Suits Season 2_HDTVMB3

Season 2 (2012-2013)

Co-founding partner Daniel Hardman (David Costabile) returns to the firm, and Jessica and Harvey fear he wishes to return to his former position as managing partner. Because of this, Jessica allows Mike to continue working, despite discovering his secret. Meanwhile, Jenny confronts Mike about his feelings for Rachel, and when Mike hesitates in his response, Jenny breaks up with him. At the firm, Travis Tanner (Eric Close) accuses Harvey of burying evidence and is determined to have Harvey disbarred. Donna finds the missing document and realizes she had signed in the document and then lost it; she panics and destroys the document. Jessica fires her shortly after. Hardman is able to blackmail Tanner into dropping Harvey's disbarment from the settlement, and Hardman's decision to settle or Jessica's decision to go to trial is put to vote. With the partners evenly split, Harvey has the deciding vote and, realizing the trial will jeopardize everyone at the firm, votes to settle, unwittingly siding with Hardman over Jessica so the firm can move past the lawsuit. This causes Hardman to call a partner vote and challenge Jessica for the position as managing partner. Soon after, Hardman promotes Louis to senior partner, and both Harvey and Jessica fail to definitively win Louis' support. Hardman becomes managing partner, but it is short lived as Mike and Harvey discover that Hardman forged and planted the document that Harvey and Donna supposedly buried. He is voted out of the firm, and Jessica regains the managing partner position. Immediately after his grandmother's death, Mike tries to start a relationship with Rachel, but she is reluctant. Mike then begins a romantic entanglement with his now-married first love and childhood friend, Tess (Elisabeth Hower), who was in town for the funeral. Rachel, who has now decided that she is willing to have a relationship with Mike, discovers them together. Mike ends the entanglement with Tess.

A week after the dust settles from the Hardman incident, Mike tries to repair his relationship with Rachel, and a new case arises that hits home for Mike. He has to deal with the struggles of defending a hit-and-run case similar to his childhood experience of losing his own parents. Louis Litt, relishing his new Senior Partner title, takes it upon himself to hire his own first year associate, who just may poke some holes in Mike's story about his time at Harvard. Harvey realizing this, goes to Jessica, who stops Louis from hiring the associate, giving the excuse of a "hiring freeze". Hardman returns to battle with his old firm, working as a contract lawyer for Rachel's father, well-known trial attorney Robert Zane. Rachel, at this point, is applying for admission to Harvard Law after finally gaining a Harvard-worthy score on the LSAT. Hardman strains Jessica's already low resources even further as she and Harvey are forced to try multiple gender discrimination suits, against Folsom Foods, in different locations. Scottie, an old flame of Harvey's, returns after stealing some of the firm's discrimination lawsuits. Eventually, Harvey convinces Jessica and Scottie that both firms should jointly fight the 45 discrimination cases. Jessica is also offered a possible merger deal with another NY firm managed by Robert Zane, who then retracts the offer after discovering that Daniel seems to hold all the cards to crush Jessica's firm with the Folsom Foods "rocket docket" cases. Jessica begins considering a second possible merge offer with Scottie's U.K. firm, headed by Edward Darby. Agreeing to such a merger would allow Jessica to finally end Daniel's attack. By law, Jessica is required to hand over the firm's financial documents to possible merger partners. This would allow the British partner to threaten to reveal Daniel's past without Jessica breaching her confidentiality contract with Daniel. This stops Daniel in his tracks. Harvey, whose goal is to earn the title of named partner on merit rather than be given it by extenuating circumstances, becomes angry at this impending merger news and his and Jessica's plans for the future clash. In the end, a deal to merge goes through with Harvey "learning his place" as a senior partner, for now, in order for Jessica to show he can be controlled. Rachel, after learning she has been denied admission to Harvard Law, forces Mike to reveal that he did not attend Harvard, but after that she has sex with him in the file room.