Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 4 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Father Figurehead
By M. Giant | Season 2 | Episode 13 | Aired on 01.31.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's all over but the signing on the settlement for Harvey's gender discrimination case, until opposing counsel has the poor form to die on him and the replacement counsel is one Robert Zane. Yes, that would be the father of Rachel Zane, who feels like she's always been something of a disappointment to him. And for good reason, because he's kind of a dick. Anyway, he's also a dick to Harvey's plaintiff during a deposition, even with Rachel in the room to witness it. And, as it turns out, Rachel takes her father's excoriation of the plaintiff rather personally. As for Robert Zane, he's irritated enough at Harvey for dragging his daughter into it (even though it was at Rachel's request) that he withdraws even his lowball settlement offer and dares Harvey to take him to trial. And we know how much Harvey hates to go to trial.
Louis is still butt-hurt about how the firm hired Katrina Bennett after Jessica made him rescind his offer to his dream associate, and he's making Katrina pay for it. Thus commences a small war between Louis and Katrina, in which they take turns embarrassing each other in front of the judge on her current case, but she eventually wins by orchestrating his arrest for attempting to bring a sharp object into the courthouse -- which she planted on him. While Louis languishes in a cell, he convinces her that his enmity toward her has nothing to do with her gender, and that he's nobody's chauvinist. She in turn has convinced him that she's nobody's pushover, and they call a truce. Louis's relationship with Harvey and Donna also seems to be on the mend, as Harvey was kind enough to take the trouble to plaster Louis's office with his own mug shot.
As for Zane vs. Zane, Rachel tells her father to stop wanting her to give up on the legal profession, finally breaking the news that she passed the LSATs. And Mike figures out how to turn a single gender discrimination suit into a class action on behalf of 113 other females of the same company, all passed over for promotions. Robert Zane is unintimidated, threatening Jessica that he's going to break up the class and fight every individual suit, which he knows Pearson Hardman can hardly afford at the moment. That is, unless Jessica agrees to merge with him to form Pearson Zane instead. Harvey talks Jessica out of it and she vows to Robert that she's up for the fight.
But he's not, as he admits to Rachel that taking on her firm was kind of a dick move in the first place. They seem to be patching things up, as are Rachel and Mike. But Zane Sr. tells Jessica and Harvey that the case isn't going away; it's just being handed off. To Daniel Hardman. Crap.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Harvey and Mike are wasting their crazy-expensive billable hours shooting paper into Harvey's trash can when Jessica puts a stop to it and sends Mike on his way. She informs Harvey that someone named Derek Portis died. Harvey's not exactly broken up over it, but Jessica says they now have an issue with a $10 million settlement that Derek Portis brokered with Folsom Foods. More specifically, with Derek's replacement as Pearson Hardman's opposing counsel.
Cut to Rachel being taken out to lunch by her father for her birthday. He's being played by Wendell Pierce from The Wire, so if you've been trying to puzzle out Rachel's ethnic ambiguity it looks like one of the variables has been locked down. He tells her that he's the one who's taking on the case against Pearson Hardman, in case she wants to sit it out. It also seems that there's a little tension between the two of them. Daddy Zane's a little hurt that Rachel doesn't make a thing of who her dad is. "People treat me differently once they find out," she explains. He asks if she's worried they'll judge her for being a paralegal, and she assures him that only he does that. Well, and Rachel herself. But she informs him that she won't be a paralegal forever, although she doesn't mention her last LSAT score. And he's a condescending jerk to her, saying that if it were going to happen for her, it probably would have by now. "Of all days," Rachel says, stung, and gets up to leave.
Katrina Bennett, the assistant DA Harvey had hired at the firm at the beginning of this half-season, arrives at her new office at Pearson Hardman. Her door even has her name on it over the words "Senior Associate" and everything. Only Louis is sitting in her chair, trimming his nails over her desk and being all gross about his responsibility over all first- and second-year associates. As if it's not already gross enough that he's getting his finger-scraps all over her workspace and bragging about his gold cuticle-sculptors from Denmark. She points out that she's a fifth-year, and he's trimming her nails at her desk. Louis unrepentantly leans into her computer, which he easily hacked into ("who you gonna tell?" he mocks when she protests this shocking invasion of her privacy), and says of her planned defense on her current case, "Wow, it's like you're a baboon." He announces that he's going to have to supervise, and she can either like it or go back to the DA. "Welcome to Pearson Hardman," he says.
Rachel goes to Mike and asks if he's got a minute, which he does when he finds out it's about work rather than the two of them. She basically demands to be assigned to the Folsom Foods case, telling him that her dad is the new opposing counsel. "Your dad is Robert Zane?" Mike says in shock. Rachel asks, "It is so hard to believe that my father's black?" Mike, in equal shock: "Robert Zane is black?" Rachel says that's not a year-round tan she's rocking. Mike asks if they should be working together, and she hisses, "Are you really asking me what is or isn't a good idea?" in a way that makes Mike say, "Look out, Robert Zane."