happens. Beautiful woman comes over, not asked to come over. How are you guys doing over here? It looks like you're having a good time. They have a nice rapport.
Wait, not asked to come over. She's the waitress.
She's not waved down, that's my point. She comes over.
But she's doing her job.
She's a waitress, but it's not like she volunteers in that moment to come over and be like, You guys seem like you're having a good time over here. She's friendly, and she's being a little dare I say flirty with our guy, Harvey. You're picking up on her flirt or no? Is that not real?
I was so distracted by what was going on with Jessica and Harvey, which is what I liked so much.
There's this weird moment where Harvey starts hitting on her, but he glances over at Jessica as if to say, Cool if I do this? And Jessica gives him a quick, You go ahead. I think she even maybe raises a glass to him or something. Maybe I'm making that part up. But it's a real go for it champ. And then he turns back and really lays on the charm and basically asks when she's done with work. And the whole moment, I was like, Huh?
Did he ask for permission?
Did he just get permissioned on her?
I hope that's what that was.
It's just enjoying this? What is this? What is this about?
The mystery is great.
But then also, strangely, she just like, again, maybe a credit to the show where it always goes in a direction you don't necessarily expect. But then this wager just turns on Harvey hard. Like 10 past, I'm never going out with you. I'm like, whoa.
What? And Gabriel has the best reaction as Harvey.
Yeah, it's perfect because he also knows how this is actually going to end. That's the look I get from him. Well, he looks back at Jessica. She goes, I guess you're not the best closer after all. And he looks back at her. And then we cut to him with her in the apartment. To me, I'm like, that was not the end of this interaction for Harvey. Okay.
I thought that Harvey was just like, Oh, egg in my face. Okay. But then he ends up with her. No, exactly. But I didn't know that moment was coming.
But you know it in the moment after when you see it.
I sure do. Okay, so then the next morning, Harvey admires the view from his apartment, and we see that Lisa decided to spend the night with him. It's a pretty apartment, huh?
Another insane apartment. Again, so fun to be on the practical sets. We obviously rebuilt Harvey's apartment as a set in Toronto when we ended up going there to shoot for the rest of the season. But to be there in this actual moment with the real thing and the doors open and him out on that view of New York City, at what time is it? Also, his apartment could use some curtains. It's very bright in there. I mean, it is a beautiful apartment, but nary a curtain.
I couldn't live there, not with my complexion.
Also, if you've had someone over and you leave all those blinds open, I mean, I'm presuming there have to be blinds. You're really telling that person they got to go. There's no letting that person sleep in. You are in a sauna. You are sunbathing in bed. Epic apartment, though. I don't remember the set, but it was a hotel. It wasn't an apartment. Oh, was? Yeah, it was the top of a hotel. Insane apartment.
Well, there's an amazing cut from that scene right to Mike visiting Grammy in her nursing home.
From Harvey about to eat breakfast off someone's stomach to Mike with Grammy in the nursing home, which is great. I mean, such a contrast between our two characters. This is where they're both coming from.
Perfectly. I have to say I'm really sad that I never really crossed paths in all the years with Rebecca Shull. She seemed amazing.
Such a sweetheart. Yeah, she was great. I I love the line in this scene, Dr. Schrager gave me her word, She wouldn't poison you until January. If she does it before then, she can't count it towards this year's quota.
Then we got to Louis and Harvey, who are meeting with Jessica in her office, where she informs Harvey that he'll need to hire an associate now because, surprise, he's being promoted to senior partner. I just want to shout out to Rick's entire posture in this entire scene. I mean, he's so transformed, and the fact that he actually moves really slowly and has this relaxed.
I think it's a masterclass, this scene, Rick. I have the same thing written down. I think he always makes the different choice. There's moments where you think he'd yell or get mad, and he plays it really small and menacing and hurt. He's like a wounded puppy, but then he'll just snap back. Then at the end, when Harvey finally says that thing about his- Harvey is such a jerk at the end.
He's such a jerk.
Instead of storming out, which, again, I'm reading it, I'm thinking, I'll storm out of here. I'm so pissed. He just slinks. Slinks is the perfect word. He slinks out of the room slowly. He's been here a thousand times before, and he's not going to give him the pleasure.
