Kevin from 'The Office' Wants To Be Taken Seriously in a Laughable 'Suits LA'

Y’all: Suits LA is a preposterously bad show. I know I wrote after the pilot that its aggressive, arrogant awfulness was part of its appeal, but three episodes in, the novelty of The Dunning-Kruger Effect: The Television Series is wearing thin.

Part of the problem — aside from the abysmal writing and the show’s complete refusal to acknowledge its own awfulness — is that Stephen Amell is simply not up for the task. Amell can be serviceable in the right role—he was great in Heels as “Name Recognition”—but Suits LA is just too heavy a lift. His character, Ted Black, is clearly meant to be a West Coast knockoff of Gabriel Macht’s Harvey Specter—arrogant, full of shit, but somehow charming—but Amell has only nailed “arrogant” and “full of shit.” Meanwhile, Bryan Greenberg is a pale imitation of Patrick J. Adams, and no offense to Adams, but that character was already ghostly. As for Josh McDermitt’s Stuart Lane, he’s supposed to be the Louis Litt of the show, but bless him, McDermitt looks like Eugene from The Walking Dead after he used a coupon from the Pennysaver to dye his hair blond.

The only two characters who even approach watchable are Erica Rollins (Lex Scott Davis) and Leah Power (Alice Lee), but that’s mostly because Leah is trying to teach Erica about pop culture, which is an important skill when your job is representing Hollywood actors. Unfortunately, this also means achingly awful and dated pop-culture references to movies like Forrest Gump (the pop-culture references were already the cringiest thing about the OG Suits).

This week, Erica’s client is Brian Baumgartner — yes, Kevin from The Office — who plays himself as an actor desperate to be taken seriously in dramatic roles. But because this show operates on the storytelling instincts of a concussed tech CEO, Baumgartner insists that the only way he’ll sign with the firm is if they set up a meeting with the ultimate comedian-turned-Oscar-winner: Tom Hanks.

This is a real storyline. In a real show. Which means that Baumgartner is called upon to do his best actressin’, a skill that, bless, is not his strong suit. He gets shouty and demanding, and it’s weird. Obviously, there’s no universe in which Kevin from The Office scores a sit-down with America’s Dad, so Erica and Leah find a more “realistic” alternative: Patton Oswalt.

I have no idea what possessed Oswalt to appear on a show where he’s both the best actor and the most famous person in the cast, but I sincerely hope the paycheck was enormous. Oswalt meets with Baumgartner, immediately gets into an argument with him, and tells him he’ll never be taken seriously as a dramatic actor. Baumgartner explodes, storms out, and then — brace yourselves for this mind-meltingly stupid twist — lands a role in an off-Broadway play out of spite! And that’s when Erica drops the big reveal: She and Leah planned this all along. They knew that the only way to motivate Kevin from The Office was to piss him off. And it worked!

That, dear reader, is how idiotic Suits LA is. And yet, I will continue watching it. And yes, I will continue to shake my head in disbelief after every tin-eared, ham-fisted line Stephen Amell delivers.