Summary
High Potential doesn’t have the most riveting case in Episode 8, but it provides worthwhile character dynamics, finally progresses the Roman subplot, and feels thematically unified.
“Obsessed” is a fitting title for the midseason premiere of High Potential. Morgan is obsessed, for instance, with solving crimes, spouting off random facts about everything, and trying to get to the bottom of her first husband’s unsolved disappearance, which finally gets a little update here in Episode 8. Likewise, everyone seems obsessed with this show, which returns from its winter hiatus without having lost a step. But obsession can be dangerous, especially personally, as Morgan (and Tom, sadly) is beginning to learn.
The idea of Morgan being a workaholic hasn’t been explicitly tussled with before, but the signs have been there. It isn’t a work ethic thing for her, though. She just can’t let things go. Once the clues are tumbling around in her mind, she can’t rest until they coalesce into a logical sequence of events. For Karadec it’s different. He’s in love with the job, more so than he is with anything – or anyone – else in his life. The best scene in “Obsessed” is a low-key one between these two characters, as they eat Chinese takeout and go over the case late into the evening. Neither of them says how alone they are, but it’s implied, a blue rose framed on Karadec’s wall a lingering reminder that there isn’t enough of him to go around, and the job got the lion’s share.
All of this stuff is important in High Potential Episode 8 because it has a better balance between the case of the week, the developing character dynamics, and the overarching Roman-remains-missing plot than previous episodes have had. It opens with a brief first date between Morgan and Tom, which has to be a fleeting diner breakfast because it’s the only time of day Morgan has free. The case – a woman found unconscious on the beach after being thwacked on the head, which is connected to the unsolved murder of her boyfriend and a swanky country club – threatens to become cold, reminding Morgan of Roman, and provoking more obsessive investigating from Morgan and Karadec. Everything is quite tightly linked, thematically speaking.
This is perhaps just as well since the case of the week in “Obsessed” isn’t great, or at least not in its actual details. There are some fun facts about the Lazarus Effect – when someone who exhibits all the signs of being dead suddenly regains blood flow and seemingly comes back to life – and the contents of snow globes (one of which turns out to be the murder weapon), but it’s more interesting in its class-conscious context. It’s easy to forget this sometimes, but Morgan is a struggling single mom. She’s clever despite her education and circumstances, not because of them, so she’s particularly sensitive to being sneered at by hoity-toity rich kids like the brothers, Edward and Blaine Wilson, who are key suspects in the case.
Daniel Sunjata and Kaitlin Olson in High Potential | Image via ABC
I’ve complained before about Morgan getting away with stuff without really being challenged in this show, and there’s a bit of that creeping into her personal life in High Potential Episode 8. Throughout the case, she ends up screening texts from Tom because she’s too busy to respond, blows off a date, and has to cancel another one, but then cracks the case earlier than expected and makes the homemade dinner anyway. Tom’s extremely smiley and gracious throughout all of this, which seems unlikely to me, but JD Pardo is so charismatic I don’t suppose it really matters.
I’m glad that there’s zero hint of any romance between Morgan and Karadec and I really hope that’s sustained throughout. A purely platonic relationship is more interesting than blurring those lines between colleagues, and even with the introduction of Tom as a consistent love interest, there’s no suggestion of a triangle forming, even after Morgan spent the night in Karadec’s sparse apartment rather than Tom’s. This is good. It’d be too easy to ruin.
It was one of the brothers, by the way. Edward is the killer, having lamped the victim over the head with a snow globe to protect his wayward blowout brother. You can predict this from about five minutes in, which is pretty unusual for High Potential, but as I said, the details aren’t really the point of “Obsessed”. It’s a memorable episode for everything it includes that has nothing to do with actually solving the crime; the scenes between Morgan and Tom, Morgan and Karadec, and, towards the end, Morgan and Selena.
Finally, Selena has an actual lead. After spending so much time looking into Roman’s disappearance and uncovering nothing but diapers, she has managed to turn up a name – Gio Conforth, a “concierge” known for procuring items on both sides of the law. Roman met with him several times, and the connection implies he was up to something that Morgan didn’t know about. Luckily, Selena has managed to track him down.