You know what I mean? He's holding on to his dignity, I guess, in a way, maybe. Yeah. Oh, he's so good.
I love this scene. I think this is up there for maybe one of my favorite scenes. Just seeing these three people together, how they work, the chemistry, the rhythm, their comfort with each other. Again, it is so hard to do this on a pilot. We don't know each other. We're just getting to know each other, and we have to establish this rapport right off the bat. And watching this scene and these three people, I'm like, Oh, that's it. I want to watch. I want to watch these people next week.
Absolutely.
Back at the nursing home, it seems like this are tough for me when it's a doctor's just like, I have to deliver to you the facts to make the case here. We'll cut this out if we want. I'm just saying it's you, my friend Sarah. Walking down a hall and a doctor's like, Give us 25K. I'm like, What? Do doctors ask for the Really?
How does this work?
Again, nitpicks.
She's the doctor?
She's not an administrator. You know how you know. She's got the stethoscope around her neck.
That's how I knew I was one once. Yeah.
Okay, I'm playing a doctor. What do we have? Oh, Stethoscope. All right. Well, not in the ears. What about around the neck? All right. Clipboard? Let's go. Give me 25K. Again, it's one of those silly things where we just need to get the information. But we We do learn that Mike needs to come up with 25K in order to keep Grammy in this home.
That forces Mike to decide to accept Trevor's offer to help with the drug deal. Yeah.
Then in our first scene with Donna Paulson, Harvey asks if his suit makes him look like a pimp. Yeah, a little bit, she says. Can you give us a reading on that? Yeah, a little bit. There it was. A little bit. Look at it. There, that's it. A little bit. This is our first time meeting Donna.
It is our first time meeting Donna. I just have to say that I loved Gabriel's reaction to the fact that she tells him that he does look a little bit like a pimp in his outfit.
Now, was that an improv line? Do we know? Have we looked at the script?
We did improv that line. You improv that line. It was supposed to just be played in a look. I do remember, I think I've told you this, that I remember being afraid every time I added something. Am I allowed? Am I going to get in trouble? Excuse me, sir, may I please try to add lines?
I always have that on sets all the time. There's always that first day where you're like, What set is this?
You don't know whether it's the perfect or whether it's the try stuff, whether it's like, Yeah, make it your own, or whether it's like, No, I wrote a specific thing, but this was... You felt the vibe that day.
How do you deal with it now? Now, I just ask. Day one, I'm like, What set are we? Can I say? Can you want me to play, or is this a word perfect environment?
Yeah, and I also ask if we can do things like keep rolling and reset ourselves. Are we the place where we can do that? Would you like to talk the night before? Would you like to talk the week before? If I have any notes on those kinds of things. I'm imagined, though, there are sets that I will go to where I'm like, I will just keep my mouth shut and show up.
Luckily, this wasn't one of those sets. It was pretty clear, I think, from the beginning, that especially because Aaron was on set for the pilot, it was like, Do whatever. Let's make it. The goal was to always make everything as funny as possible, where funny was the goal. You know what I mean? That was my memory of the pilot. It was like, whoever has the funniest... If you make us laugh at Video Village, then that's a win.
Yes, because we're in the discovery of who these characters are.
Yeah. And Aaron, to his credit, was like, I wrote it, but if you make me sound like an even better writer by making something even funnier, then let's go.
Then they began to write towards us later as we moved into it. Patrick, you want to hear a fun fact? I do want to hear a fun fact. For the first few episodes, all the way through the pilot, in the first few episodes, I was wearing fishnet stockings. Scandalous. Orange? Yeah. Okay, so let me ask you, what makes you say scandalous?
I don't know. I don't know anything about fishnet stockings, but I always assumed it's like a French Parisian woman of the night a thing. Tell me about fishnet stockings.
I don't know anything about it. I mean, there's a whole history to them. They became very popular in the '20s, the Roaring '20s with the showgirls and the flappers.
Hold on, I'm going to write this down.
