6

Thursday, July 21, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

‘Suits’ ill-fitted

By ALEX INTNER

Summer Managing Arts Editor

Can anyone explain what hap-

pened to “Suits”? I’m struggling to 
come up with why the show is still 
running 
and 

why they decid-
ed to substan-
tially 
remove 

the drama from 
where it was 
at its creative 
peak. This sea-
son 
premiere 

didn’t feel like 
the 
“Suits” 
I 

fell in love with 
when it first premiered. It’s a com-
pletely different show, with a tone 
that feels unfamiliar and, quite 
frankly, wrong.

Season six picks right up where 

season five left off, with Mike Ross 
(SAG Award Nominee Patrick J. 
Adams, “Orphan Black”) adjusting 
to prison after pleading guilty to 
fraudulently practicing law despite 
not being an actual lawyer last sea-
son, and Pearson Specter Litt deal-
ing with the consequences of pretty 
much all their staffers leaving as a 
result of a deal gone wrong.

In preparation for the season six 

premiere, I binged the last six epi-
sodes of “Suits” ’s fifth season that 
aired last winter and it felt like the 
series was preparing for its end-
game. Where can this show go after 
permanently separating the show’s 
two leads in Mike and Harvey Spec-
ter (Gabriel Macht, “The Spirit”) 
after having Mike’s guilty plea? 
Doesn’t that mean it just blew up its 
whole premise? The drama seemed 
lost during its premiere, trying to 
rediscover its tone with its new arcs 
while seeming to struggle greatly.

Mike’s prison story is what felt the 

most off-base from what “Suits” has 
done before. The premiere shows 
him trying to adjust to a new way of 
life and a new group of people while 

imprisoned. It’s embarking on a dark 
storyline, especially as Mike gets 
tricked by his original cellmate Frank 
(Paul Schulze, “24”) into telling his 
life story and texting his girlfriend 
Rachel (Meghan Markle, “Fringe”) 
from the man’s phone. Frank then 
reveals himself as someone Harvey 
is responsible for imprisoning, and 
that he’ll use this information to get 
back at him through Mike. A story 
of having Mike deal with villains in 
prison feels distinctly different from 
what the show used to be. The series 
invokes “Shawshank Redemption” a 
lot in these scenes, but it’s not nearly 
at the level of the movie it’s referenc-
ing.

Where “Suits” gives glimmers of 

hope is in its story involving Har-
vey, Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres, 
“Firefly), Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman, 
“Samantha Who?”), Donna (Sarah 
Rafferty, “Brothers & Sisters”) and 
Rachel trying to recover everyone 
from leaving. “Suits” is at its best 
when it throws an intriguing chal-
lenge at its lawyers while simulta-
neously watching them dig their 
way out of it, and elements of this 
idea were at play in the premiere’s 
storyline. Additionally, the moment 
where Louis accidentally gets some 
of his late assistant’s ashes on his 
face is one of the few moments 
where the episode allowed itself to 
loosen up and be humorous.

In this story, the show didn’t 

double down on its misery. It didn’t 
force the characters into situations 
where they’re not allowed to be 
happy, like it did for most of last sea-
son and it’s doing to Mike with the 
prison storyline. They’ve jettisoned 
the character off onto his own show 
and they’re struggling to figure out 
what it should be. Honestly, I might 
be done with the show at this point, 
because once they made this choice, 
there’s no way the show can reunite 
and become what it once was, even 
if there are hints of what I enjoyed 
about the show still existing.

USA

I wish Alicia Florrick was here instead.

TV REVIEW

What’s next for Nintendo?

VIDEO GAMES COLUMN

Y

ou know what Pokémon 
Go is. If you haven’t 
noticed the people 

around you playing it, you’ve 
probably read one of the thou-
sands of news 
articles cover-
ing its meteoric 
rise to the top 
of the app store 
and its gar-
gantuan rev-
enue stream. 
According to 
CNBC, it’s the 
biggest mobile 
game in the 
history of the 
United States. There’s not much 
more to say about the game that 
hasn’t been said — it’s a bona 
fide cultural phenomenon. And, 
as someone who follows gaming 
culture very closely, it’s been 
wonderful to see.

However, as fascinating 

as it has been to watch 
Pokémon retake the cultural 
consciousness both locally and 
internationally, I have to say 
that I’m even more interested 
in seeing how Nintendo handles 
its current boost in fame and 
fortune. Long story short, I 
think they’re already failing 
to capitalize on their biggest 
opportunity ever.

Even though Pokémon Go 

wasn’t developed or published 
internally at Nintendo (instead 
developed by Niantic, Inc., 
which Nintendo owns a stake in), 
the resurgence in the popularity 
of the Pokémon brand has still 
managed to double Nintendo’s 
stock price. Apparently you can 
hear Silicon Valley executives 
salivating from as far west as 
Arkansas.

