Image Credit: Shane Mahood/USA

Tonight, Suits returns to USA (10 p.m. ET) with the first of six new episodes. The last we saw of brilliant-but-fake associate Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), he was grieving the loss of his beloved Grammy, and he’d rallied to help top closer Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and managing partner Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres) oust Daniel Hardman (David Costabile) from the law firm Pearson Hardman. But he was making a string of bad choices in his personal life including smoking pot again, and sleeping with his married ex Tess (Elisabeth Hower). His will-they-or-won’t-they love interest Rachel (Meghan Markle), the firm’s top paralegal, spotted Tess when she showed up at Mike’s door to be his shoulder to cry on/have sex with. The entire series has been On Demand encouraging new fans to catch up with a marathon, and judging from Adams’ Twitter mentions, it’s been working. “As soon as people get to that last episode, they’re just like, ‘Dude, how can you screw this up so bad, over and over again?’” Adams says, laughing. “People are really frustrated with him and his inability to do what everybody thinks he should be doing.” Where does Mike go from here? Here’s what Adams has to say.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The first two episodes back establish that Pearson Hardman is still at war, only now the attack is coming from outside the firm, and that Mike needs to get his s— together. There are some really tense scenes between Mike and Harvey. What was that like for you and Gabriel?

We have a lot of fun together, no matter what. So it was fun for us to take it more in that direction. Usually our serious scenes have been with other people, and now we really got to get into some darker stuff together, and we enjoyed that. That’s going to be a continuing theme through these six episodes. Harvey is under a lot of pressure, and Mike is dealing with a lot of pressure, and eventually that sort of snaps. Without saying too much, there are gonna be a couple of situations where they get very, very frustrated with each other. We’ve seen Mike trying to figure out what kind of person he wants to be, and what kind of lawyer he wants to be — a lot of that’s gonna come to a head, especially as Harvey is very stubbornly refusing to accept the reality that Pearson Hardman is in serious trouble. He’s standing in the way of making that better. Toward the end of these six episodes, you’re going to see a different Mike and Harvey. As they mature and become the different people that they are, that mentorship is gonna go from just being a bromance where they get along and have a great time, to where they really have different ways of doing things. I think we really leave the season in an interesting place. READ FULL STORY »