A cheap knockoff of the original

NBC is giving the people what they want: More “Suits.”

Except that’s not actually what they’re doing. The USA Network legal dramedy, about a genius pretending to be a lawyer and the mentor who enabled him, was a solid performer in its 2011-19 basic-cable run, but it exploded in popularity in 2023 when it arrived on Netflix. All of a sudden “the green back boogey” was trending again, and NBC was more than happy to capitalize on it by extending the franchise.

But making more “Suits” in its original form is impossible, and not just because one of its stars is now a duchess. So NBC entrusted “Suits” creator Aaron Korsh with a spinoff, and what he came up with was “Suits LA” (Sundays, 9 EST/PST, ★½ out of four) a bargain-basement version of its parent show. There are the trappings of the original series: the pretty people in business formalwear, kicky music, fast-paced dialogue, full-frontal flirtation and a legal system that exists only in Fantasyland. But it’s missing the humor and fun of the original series, an integral part of the addictive tone that makes it so very binge-watchable. Plus it lacks a unique hook or characters anywhere nearly as appealing as the beloved Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) or Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams).

“Suits LA” is what seltzer is to soda: Sort of, almost, not really the real thing. Your La Croix gives you a hint of strawberry, and “LA” will give you a smattering impression of “Suits.”

The dissonance starts from the very first scene of the first episode, in which we see our ostensible hero, Ted Black (Stephen Amell, “Arrow”), as a New York federal prosecutor in 2010 threatening a mob whistleblower before both are caught in a bomb blast. In the present, Ted’s life is completely different: He’s the partner at a swanky Los Angeles law firm, now working in entertainment rather than as a prosecutor. His partner Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) is his best friend and confidante, though Ted doesn’t respect Stuart’s criminal-defense specialty. That difference between them proves rather problematic when Stuart tricks Ted into merging their firm with another that’s coincidentally run by Ted’s ex, Samantha (Rachelle Goulding), and then cuts his partner out of the deal.

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Ted struggles to keep what’s left of his side of the firm alive after losing half his staff, including mentee Rick (Bryan Greenberg), to Stuart. He’s left with Erica (Lex Scott Davis), an ambitious entertainment lawyer he doesn’t fully trust, his loyal secretary Roslyn (Azita Ghanizada) and quirky associate Leah (Alice Lee). Oh, and his top client has just been arrested for murder.

There’s just too much going on in the messy, hard-to-follow pilot, and barely any time to meet the characters, let alone being to feel for them, by the time the big betrayal happens. (By comparison, CBS’ “The Good Wife” took five seasons to get to its law-firm split). By the time you’ve processed Stuart’s move, there’s another puzzling element thrown in, like the flashbacks to Ted’s career as a prosecutor which featured his estranged father and some vague terrible incident. Or there’s John Amos, who died in August, appearing as himself and verging on the “Magical Negro” trope that can be found all over American TV and film ― a wise old Black person who only exists to impart wisdom to a white character ― as he gifts advice to a floundering Ted.

It’s all a big tonal jump from the original series, which was campy and lighthearted, with frequent phallic jokes and an infamous dream sequence about the trial of “Faye Pooperson.” Amell, known for his subdued performances and public controversy, lacks the magnetism of Macht and Adams. And the central relationship in “Suits” was not a romance but a deep friendship between those two men, while “LA” blows up its only chance to recreate that in the first episode.

The appealing moments that feel most like “Suits” are between Erica and Leah, two supporting characters tasked with the series’ Hollywood lawyer B-plots, like getting an actress out of a contract on an indie film or introducing “The Office” star Brian Baumgartner to Patton Oswalt (both also awkwardly playing themselves). But when the camera turns back to Ted’s increasingly dark life, things sour.

The series was originally imagined by Korsch as a show about Hollywood agents, and it was only after the Netflix bump that the creator was asked to rework it into the “Suits” universe. In the three episodes made available for review, it’s easy to see how many concepts were pasted on top of each other to fill the running time: Baumgartner’s crowing about wanting an Oscar doesn’t gel with flashbacks to a New York prosecutor’s war on the mob, which doesn’t make sense juxtaposed with scenes about a high-profile Hollywood murder case. It’s not enough like “Entourage” to be a Hollywood romp, not “Law & Order” enough to be a serious legal drama and not “Suits” enough to be compellingly bingeable.