This is a classic TV story like Boy Meets Girl. A mystery-solving genius meets a troublesome detective who needs help with his investigation. It’s not love at first sight. Similar to crime solving for the first murder. Sparks fly. A happy ending ensues. credit roll. That is, until another body is found next week.
Do you know what kind of TV show I’m talking about here? “Castle.” “Bones” “Mentalist.” All are made from the same Sherlock Holmes-inspired fabric, each matched with an unconventional and, dare I say it, downright frustrating civilian with seemingly magical powers of investigation and deduction. It depicts a diligent detective. We love watching these geniuses pick up on clues that the police miss and come up with witty rebuttals to any suggestion of following procedure or the law.
In its time-honored television tradition, ABC brings us “High Potential” (Tuesdays, 10 pm ET/PT, ★★★ out of 4). This is another cop and consultant show that might be worth mentioning along with its list of hits. “Potential,” based on a French series, is a little silly and a little formulaic, but it’s a lot of fun. This is a light-hearted cop drama that you don’t see much of anymore in a sea of bleak Chicago spin-offs and Law & Orders broadcasts. Produced by “The Good Place” and “The Martian” producer Drew Goddard and starring “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” MVP Kaitlin Olson, “Potential” is the cozy vibe we’ve all been missing. It has the potential to fill a mystery niche. In our very serious times.
A combination of eccentric genius and straight-laced cop, our smartpants are Morgan (Olson). Morgan is a single mother of three children with “high intellectual potential” but is volatile and unstable enough that she has quit or been fired from all her jobs. It’s happened before. She oversteps her original job as a precinct janitor and stumbles into police counseling work, where she is quickly picked up by Commander Selena (Judy Reyes, “Scrubs”). It’s just like “Good Will Hunting,” but Olson dances to pop music and wears leopard print.
Morgan is paired with Detective Karadek (Daniel Sunjata, “Rescue Me”), and you guessed it! – Literally a surly cop with no interest in outside help. That is, until Morgan proves that random trivia (like which direction the wind blows on what days in Los Angeles) and powers of observation can help put the bad guys in jail. He just has to put up with her antics, like taking the baby to crime scenes and borrowing evidence to “work from home.”
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Of course, the odd couple’s marriage works out, and Morgan and Karadek return to the race with their crime-fighting zeal. Morgan’s new career is aided by her ex-boyfriend (Taran Killam), who is the primary caretaker of her teenager (Amira Johnson), preteen (Matthew Lamb), and toddler.
The episodes, at least the first three, are available for review and quickly fall into easy patterns. Morgan and Karadek also quickly establish a pattern together, with the actors playing off each other’s tics. The script manages to balance the mystery of the case of the week with the larger story of Morgan and Selena investigating the 15-year-old disappearance of Morgan’s boyfriend.
In fact, everything about “possibility” feels easy. It’s not like the stilted, heavy-handed network procedurals that lack compelling characters, a sense of whimsy, or even a compelling murder of the week. “Potential” feels fun because it takes copious notes from sunny cop dramas like “Monk,” “Lucifer” and “Psych.” Since everyone is obsessed with hunting down the bad guys, the murders seem a little less gruesome.
A predictable series like “Potential” can be comforting and familiar at times, and at other times feel boring and conventional. For the most part, thanks to Olson’s charisma and Goddard’s witty script, “Potential” doesn’t feel too much like a rehash of a show it shares a lot of DNA with. Whether or not you welcome another singular crime-solving genius to your weekly TV show may be based on your own distance to this subgenre of television. Is Morgan a lovable character or just a nuisance?
It could be both, depending on how you look at her.
