These days the line between movie star and TV star is blurred, as Oscar winners and other A-listers take on roles in various TV projects (i.e., Nicole Kidman in The Perfect Couple, Expats and Lioness season 2 in 2024 alone). But let's take a moment to truly appreciate the TV stars that have made their name on the "small screen" and deliver time and again on various shows. One example: Katilin Olson.
Olson leads the new ABC crime show High Potential, which premieres on the network on Tuesday, September 17, at 10 pm ET/PT. Based on the French TV show HPI, High Potential follows Morgan, a cleaning lady with an IQ of more than 160 who uses her knowledge and insights to help the Los Angeles Police Department solve cases. Olson is very good in the show, for which she also serves as a producer, bringing a spark of energy to the proceedings and occasionally being brash, as she has little time to suffer fools. She also effectively portrays the different layers of Morgan, a single mom struggling to support her kids.
Unfortunately, the rest of High Potential feels pretty bland. It's case-of-the-week format is tried and true, but the show doesn't do a lot to separate itself from the slew of others that have used the format; I do enjoy some of the cutaways they do to emphasize Morgan's train of thought, but they're too few and far between. None of the other characters (most notably her team in the LAPD played by Daniel Sunjata, Judy Reyes, Javicia Leslie and Deniz Akdeniz) are able to get out of Olson's shadow in the episodes I watched. It also doesn't help that by the second episode the characters already seemed like they are getting tired of Morgan's schtick, asking her to get to the point faster.
Now, I would say High Potential deserves some time to see if it can grow out of these early critiques, and perhaps others won't be as critical of them as me. It also has laid the groundwork for a recurring throughline regarding Morgan's missing ex-husband that could keep viewers intrigued. But I can't help but be reminded of an older ABC show when thinking of High Potential — Stumptown. It had a solid Cobie Smulders as an unconventional detective and a subplot mystery involving family, but only lasted 18 episodes.
The fate of High Potential isn't up to me, so I'd like to spend more time in praise of Olson, who has as good a record on TV as anyone. Olson broke out as part of the main quartet in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which has now become US TV's longest running live-action sitcom ever. She is just as key to that ensemble as Rob McElhenney (her husband), Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton and Danny DeVito; a great foil to the guys' antics, but also fully capable of being outlandishly and hilariously ludicrous in her own right.
She also stars as DJ Vance in Hacks. It's a treat when we get a DJ storyline in the acclaimed comedy, as Olson makes the most of it, as evidenced by episodes like "The Roast of Deborah Vance" (Hacks season 3 episode 3), for which she earned one of her three career Emmy nominations (two for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks, another for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series with Flipped).
I'd also be remiss to not mention The Mick, which while it didn't get the greatest notices from critics, it received a 92% positive rating from general audiences on Rotten Tomatoes and ran for two seasons.
While Olson has appeared in a handful of movies, her best work has been on TV. She may not garner the pre-release buzz that a Kidman or Cate Blanchett (starring in the upcoming Disclaimer) does when they do TV, but you know when she stars in a show she is going to bring her A-game. That is the case again with High Potential; we'll see if the rest of the show can reach its ceiling.
High Potential premieres Tuesday, September 17, at 10 pm ET/PT on ABC. It'll stream the next day on Hulu.