Okay. Okay. Go on. I'm taking notes. See, ladies, the ladies wanted to be- Flappers.
Okay. No, go ahead. I'm genuinely curious.
And the flappers.
Is it a thing that someone would wear in an office?
Well, see, that's the thing that I thought was so interesting about our costume at the time, choosing them for Donna.
Are you using the word interesting? Like interesting?
Well, I think it's a choice. It's a bold choice.
Would anyone ever wear that in an office environment?
I think, well, all women have different relationships to their hosiery. But what was interesting to me... Look, Fishnets became popular and have that lady of the night vibe thing that you're saying, that sexy vibe, because they were open. They revealed more. In the '20s and '30s, Fishnets were like, Oh, you see more of the leg. It's not like an opaque thing. Then they became a really punk rock thing. It became very Courtney Love. It became very Madonna.
Donna has a bit of punk rock in It became...
So some people, I read a little bit about how they were embracing the male gaze, but also flipping the bird to the male gaze. It was a reclamation, an ownership of sensuality. When I saw, for a second, when I saw in that scene where you noticed that I was a little bit nervous, and I sat down and crossed my legs. I was like, Oh, right. I wore fish nets for a while. I had a whole drawer of fish nets. Originally, we were thinking that Donna had this, I don't know, was it a punk rock thing or was it a sensuality thing? What was he going for? I just remember being like, Oh, head scratcher. Oh, there they are.
Oh, you're looking. I'm looking right now. I'm pulling it up so I can see what babies we were.
We were so young. Such babies.
Yeah, I'm seeing the fish net. There we go. Zooming in.
I I mean, ultimately, when Jolie came on board, and then in the years later, Donna went in a different direction in terms of the elegance that she had. But this was just an interesting thing that I think we started with and moved away from.
I love the idea that Donna punches out at the end of the day and hits a punk bar. Never occurred to me, but totally makes sense. That she could either go to a Michelin Star restaurant and do that, but she's also going to catch a punk show and maybe smoke a couple of sneaky cigarettes and stay out late. Do you know what I mean? Just dangerous.
Basically, we go from this moment where we meet Donna for the first time. Harvey is psyched that he looks like a pimp. Then Trevor picks up the drugs for Mike to deliver, but he finds out that the whole deal might be a setup.
Fun fact from our researcher, this was the very first scene to be shot of suits. It was? First scene of the pilot. Shots in a, fun fact, a hot dog cart warehouse in Brooklyn, which is strangely fitting. We have hot dog carts.
We have hot dog carts. But do all the hot dog carts in all of New York have to go to that hot dog cart warehouse at night to go to sleep?
I'm imagining there's probably a few of them. There's probably many a hot dog cart warehouse.
It feels weird to me that I lived there for 12 years and I never noticed this.
There's a little underworld of hot dog infrastructure.
No, that there's going to be this whole moving of the hot dog carts at night, like a procession of hot dog carts going back to in our warehouses. I'm serious.
I wonder if they just keep the hot dogs in that water all night. Anyway, let's move into act two. Right from the beginning, Mike's picking up the briefcase full of weed at Trevor's apartment. When Jenny walks in, she adjusts his tie for his first day of work.
And we feel things.
I feel a lot. I really can't tell you enough, and hopefully we'll have her on the pot at some point. But Vanessa Ray is truly just a ray of sunlight. She was the best. So fun to play this part with her and to play this relationship and figure it out and find it. I think we knew from the beginning it was that Mike was on this new trajectory and she was a part of the past. That's a tricky thing to play in a pilot. You're like, Are we going to be a thing? Is this going to be a thing or is it not? Playing all that unsureness was great. I think she did such a beautiful job. In this scene, you feel them. I guess Kristen found out that there was a line cut at the end when Jenny said, Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you and I had met first?
Oh, Jenny says it.
She said it in the script, but we don't say it. It's perfect because you don't need to say it. You can feel it.
Because you showed it and you didn't tell it.
Yeah, I think you just feel it in the scene. Anyway, then we're in the New York Hotel Suite. Harvey's interviewing a line of Harvard graduates for his associate position, and Donna is helping him to find another Harvey. I had a question. Was this your first day of shooting? Did we discover that this was probably, I think, Kiki has confirmed that this was probably your first day shooting?
