Summary
High Potential returns for Season 2 on top form, with Episode 1 picking up the Game Maker and Roman plot threads and running with them out of the gate.
It has been a while since High Potential was last on our screens, something that I was reminded of in the Season 2 premiere. The victim in “Pawns” is deliberately a dead ringer for Morgan Gillory, right down to the attire and the demeanour, and I had a brief moment of confusion where I wondered whether we were watching a flashback, or even – imagine! – that Kaitlin Olson had been recast. But it quickly became obvious that Morgan and everyone else in the LAPD’s Major Crimes Unit are still being deftly manipulated by the Game Maker, the Moriarty-style nemesis introduced in the Season 1 finale.
This more explicitly serialised approach is an interesting one for the show to take. Largely a procedural in its first season, with only the hint of an overarching plot in the form of Morgan’s ex, Roman, having mysteriously disappeared, “Pawns” picks up the Roman and Game Maker angles and starts running with them out of the gate.
High Potential is up to its old tricks on some level, though. Morgan, after spending a week or so locked up in the house with Ludo and the kids while under police surveillance, has become hyper-fixated on the idea that the Game Maker will target her again, and there’s the briefest hint that her fear might be pushing her into the realms of paranoia. This doesn’t hold up for very long, though. There was never a doubt in my mind that Morgan was right about the Game Maker’s involvement in the disappearance of Maya Price, Morgan’s missing lookalike, and eventually, her colleagues gave up trying to suggest she might have been mistaken. Morgan’s right about everything. The entire show hinges on it.
To be fair, it never really seems like Maya’s case is unrelated. She’s snatched from a parking lot outside a nightclub, but Morgan is almost immediately lured to her empty home by a misdelivered flyer and the eerie melody of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. This and the fact that Maya and Morgan are so alike – which is barely remarked upon, I think because it’s mostly only clear to the audience – mean it’s really obvious that everything’s connected, so the rest of Major Crimes suggesting it might not be risks becoming tedious.
The case presents two alternate suspects – Maya’s ex, Derek, with whom she has been going through a custody battle, and her boss, Jason Howard (played by Nick Wechsler, who also did good work on The Hunting Party recently), who has been showering Maya with lavish gifts and gave her the tickets to the club that she was ultimately kidnapped outside of. But these are all pawns – that’s the episode’s title, after all – on the Game Maker’s board, and the thrust of the case becomes Morgan proving how it’s all related to her sceptical colleagues.
This actually plays out better than you’d think. Olson really sells the idea of Morgan’s gifts being something of a curse, especially in how she’ll never be able to forget the face of the Game Maker, even after he has been apprehended, which in turn makes it even more painful when Selena, Karadec, Oz, and Daphne float the idea that she might be seeing things. I complained a lot in Season 1 about High Potential not suitably challenging Morgan, not committing to the idea of having her be wrong sometimes, but if Episode 1 of Season 2 is anything to go, the writers have hit upon a more interesting angle from which to approach a similar idea – how Morgan being right all the time can in itself be a burden.
What eventually becomes clear is that the Game Maker has been manipulating events to try and trick Derek into killing Jason. And – again, unusually for this show – the case isn’t resolved by the end of the episode. In fact, “Pawns” ends with a number of avenues still open. Derek is on the hunt for Jason, armed with the gun that Maya seemed to have purchased for herself; Daphne and Oz have tracked down a lead on Roman, who might be hiding inside a motel room; and the Game Maker presents himself to the Major Crimes Unit, clearly intentionally, judging by his smug expression, though for purposes that thus far remain mysterious and obscured.
It’s a great way to kick off the second season, which is already operating on a higher level than its predecessor in terms of both plotting and character dynamics. It took a while for the show to return, but based on the premiere, the wait may well have been worth the wait.
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