Roush Review: Spiffy But Empty ‘Suits’ Spinoff, Giddy ‘Grosse Pointe’

Matt Roush February 21, 2025, 1:00 pm

Stephen Amell as Ted Black in 'Suits LA,' Melissa Fumero as Birdie, Aja Naomi King as Catherine in 'Grosse Pointe Garden Society' — David Astorga/NBC; Steve Swisher/NBC

It’s rare when a broadcast network launches an entirely new night of original programming, as NBC is attempting on Sunday nights, so that alone is cause for applause, though we’ll save the real ovation for when something more original comes along.

Even the dazzling new nature series The Americas (premieres Sunday with back-to-back episodes at 7/6c and 8/7c) plays to formula, with folksy narrator Tom Hanks serving up vignettes of telegenic wildlife on land, sky, and sea. There’s little doubt that nature fans will deservedly eat it up. (An entire series could be made about those resilient raccoons living in Central Park on the outskirts of a metropolis.)

An animal of an even more familiar variety — species: spinoff — anchors NBC’s new lineup, with the heavily promoted premiere of Suits LA, which owes its existence to the original USA Network series’ unexpected renaissance on Netflix (with the added zing of a cast member marrying into a certain royal family). The tailored wardrobe is as spiffy as ever in the “blue sky” setting of Los Angeles and the corporate towers of Century City, where entertainment lawyers and other slick attorneys ply their trade. It’s the storytelling that feels a bit threadbare and second-hand.

Stephen Amell (Arrow) makes his overdue major-network leading-man debut, swaggering in style as Ted Black, a former New York federal prosecutor who left under a cloud of tragedy and has spent the last 15 years building a lucrative business with his boutique Black Lane firm, repping (so we’re told) high-profile Hollywood types. He woos a prospective client described as Warner Bros. newest action star by boasting, “I took on the worst mobs in New York. I beat all of them, I did it without batting an eye.” He goes on to declare, “I can walk away from any deal at any time — which is where the power in this world comes from.”

Sounds like someone who needs to be taken down a peg or three, no? Which is exactly what happens in a pilot episode filled with betrayals and back-stabbings, all of which might have had more impact if we had a better idea of the people inhabiting these designer duds. (Flashbacks, which quickly become a staple of the series, help flesh out Ted’s and others’ backstories, which tend to be more compelling than the present-day intrigue.)

Inside 'Suits LA': Stephen Amell Talks Ted Black's Secret Side

As his best friend/criminal lawyer Stuart and earnest protégé Rick, The Walking Dead‘s Josh McDermitt and One Tree Hill alum Bryan Greenberg are sidelined too soon by a major plot twist that turns Ted from L.A.’s top dog to underdog. Lex Scott Davis embodies the least enviable role, as Erica, Rick’s competition for head of the firm’s entertainment department, despite the absurd fact that she has no apparent grasp of film or TV history. It’s revealed she is even clueless about Cheers. On an NBC series? For shame.

Lacking the fake-lawyer hook that made the original Suits stand out, Suits LA tries to conjure drama by depicting Ted making a reluctant pivot to a type of law he despises, with Kevin Weisman (Alias) his exasperatingly sketchy client. Effective cameos by real-life celebs, including the late John Amos (in a poignant cameo) and The Office‘s Brian Baumgartner as versions of themselves, suggest the series might have been better suited, so to speak, if it had stayed true to the creator’s original intent of building a series around Hollywood agents.

SEEDS OF INTRIGUE: Green thumbs are muddied by the sticky fingers of scandal in Grosse Pointe Garden Society, an enjoyably seriocomic melodrama that gives off Big Little Lies vibes from the opening scene, when four members of a hoity-toity Michigan garden club frantically bury a body under the moonlight. But whose is it?

That’s the sudsy premise, as the baroque plotting seeded with gardening metaphors gives each of the main characters an adversary worth putting six feet under. The newcomer to the group, wacky and narcissistic Birdie (Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Melissa Fumero), is a camp bouquet of ridiculous excess, upsetting the natural balance established by winsome schoolteacher Alice (AnnaSophia Robb), her divorced best friend Brett (Ben Rappaport), and high-end realtor Catherine (Aja Naomi King).

They’re unlikely conspirators in a messy cover-up that, if exposed, could cause them ruin in their snooty suburb. If you pine for the days when ABC’s Desperate Housewives ruled on Sundays, this is your show.

Suits LA, Series Premiere, Sunday, February 23, 9/8c, NBC (two and a half stars)

Grosse Pointe Garden Society, Series Premiere, Sunday, February 23, 10/9c, NBC (three and a half stars)