I think it was. It's one of the days that I have pictures on my phone from. Because Santu came to meet us. I think he was working nearby. He came. It was just funny to us that Santu was in his suit for work, and then Gabriel was in a suit. I think it Maybe it was the third time in our lives we'd ever seen Gabriel in a suit.
So annoying how good he looks in a suit for somebody who doesn't wear a suit. He looks terrific.
I took a picture of our chairs next to each other. Just like, Oh, we did a thing. In case it never went anywhere, I had Donna and Harvey chairs somewhere. Just to remember it.
I don't know if you like this. The reason I'm asking if it's your first day of shooting is because you said you're nervous before, and I've never seen it. But watching this this time, I went serious nervous. Just in the first shot, It's in the ones you get from the side and you go, I can't believe it's a hole. You have a deliver a hole. Like, Oh, so you wanted to be someone who's stuck up and has got his head up his butt. That one shot, I went, Oh, my friend Sarah is nervous.Oh.
My gosh.I could see it. I did the same exact thing.
You could feel it?
Oh, right away. That whole thing, actually, because it's all little bits cut together. I knew ultimately that I would just be shooting line by line without a scene to play. I remember I worked so hard on it because I was so nervous. I wanted to work on it so that I could let it go. I don't know about you, but I know for me, with the small part, it almost made me way more nervous to do it. It was like, I have to prepare extra hard with backstory, and it's going to be maybe I'm going to be just saying it to the wall, or maybe it's going to be rushed because they're not going to have time to figure it out. I was surprised. I was able to see it this time with a little bit of empathy for myself because when I think about where I was in my life, we've talked about this. I had done so many pilots. I had been a guest on so many things. All of that is ultimately really dysregulating. All the rejection, all the disappointments, all the thing not getting picked up, all the bouncing from being a guest to a guest to a guest.
There's so much effort that goes into it. I could see the effort in this scene.
Then you're supposed to show up on a... Look, it's great. It's funny. It's so charming and it's wonderful. I can see exactly why the world's going to fall in love with Donna Paulson. But because I know my friend Sarah, I was like, I bet that's first day. We all have first-day jitter. It's on every job. Absolutely. No matter how much experience you have, you always have the like, Oh, is this the moment where I realize I don't know how to act and everybody's going to tell me that I'm terrible. I just saw maybe a bit of it in this one moment.
I did, too. I love that we both saw that.
Then we cut to Jessica meeting with her mentor, Philip, played by Victor Garber at his home. I think we're going to get into a little bit of this when we talk to Aaron because of the Victor Garber of it playing this role. Anyway, back at the hotel, a nervous Mike walks through the lobby with a briefcase in the hotel bathroom. He's splashing water on his face, giving himself a pep talk, and then he gets in the elevator. He's nervous. Mike is nervous. He doesn't want to deal drugs. This isn't what he wants for himself. He doesn't want to get caught. But he's doing it because he's got to get that money for Grammy. Yes.
So we can't blame him. Yeah.
I feel bad for him.
Any means necessary to save Grammy.
This is not a great situation to be in. I love all the music through this sequence, I want to say. It's got a very... Do you remember the score for Social Network? Oh, yeah. Do you remember that? It's like a techy... I'm going to do an impression. You ready? Can we acknowledge your gifts for this? Trademark that. Let's make sure that if anyone uses that audio, that I get paid.
I did. I noticed the music, too, and I feel like it gave it the... It just teed it up.
Yeah. It just... Nurtured it. It builds the sequence. It swattled it. Yeah, swattled. It builds. There's a building. There's a building tension. Meanwhile, Donna is not having any luck finding the right person for the job.
She is not. You know what else? That guy was not named Chip.
You heard it here first, folks. That's the He was not named Chip. You came to this podcast for some behind the scenes.
I remember nothing, but that dude's name wasn't Chip.
You're saying that that actor's name wasn't Chip?
No, that Chip wasn't in that thing. I was afraid I was going to get in trouble for calling him Chip.