But, like any smash hit on the 

app store, Pokémon Go won’t 
be able to keep its grasp on the 
zeitgeist forever. Observing the 
stories of fly-by-night app boom 
companies like the currently 
gasping-for-air Zynga shows a 
distinct trend of initially massive 
hits in mobile and social gaming 
that fail to recapture their early 
successes. If Nintendo wants to 
fully capitalize on their enviable 
situation, they need to make 
several significant moves sooner 
rather than later.

First and foremost, Nintendo 

needs to announce NX right 
now. Like, within the next two 

weeks. It’s already baffling 
that Nintendo hasn’t even 
announced the real name of 
their still-codenamed console, 
which is due to be released in 
March 2017. If they want to 
turn around the rather rough 
story their hardware sales 
numbers are telling (Wii U has 
sold around 13 million units 
worldwide, a little more than a 
tenth of what the original Wii 
sold), they need to jump on their 
worldwide news media attention 
and provide details on their next 
big hardware launch as soon as 
possible. It’s not like they’ll lose 
out on coverage from the games-
specific press if they put out 
the news in the fall. The IGNs 
and the Gamespots of the world 
will hound Nintendo’s every 
decision regardless of when or 
where it happens. What they 
will lose out on is a significant 
portion of the mainstream 
press — your EWs, your Us 
Weeklys. All of these influential 
outlets are rubbernecking in 
Nintendo’s direction right now, 
but they’ll turn their heads back 
toward the highway if Nintendo 
doesn’t work their magic with a 
hardware press conference soon.

Nintendo also needs to find 

a way to load Pokémon Sun and 
Moon — the new main-series 
Pokémon games — into Pokémon 
Go’s powerful trebuchet. While 
the more traditional Pokemon 
games never really stopped 
selling big (Pokémon X and Y for 
Nintendo 3DS sold an impressive 
15 million units), they haven’t 
done the ridiculous numbers the 
original games did back in the 
late ’90s, never mind the mind-
boggling numbers Go is doing on 
the App Store. If Nintendo can 
correctly maneuver the message 
around their new games, 
perhaps even by promoting 
within the Pokémon Go app, 
they might be able to massively 
boost their sales even past what 
they were in the first generation. 
It’s really their only chance to 
come out of this holiday season 
in the black, since both the NX 
hardware and their new “Legend 
of Zelda” game aren’t releasing 
until next year.

Finally, Nintendo should 

attempt to understand the 
social aspect of Pokémon Go 
and incorporate it into future 
software and hardware. 

Nintendo has always been a 
company notoriously behind 
the curve with social and online 
features — the Wii was maligned 
for requiring lengthy “friend 
codes” to connect with other 
players online, and neither 
it nor the Wii U has offered 
any sort of social networking 
comparable with the online 
ecosystem of Playstation 
4, Xbox One or Steam. To 
this end, Pokémon Go has 
demonstrated that it has power 
far beyond financial. It shows 
that Nintendo’s brands have 
the ability to connect people in 
droves — to bring people from 
diverse walks of life together 
under one big geeky umbrella. 
If Nintendo could learn to 
make something powerful and 
interesting out of people’s shared 
love of their games (perhaps a 
functional online profile and 
chat functionality for their next 
console?) they could drastically 
improve the future of their 
hardware.

Besides a few tweets about 

the next Pokémon game’s roster, 
the only news we’ve heard 
from Nintendo post-Pokémon 
Go is the announcement of 
their “NES Classic Edition,” a 
replica of their iconic ’80s home 
console that’s bundled with 30 
digital games. It’s a lukewarm 
announcement that really only 
appeals to Nintendo’s perennial 
hardcore fanbase. Again, these 
people aren’t the ones Nintendo 
needs to be looking to right now.

This article isn’t meant to 

be a scathing criticism about 
a company I have problems 
with. On the contrary — his is a 
layman’s advice for a company 
that I care very deeply about. 
I’ve been a gigantic Nintendo fan 
for as long as I can remember, 
and I truly believe in the quality 
of the art that Nintendo’s 
talented developers create. If 
anything, Pokémon Go should 
be proof that the Big N should 
never be slept on. Just when you 
think they’re out for the count, 
they deliver a huge uppercut that 
puts them right back in the fight. 
Pokémon Go is their biggest one 
yet.

Pokemon Go just crashed on 

Jacob Rich’s iPhone. If you’re as 

angry as he is about crashes, 

email jacobdr@umich.edu.

JACOB 
RICH

C+

Suits

Season 6 
Premiere

Wednesdays at 9 p.m.

USA

