'High Potential' Reviews: "Olson is quite funny and has strong comedic chemistry with Sunjata"

         On September 17, 2024, ABC premiered 'High Potential', which has received predominantly positive reviews from critics and a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the series, "Morgan, a single mom with three kids and an exceptional mind, helps solve an unsolvable crime when she rearranges some evidence during her shift as a cleaner for the police department. When they discover she has a knack for putting things in order because of her high intellectual potential, she is brought on as a consultant to work with a by-the-book seasoned detective, Karadec. Together they form an unusual and unstoppable team." The ensemble cast includes Kaitlin Olson, Daniel Sunjata, Javicia Leslie, and Deniz Akdeniz. Read the full review round-up below.

        Carly Lane of Collider says, "Procedural shows are a dime a dozen on television these days. You can't throw the proverbial rock without hitting one — whether it's a series where various members of law enforcement team up to bring offenders to justice, or one that revolves around first responders arriving on the scene to save those in peril. In recent years, however, a new subgenre has emerged within the procedural, in which a citizen — typically one with no previous law enforcement experience — teams up with the police as a special consultant to assist them in solving the kind of cases that have perplexed most investigators. Said citizen, for the most part, also happens to possess a unique set of skills, enabling them to study crime scenes through a lens that allows new clues to emerge. CBS recently cracked this very formula with Elsbeth, starring Carrie Preston as an atypical, brightly-clad attorney who just so happens to have this unorthodox way of thinking about each case — and now, ABC seems to have its own answer in High Potential (created by Drew Goddard and based on the French crime series HPI) starring Kaitlin Olson as an atypical, brightly-clad single mother who's brought in to assist the LAPD on their investigations." Adding, "Olson's Morgan might be learning the ins and outs of becoming a proper detective, but she's going to do it her way, right down to the loud animal prints and high-heeled boots she wears to every new crime scene. It's a distinct aesthetic that calls back to the 2021 French series on which High Potential is based, but Olson is the type of actor who can absolutely pull off her character's unflinchingly bold style. Beyond the outerwear, though, the ABC procedural allows Olson to show off the full breadth of her talents instead of forcing her to rest on mostly comedic laurels, as her long-running role in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia so often has. High Potential's Morgan might seem like a more straightforward character next to Sweet Dee, especially when paired with the kind of expositional monologuing that needs to be delivered every episode, but her quick-witted and sharp mind give Olson the opportunity to flex different acting muscles for a change. The scenes in which she gets to go toe-to-toe with Sunjata are some of the series' best out of the three episodes provided for review. For his part, Sunjata, as a longtime veteran of the procedural genre (including this critic's personal favorite, Graceland), plays an excellent straight man, giving Karadec a resigned weariness opposite Morgan's perspicacious energy."

        Tim Stevens of The Spool notes, "As you might expect, Olson is quite funny and has strong comedic chemistry with Sunjata (although, thankfully, not romantic). She also nicely underplays Morgan’s struggle to process the absence of Ava’s dad and the ongoing tragic deaths her new job as a police consultant exposes her to. Network “quirky consultant” shows tended to lean more toward drama over time, while their basic cable cousins would become increasingly comedic. It’s too early to say which way Potential will tip. In terms of the talent on-screen, though, it feels whatever direction it pursues."

Photo Courtesy of ABC

Dave Nemetz of TV Line praises the series, stating, "Another fall TV season is upon us, which means a fresh batch of network procedurals that can roughly be described as The ____ Who Solves Crimes. (Lucifer, The Devil Who Solves Crimes! Sleepy Hollow, The Ichabod Crane Who Solves Crimes!) ABC‘s latest entry in the genre, High Potential — premiering Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 10/9c; I’ve seen the first three episodes — is basically The Genius Single Mom Who Solves Crimes, and it honestly doesn’t do much to reinvent the procedural wheel. But it’s still a satisfying underdog tale with a sly sense of humor, thanks to a fantastic lead performance from Kaitlin Olson." Continuing, "With a pilot script from Lost and Daredevil alum Drew Goddard (and based on a French series), High Potential is more lighthearted than grim, closer to Monk or Psych than Criminal Minds. Morgan is a walking Wikipedia, citing local meteorological patterns and ancient history to help nail each week’s culprit. (We get to peek inside her complex thought process through crisp crime-scene reenactments.) She’s also blunt, arrogant and stubborn, rubbing the cops the wrong way at almost every turn — she’s annoyed, actually, that everybody else doesn’t see the solution as quickly as she does — but she gets results. And seeing her run intellectual circles around a room full of veteran detectives without breaking a sweat is a fun, fizzy treat."