You made up the name Chip?
Yeah. And again, I was nervous. I was like, Can I say Chip? Can I call him Chip?
It's funny. You did it. I mean, I believed it.
Apologies to the chips in my life that I know.
I believed He did. Okay, then Mike walks towards the hotel room designated for the drop. There's that interesting thing that we establish here that Mike has seen. We're trying to establish. He's got this photographic memory. The show is trying to figure out how to tell that story. We're seeing that he sees the kid coming from the pool with his father, and he's seeing the sign about how the pool is closed. He's putting all these things together. So we get to see Mike really be in superhero mode where he's processed a lot of information very quickly that most people would probably miss. And he asked the question of these guys at the hotel room door if the pool is open or how the pool is at the hotel, and they don't say anything about it being closed. He knows. He's like, it puts two and two together because our guy Mike is smart.
Yeah.
I don't know if you noticed. But he's smart.
Or about to get into a scene where he really demonstrates how smart he is. Right.
But he's not so smart that he hasn't found himself in a situation where he's running from the police in a hotel with a bag full of wheat.
Well, he got knocked into another life.
God bless you. Mike finds himself in the lobby of the suite with Donna. He's running from the police piece, and he takes the interview slot meant for Rick Sorkin. Donna gives Harvey the Wink. This might be the one.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. There's a meme.
What?
This is an episode where you wink. I mean, this is the episode. This is the scene where you give Harvey that wink, and that became meme-worthy.
That did become a meme.
That is the thing on my phone when I go looking for the old gif, I see your face winking a lot. So that might be like, suits first first meme. You might be, Suits first meme.
Can I have a T-shirt? I need a sticker. You're a meme. Can I have a sticker? I didn't know that we could do that thing on your phone where you can look up a GIF and then send it. I didn't know it until my friend Erica, she was texting me. She was like, Sarah, you're not going to believe it. I was just texting with Noah, her husband, and she was like, I think it was Valentine's Day or something, and she was like, and we were just being cute and flirty and loving. Then I go and I search a I just put in sexy. You're not going to believe what comes up. I'm reading this, I have no idea where she's going with it. Then she sends me the one of me winking. I was like, Dear God, please tell me you did not send that to your husband.
You don't like it?
Not sexy? It's just not appropriate because I'm really close friends with both of them. It's just funny. It was funny to me. I was like, Oh. She's like, No, I chose the Beyoncé one. I was like, I think that's the better choice.
You're not particularly tech-savvy, are you, generally? But do you know how to send a gif now? Are you trying to hurt me? No, you've admitted it before. I'm not saying anything out of school. Do you know how to send a gif? Yeah, I totally know how to do it.
You're gifting now with the best of them. I have a great gif game. Oh, your gif game is so strong. It's so good.
Why aren't you gifting with me?
Rick and I have a very special gif game, and it involves a lot of donkeys.
Oh, God. It's a different pod.
Gina has a strong gif game, too, I got to say. But Patrick, I just thought of something in real-time.
Tell me in real-time what you're thinking.
It's amazing for me to think in real-time. Donna actually hired Mike. Donna unkept The Gate, gave Harvey the Wink, so all the ensuing drama is her fault. We owe you everything. No, I'm saying it's her fault. She needs to feel way worse about some things in the future.
You changed everybody's lives for the better. What do you mean? No, I think that's a really good actual observation, though, is that you made this possible.
With the power of the gatekeepers, though. I really thought about it last night when I was watching this again. I was like, it's about getting in the door.
You could have just been like, whoa, who are you? You're a whole mess. Get out of here.
Yeah, but think about the casting directors who let us in the rooms or whatever it is.
You just need to- You saw something in me. Yeah. In Mike and me. She sure did. Do you see something in me?
I don't remember you. What do you see in me?
All right, well, then Mike introduces himself to Harvey, walks in the room. He's Rick Sorkin, just in for the briefcase to spill open, revealing the weed. A moment that lives in infamy on the internet and social media forever. Gabriel's, Whoa, what's this? Just a 10 out of 10 delivery. Intrigued.
Super into it.
