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I love everything about USA’s legal drama Suits. It’s even fun to say… Suits! For eight years I’ve watched a beautiful medley of well-dressed hot people exchange rapid-fire legal dialogue while occasionally dropping in a few well-timed pop culture references and/or curse words so that dummies like me know what’s going on. I may not know my corporate merger from my… second glossy legal term, but even an admitted legal simpleton like me understands that things didn’t quite go Harvey Specter’s way when he looks out into the cool, unforgiving Manhattan skyline and dramatically yells phrases like “son of a bitch!” or “that didn’t go my way!”

Simply stated: Suits is my favorite show in which I’m never quite sure what’s going on.

Later tonight, Suits returns with the final six episodes of season… who knows. 50? The latest installment is the first without series stalwarts Patrick J. Adams and Meghan Markle, the latter choosing happily ever after with a British prince over returning to the USA Network for another round of pulpy legal tomfoolery. Did M-Mark make the correct decision? I can’t answer that, but I will say that only one of those options include the theatrical razzmatazz of one Katherine Heigl. Question, was Prince Harry a cast member on the WB charmer Roswell? No. No he was not. That was all Heigl. I rest my case.

Late last week, USA released the screener for tonight’s second-half season premiere of Suits, which is basically my Christmas. The “previously on” reminded me that Harvey’s mad at some guy for doing a BAD LEGAL THING, and that Katherine Heigl’s character is feuding with Dulé Hill over a promotion. How do I know this? Heigl’s character yells “If we go to court, I will clean your clock!” to Hill’s character.

Suits earning back-to-back People’s Choice Awards nominations for Favorite Cable TV Drama is no accident, gang.

Anyway, the show starts and I’m jazzed AF. Harvey and Donna are walkin’ and talkin’ and Harvey, as handsome and well-dressed as ever, asks Donna a simple question: “What do you say you help me out with Malik?” Who’s Malik, you ask? Great question. Doesn’t even remotely matter. Donna, also beautiful, also well-dressed, replies, “Let me guess, by getting you a hot cup of coffee?” And there it is. Not Donna’s clever retort but the phrase “let me guess.”

As a true Suits historian, I’ve noticed that the show loves to use this phrase. A lot. Like, all the time. In the Season 7 episode “Pulling the Goalie,” “let me guess” is uttered four different times. Here’s Harvey saying it at a batting cage, you know, where all the real lawyering takes place.

Later in the same episode, two minutes apart no less, two different guest stars recite this classic phrase:

Coincidence? I think not. In Season 2’s “Blood in the Water,” the show dared to dream the impossible dream by replying to a “let me guess” WITH a “let me guess”:

Suits’ obsession with this term seemed to be increasing with age, but I couldn’t be certain. I needed what we in the biz call ~~a waste of time~~ some hard data. If only there were someone who lacked any semblance of a personal life; a man so devoid of social commitments he could comb-through all 118 episodes of Suits and count each and every time a character said “let me guess.”

I found a website that uploaded every single Suits script ever produced (aka heaven). I can’t certify each and every script is 100% accurate, but when I fact-checked the above examples, the dialogue matched. Fueled by nothing but a dream, caffeine, a rudimentary understanding of Command+F, and an indomitable thirst for some truly useless knowledge, I discovered that Suits has used the term “Let me guess” 108 glorious times over eight seasons. To truly grasp that number, here is a candy dish filled with 108 pieces of candy. I included a Brockmire bobblehead, a Ron Swanson Funko Pop, and an autographed cast photo of the hit CBS series God Friended Me for scale.

Based on my research — and, yes, I use that term very loosely — here’s the season-by-season breakdown of how many times the phrase “let me guess” has been said on Suits. Each season contains 16 episodes unless noted.

Season 1 (12 episodes): 8
Season 2: 15
Season 3: 10
Season 4: 9
Season 5: 14
Season 6: 10
Season 7: 24
Season 8 (10 episodes, so far): 18

Never content to waste only my time, I had our graphics maestro Dillen Phelps whip up a visual chart to illustrate the usage rate.

Remember, there are still six episodes left in Season 8 and they absolutely use “let me guess” multiple times in tonight’s offering. Will Season 8 break Season 7’s record? I sincerely hope so. I have no idea what the future will bring, but I do know that there are ten different episodes of Suits* in which “let me guess” is recited three separate times, and one glorious episode, the aforementioned Season 7 icon “Pulling the Goalie,” where the term is said four times.

If that’s not the textbook definition of art, what are any of us even doing on this silly blue marble we call Earth?

I mean no disrespect to my dear friends at Suits. We all have conversational quirks and having one character interrupt someone to say “let me guess” followed by all the necessarily legal exposition is certainly a better option than reciting a bunch of esoteric legal claptrap. At its heart and dare I say soul, Suits is not about esoteric legal gibberish; it’s about the day-to-day drama of well-dressed, ridiculously good-looking people who enjoy scotch, cursing, and sometimes boning.

No need to guess, Suits returns tonight (January 23) with an all-new episode.

* S01E08, S02E03, S02E12, S02E15, S05E02, S05E16, S07E12, S08E02, S08E07, S08E10

Where to stream Suits