USA Network’s ‘Suits’ Is The Best Show that Smart People Aren’t Talking About This Summer

Most of the early weeks of the summer were focused on Game of Thrones, Mad Men and Girls, and the latter half of the summer has been squarely centered on Breaking Bad, Newsroom, and Louie. That’s as it should be. Five of those shows are brilliant, and one of them comes from Aaron Sorkin, a guy many consider one of the better writers on television. Or at least once did. There are other shows that occupy our time: Bunheads is good, Dallas is terrible, and Longmire and Political Animals are watchable, but there’s one show that’s not getting very much play despite quietly becoming one of the better escapist dramas on television.

That show is USA Network’s Suits.

Last year, if you watched the first few episodes of Suits, and then bailed, no one would have held it against you. In fact, that’s exactly what I did: Despite a strong pilot and charismatic lead actors (Gabriel Macht and Patrick Adams), Suits seemed like yet another legal procedural in a television marketplace dominated by them. It felt like simply another show in the USA Network factory: Take middle-of-the-road attractive people, cast them in an episodic series with self-contained episodes, and bookend each episode with a never-ending serial arc that most viewers will stop caring about by midway through the first season.

However, on the recommendation of several reader who had noted the show’s marked improvement over the course of the first season, I was convinced to check back in. I’m glad I did. Suits certainly doesn’t belong in the same company as Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, but it is a satisfying, often riveting, and always enjoyable series that has found a way to bring some dramatic tension to USA Network’s brand of breezy escapism.

In fact, the second season of Suits has borrowed a page from the best legal drama currently on television, The Good Wife, and eschewed much of those self-contained episodes in favor of a serialized season-long arc focused on office politics. They brought in David Costabile (Gale from Breaking Bad) and turned the show into a mini, contemporary Game of Thrones-lite: The cases have become secondary, taking a backseat to who will get control over the firm.