Stephen Amell in NBC’s Legal Dramedy Spinoff

By its third episode, NBC’s Suits LA has gotten itself somewhere in the ballpark of what you’d expect from a series called Suits LA. There’s a blandly attractive ensemble trading dutifully quippy banter. There are storylines about professional rivals and potential office couples, maneuvering around difficult clients and unsympathetic judges. There are many establishing shots of the CAA building in Century City, recognizable to anyone in Los Angeles adjacent to “the industry.”  

Sure, it might not be fun or fizzy enough yet to replace Original Flavor Suits in anyone’s heart. And no, no one from Suits has appeared yet to explain what one show has to do with the other. But you can see how it’s trying to get there, and even how it eventually might. All in all, there are worse ways for a spinoff to start.

The problem, of course, is that it’s not the start. It is, as I said, the third episode. This might seem like a nitpicky distinction for a series that NBC is clearly hoping will run for years to come. But it matters because the actual premiere is so awful, and in such baffling ways, that it’s hard to imagine a lot of would-be fans sticking around to find out if it gets better.

When I say the pilot is bad, I don’t just mean on the usual grounds, like bland dialogue or underwritten characters. I mean it’s misguided in respects that make you wonder how any of this came to be. Its single most laughable choice is a high-key bonkers, low-key offensive twist that I am forbidden to reveal here. But there’s plenty of stuff I can talk about that doesn’t work, either.

Let’s start with the protagonist. Ted (an uncharacteristically flat Stephen Amell) is an entertainment lawyer who spends all his time screaming at friends and colleagues, treating his clients like idiot pawns and generally coming across like a walking, talking tantrum. In Ted’s defense, he has tragic psychological reasons for being this way, as painstakingly detailed over way too many flashbacks to 2010, when he was a federal prosecutor taking down mobsters in New York. Not in Ted’s defense, those explanations do not make him any more interesting. Suffice it to say that some men would rather blow up their careers, alienate all their loved ones and move across the country than go to therapy about their daddy issues.

In any case, none of the other characters seem much to mind. To the contrary, everyone in the pilot treats him like the sun they must all orbit around — whether it’s the sweet younger brother (Carson A. Egan) who has no inner life beyond worshipping Ted, the less senior lawyers jockeying for his approval, or actor John Amos, playing himself as a client who’s unhappy with the firm’s services but nevertheless very happy to offer Ted sage counsel about his dad problems. It’s one thing for a show to center itself around a prickly, arrogant, self-centered antihero. It’s another, far more frustrating thing for it to insist that said antihero is really a great guy worthy of your reflexive adoration.

That the pilot does include a few moments of recognizably Suits-ian levity — like some flirty repartee between Ted and a cheeky pro bono attorney played by Maggie Grace — only makes it feel more perplexing, and more overstuffed. It’s as if creator Aaron Korsh turned in a gritty drama about a hotshot lawyer trying to take down the East Coast mafia, and NBC decided at the very last minute to tack on a few extra scenes to repackage it as a Suits spinoff.

Thankfully, the next two outings represent significant improvements, assuming the goal actually is to deliver a plausible extension of the Suits-iverse. The second hour is still heavy on Ted, who is very conflicted about taking up a criminal defense case when his ex-prosecutor instinct is to assume anyone who needs a criminal defense attorney is inherently guilty. But the B-plot, about rival lawyers Rick (Bryan Greenberg) and Erica (Lex Scott Davis) competing for the business of an on-the-rise starlet (Victoria Justice), displays a welcome lightness of spirit. If the experience of watching the episode feels like channel-flipping between two totally unrelated programs, it’s still nice to get the occasional break from Ted’s glowering.

The third — the one mentioned at the top of this review, and the last sent to critics — shifts the balance even further. Now it’s mostly a breezy dramedy about showbiz-centric legal wrangling, which only occasionally dips into a leaden drama about Ted’s past and present angst. It still has lots of room for improvement. Aside from hotheaded Ted and maybe Davis’ coolly ambitious Erica, almost none of the characters have distinctive personalities. Some don’t even have their own look; Ted’s ex Samantha (Rachelle Goulding), his assistant Roslyn (Azita Ghavizada) and district attorney Elizabeth (Sofia Pernas) are all interchangeably gorgeous brunettes with a taste for body-con office wear and a soft spot for Ted.

But of the three totally different versions of this show presented thus far, this one is the most broadly appealing. We get the beginnings of what looks like a cute odd-couple friendship between elegant Erica and quirky junior lawyer Leah (Alice Lee), and even some intriguing insight into Ted’s complicated history with his best frenemy, the gloriously bearded Stuart (Josh McDermitt). The storylines also become more playful, and more entertainment-specific — one involves Brian Baumgartner, best known for playing Kevin Malone on The Office, deciding he’s tired of being best known for playing Kevin Malone on The Office and demanding his lawyers introduce him to other celebrity clients who can help.

Again, had this been Suits LA’s first episode, I’d have deemed it rough but not unappealing. I’d have said there were sparks of potential in the cast, that a Hollywood-based Suits extension sounded like a slam-dunk idea, that it certainly deserved more time to keep growing into the best version of itself.

But this wasn’t a fresh start. It was a slightly more successful third try, from a show whose first two indicated a serious identity crisis. And while Ted may have an uncanny knack for getting people to give him another chance, I’m inclined to think I’ve given him enough already. Maybe this series will break free of Ted’s gloom eventually, and find its way toward the clear blue skies that its title suggests it should have been chasing all along. But by then, I can’t imagine I’ll still be watching.