Intuit, but also indignant.
Was there a story about the briefcase not opening? Yeah, there was something.
I remember it's hard to get props to do what you need them to do in the moment. I think we did a few runs at it just not opening at the perfect time. We have to shake the briefcase to a certain way, but it took a few goes, that's for sure.
We cut from that to Louis meeting with Gerald Tate behind Jessica and Harvey's back. What's interesting is that this scene also was cut from the original pilot version and put back in for the Netflix version. It just shows that Louis will stop at nothing and is driven to that. Then we cut back to Mike and Harvey. In one of the most famous scenes from the series, Harvey is impressed by Mike's photographic memory, sees his potential. Harvey ultimately decides he's going to hire Mike as an associate, despite Mike never having gone to law school.
And this is it. This is the scene. This is the scene. We've talked about whether or not we want to be like, What's our favorite scene of the episode? Maybe we will and maybe we won't. But in this case, I think this scene, this is the scene. This is the scene. For me, personally, this scene changed my life. When I watch the scene, I see it, I feel it. I'm like, Oh, this is the scene. And it's funny that it's the one that plays on social and on TikTok, and I think had actually a lot to do with why the show has been so popular again, because I think it was all over TikTok and everything. It's so lovely to me that that's the thing that maybe brings people in, because it was the scene that brought me in. This was my audition scene. This was the scene that I ran at home with Troyan. This is the scene that I first was like, I think I could do this. I love this scene. I love the interplay of this. I love playing a character who's just so desperate and at wits end and just begging.
Not even begging. It's not begging. It's saying so honestly, I am ready for this opportunity. I might not be the best guy on paper I may not be... There are other people who might be technically more qualified for this job, but I will work harder than any of them because I want it that bad. That was really me. That was Patrick in that moment, auditioning for this show. I didn't have to do any acting. It's always powerful to watch it. It always makes me smile. It always makes me happy. Also, I think it's just such a great scene. It's such a great scene. It's so well written.
It's such a long scene. We don't have scenes this long with so many pieces. I don't think either really going forward as much.
Yeah. I think it's also build up. We've had 22 minutes of build up to this scene, watching these two people walk these two different paths, essentially, knowing that they're going to meet, knowing that this whole is about putting these two people in the same room. But because we had an 81-minute pilot, we had all this runway to build before they meet. In a normal hour-long pilot, you would have to put these people together in the same room, scene two, and you wouldn't get all that lead up to it. I think that's part of what makes this scene so great is like, Oh, I'm really ready to see the... I know these two people much better. To see them cross paths is exciting. It's almost cinematic. It's almost filmic more than it is television. It's weird to have a moment on camera where you could see your life change. Do you know? Because that's where my life changed. This show changed my whole life. It's changed my career. It's changed the way that I work. It's changed the people in my life. If so many things It shouldn't have happened were it not for this show.
I can distill it all down to this one scene between Harvey and Mike in this room. It's pretty wild. Love it. The technicality of it, I love the blocking of it. I love what Kevin did. I love that we switched seats. I love that he's in the power position. I'm sitting there, and then we roll up our sleeves and become little boys. He's like, All right, you go. I get behind his computer and just blocked beautifully. I think Kevin did such a beautiful job. Anyway, I could go on and on, but a great scene. How do you feel about this scene?
I heartily, heartily agree. I love how many different sides of each gent that we get to see, especially that moment when you turn the laptop around and you show that you're playing hearts, and that it's not a terribly cocky moment that you're playing against it, against the, I'm playing hearts thing that you could do. Instead, it's like, I'm good at this. This is the thing.
This is the only... I can do this.
You have empathy. You also are a character who's got nothing left to lose. Exactly. It's just like, talk about leaving it all on the dance floor.
Which is how I felt very much in my life at that moment.
In real life, yeah. I really zeroed in on that moment, and I just thought it's funny because you're turning the thing. It's a turning point in the scene. It's the moment when Harvey decides he's going to go look at the door and see who's out there and look at the guys and then just say, I'm going to take a different path, too. It's that moment.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Choosing a new path. It's going to be fun to talk about it again with Aaron.
