With departures, some retailoring of ‘Suits’ needed

When the legal drama “Suits” returns Wednesday for its eighth season on the USA Network, the elephant in the room — or, rather, the elephants

in the room — will quickly be addressed.

“Harvey, I’m only going to ask you this once,” Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) tells her boss, Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), in the season premiere. “Is there a chance that you are overreacting to Mike having just left?”

“I don’t know, Donna,” he says, before adding, with his typical swagger and lack of self-awareness: “But to tell you the truth, I don’t care.”

Fans know better — and, more important, so does “Suits.”

In its new season, the show doesn’t pretend that the departures of actors Patrick J. Adams (who played Mike Ross) and the new royal, Meghan Markle (who played Rachel Zane, Mike’s love-interestturned-wife), didn’t leave a hole in the show.

Instead, “Suits” explores how losing Mike affects the remaining characters, particularly Harvey, while also using the change as an opportunity for a reset.

Recurring characters Alex Williams (Dule Hill) and Katrina Bennett (Amanda Schull) are now regulars, and a new enterprising, disruptive lawyer named Samantha Wheeler (Katherine Heigl) takes the firm by storm.

“I’m going to miss Meghan and Patrick,” show creator Aaron Korsh said, “but I think there are still interesting stories to tell.”

With shows such as “House of Cards” and “Transparent” losing lead actors because of sexual-misconduct allegations, and “Roseanne” because of racist tweets, there is no shortage of TV shows reinventing themselves on the fly. (“Roseanne” is technically becoming a new series, “The Connors.”) But the exit of Mike, a secretly unqualified lawyer who has been the show’s moral center, is more akin to planned TV departures of the past, including that of Wayne Rogers’ 1978 exit as Trapper John McIntyre from “M.A.S.H.” (1972-83) or George Clooney’s 1999 departure as Doug Ross from “ER” (1994-2009).

“About a year ago, Patrick called me and let me know he wanted to move on,” Korsh said. “So we had that amount of time to figure it out.”

With Mike and Rachel married and gone to Seattle to start a socially conscious firm, the show will continue to focus on Harvey, the hardworking, take-noprisoners, romantically challenged head of the rechristened law firm Zane Specter Litt.

For Macht, the new twists, turns and personnel represent an energy infusion for the long-running show, which remains USA Network’s mostwatched program.

Although the new characters and relationships might be a jolt to longtime “Suits” fans, the creators promise that the show’s aesthetic sensibility — defined by quickpaced dialogue, edgy workplace fashion and contentious rivalries, inside and outside the firm — remains intact. They do allow, though, that the transition has been challenging at times.

“That first week back was really heavy,” Macht said. “Patrick and I started out together on this show; we made a deal to challenge and support each other and create an atmosphere of a set family. So, when he left, it was a massive void for me, personally, thinking my partner is not here.”