fear of a direct hit

the thing is, though, i don't think they thought we were more invested in the fake law bs than the characters, per se; i think they just misunderstood what about the characters we were interested in. korsh has always seemed overly invested in the various romances and potential romances between characters; in the interview mentioned above, when asked what he thinks people find so relatable about the show, he said (among other things, including "the banter of...in particular, mike with harvey") that "they root for mike and rachel and jenny and, you know, to kind of see who he’s going to end up with." and in an interview given in 2017, he said that "the art of tease for harvey and donna is vital. he believes that 'people enjoy anticipation and yearning more than they give those feelings credit.'"

and like, that's...fine? i guess? but personally, given that the whole entire premise of the show is mike's untapped brilliance and the enormous fraud he and harvey are committing, his future romantic partner is probably the thing about him that i'm the least interested in. (unless it was going to be harvey. which it was never. so let's not even get into the complexities of that.)

korsh did say something supremely weird in that 2017 interview, though: "darvey is different from mike and rachel. the show successfully keeps mike and rachel together, though a 'dramatic tension' is maintained there. with harvey and donna, korsh thinks that people wouldn't like to 'see them having major conflict if they were to get together.'"

i'm gonna ignore the part where he claims they "successfully" keep mike and rachel together, much less with "dramatic tension," and focus more on the part where he thinks that if harvey and donna got together, it would necessarily result in a "major conflict." or perhaps that it should include one, but that people wouldn't like to see it, and therefore they couldn't include it in the narrative (yet).

this man does not know how to write romantic relationships. he simply does not. what "dramatic tension," mike and rachel are toxic as hell, and i fully agree that harvey and donna would experience at minimum a "major conflict" if they had gotten together in season 6, and the only reason they didn't in season 8 was that harvey was already dead inside due to the lack of mike. and of course don't forget that the only way they were able to get around the "relationship as harvey to donna, boss to secretary" was to force donna into a role for which she was eminently unqualified solely for the purpose of putting them on a level corporate hierarchical playing field.

but yeah, what about donna's acting ambitions? what about mike's hero complex leading him into another profession, especially after the trauma (not that you'd know it from watching) of literal imprisonment for legal fraud? what about rachel's desire to get out from her father's shadow and make a name for herself entirely on her own merits?

none of that, no way. only two fundamental plotlines are allowed to coexist at any given time, and those are whatever bullshit lawyering is going on, and whatever torrid romances the characters are engaged in. everything else that happens needs to tie back to at least one of these two items in some way, which is fine for, say, law & order, which is very up front about being about the law and the order with characters' personal lives only occasionally becoming relevant, and even then, explicitly for plot purposes, but suits is, first and foremost, a legal soap. (not that korsh would ever admit as much.) it tries to have its cake and eat it too by making the characters' personal lives a major plot point, but then makes the mistake of refusing to let the characters have personal lives at all removed from their work ones.

given how clearly they stopped even pretending to give a shit about the legal running plot by season 7, i'm tempted to say they would have been better off giving up the premise entirely and leaning harder into the soap part. then again, look at what that did to season 9; maybe there was no right answer all along.

personally, i think i would have harvey spend the back half of s2 and probably the front half of s3 tangibly mourning the loss of donna in his life. not as catatonic as his s8 post-mike dead man walking routine, but clearly feeling her absence around the workplace, and showing some signs of their personal friendship being on the rocks; the two of them drifting apart, or donna intentionally distancing herself. (it's about time she put herself first tbh.) then what i would do is maybe around mid- to late-s4, have him get into a relationship with another woman; probably not zoe, because adding olivia into the situation is a little too complicated; definitely not paula, because what the fucking fuck; not esther, because the whole point of that was just to screw with harvey's relationship with louis.

in fact, i would put him with an entirely new character. (i didn't forget about scottie, just hang on to that for a minute.) ideally, i would have him get together with another attorney, someone from a different firm who he finds he has a vibe with and then can spend maybe three quarters of a season will-they-or-won't-they-ing until they decide to get together, either at the end of s4 or mid-s5, before the prison arc starts. their relationship would start off in a real honeymoon phase, or at least with no visible problems; anything that does come up that seems slightly imperfect is brushed aside without a second thought, and she's very supportive and understanding of his total insanity while mike is at danbury. she's even supportive during his spiraling when mike gets out of prison and decides to go to the clinic instead of coming back to psl. except...as time goes on, particularly after mike comes back and harvey becomes more at peace with his life, the cracks start to show; his girlfriend is great in a crisis, any high-octane, high-pressure situation, but the two of them just being a couple of people in a chill relationship under totally normal circumstances perhaps don't vibe quite as well as they first thought. and then mike starts showing his unrest, and hinting that he wants to leave, and harvey's attention is clearly focused entirely on mike instead of literally anything else, and she can deal with harvey going through some shit, but this is a little much. they spend the first half of s8 trying to make it work, putting all the pieces back together, until they come to the reasoned and mature mutual decision (i know, i know, but this is all hypothetical to begin with, so might as well go all in) to break up.

for the back half of s8, i would have scottie come back and the two of them fuck around in a sort of "hey, maybe...?" kind of way, even though they both know going in that it's probably not going to work out; finally, at the end of the season, they break up for good, and harvey's free to realize with a clean conscience that it's donna he's wanted to be with all along. i'd like to see her have become a moderately successful theater actor, probably not originating any roles on broadway just yet, but maybe a few short-term background roles, or an understudy in a bigger production who's set to take over the role when the lead leaves the show; now that she's had a chance to become her own person and live her own life, she's ready and willing to give herself and harvey a chance as a couple. it definitely wouldn't start off with harvey abruptly accosting donna at her apartment and the two of them suddenly having sex without a word, but i could see him going to her place without warning and confessing to her, and then the two of them opening a dialogue from there.

now, do i think this is how they would have handled it? no, absolutely not, i think they would've put harvey through the same string of failed romances he endured in canon, spent a couple episodes near the end of season 8 suddenly name-dropping donna like crazy seemingly out of nowhere, and then ended the season the exact same way they already did. they probably would've even had donna end up coming back to work at the firm somehow in some managerial position no one's ever heard of.