Then Harvey decides Mike's the guy, and he starts schooling him, telling him what he needs to do to prepare for his first day at Pearson Hardman. Harvey sends Mike to Harvard, where he's going to learn and everything there is to know about going to law school. Great needle drop here, maybe my favorite of the episode, Howling for You by the Blackies. Perfect for this moment. Then at Harvard, the administrator says that the only way to take a tour is to go back in time six months. Great line. I love this scene.
I love this little scene so much.
We see Mike with this prospective student. Shout out to actor Andrew Pastides. We see Mike conning him out of his name tag so that Mike can join the tour.
He is so good in this.
All improvised, too, I think.
The fact that he was able to improv this level of douchebaggery, I mean, my head is totally off to him.
But it's like what you talked about in the scene with you where you're like, the camera's up and they're like, Okay, we're going to be coming in, you need to say something to make this more interesting. You're not off camera. So you need to live in this moment now and you've shown up to set and you're like, Oh, it's not what I expected. I assumed you would be over there and I wouldn't be on camera until you do that. And it's like, No, you're on camera and you have to like, Okay, Who is this guy? You don't have any lines for me. I'm going to talk and you'll cut it out if it doesn't work. He just nailed it.
Andrew came prepared. He came to play. He did. He really did. It was amazing. It was so exciting.
That's the end of this first section of the pilot, Because after this, we are into a first case, and that's why we decided to cut it here. What an amazing first. Again, this is only 20. Imagine how much story we've covered and how much we know about these people. I think we're at like minute 25.
If that. It's the perfect prolog. It feels like it's a million scenes, and it feels like it's all one scene. You're just in. You're just in.
Yeah, really in. It's so weird because I guess we don't really do this with pilots anymore. I don't know, but it doesn't seem like people shoot these extra long pilots. But I think it has so much to do with why the show was successful because it didn't have to rush. Now you've got these people, you've got this great premise, you're like, Oh, my God, what's the first day of work going to be like? Then you're going to get into the case of it all. Which we are so excited to talk about in our next episode. This has been amazing. Thank you, Sarah.
I can't wait. Thank you. This will be so fun.
We had an idea. There is a word that comes up a lot in our show, and we used to have to deal with a lot online. The word goddamn. It got said a lot because we weren't really allowed to curse too much. No. And yet we wanted to be emphatic at times.
We should say that it was controversial because people feel strongly about that word, but also some people have it as a drinking game.
So It was a big part of the show. It or not, it was a part of the show, and we're going to count it. We're going to see how many are in the whole series as we go. Where are we in just part one of suits? How many goddamns did we have in the first 25 minutes of suits? There were four.
Four goddamns. Wow.
That's a lot. All right. Well, closing statements. Okay. How we feel about this whole thing. I think just an incredible amount of story told in 25 minutes. It's hard to do. It's hard to get to know people this well, to feel this close to them. It was just done masterfully because of everybody. The writing, first and foremost. But then I think I can see how close this cast is right off the bat. We said before, we've been a part of enough things where we go in with the best intentions and want to have that connection and create that intimacy, and it just doesn't work. It's really hard to do.
The directing and the music and the editing, the pacing, everything.
Yeah, we haven't talked enough. Hopefully, next time, we'll talk more about Kevin in that, how special and important he was in this process.
Yes, and one day we got to... I know He's busy right now, but at some point, he's going to have to come join us.
Kevin Bray. Yeah, just an amazing director. He did so many of the series, and I think the show owes him so much, just establishing so much the vibe of the show. All right, well, that's a wrap on part one of the Suits pilot. We want to thank you all so much for coming and listening to us, and we hope you join us next week to chat about part two. Of course, right from the beginning, we want to hear from all of you. If you do have questions, thoughts, or ideas of other things you'd like to hear from us on the pod, please send your emails to sidebarpodcast@seriusxm. Com. If you want to record an audio clip of the question, go for it. Maybe we can play it on the show.
Can't wait to hear from you. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, sir.
That was a good rehearsal. Should we do the actual one? We ready? Should we hit record? Are we ready to go? All right, let's.