Summary
High Potential hasn’t been perfect in Season 2, but “Grounded” is close to a perfect episode of this show, embodying all of its most interesting and effective qualities at once.
High Potential is an above-average procedural at the best of times, and that has been evident pretty regularly in Season 2. But only rarely does it come together in quite the way it does in Episode 10, “Grounded”, a really excellent hour that neatly embodies all of the interesting and unique things this show does well. There’s an intriguing case, plenty of Morgan being Morgan, some movement in the overarching plot, and some solid character drama to boot, reminding us of how much we like this show and these characters and how much mileage there still is in the underlying premise.
It doesn’t feel like it exists in isolation, either, which can often blight a procedural. Everything that happens here character-wise is a sensible outgrowth of established arcs and dynamics, and where we leave things is rife with potential for more interesting storytelling angles going forward. It really is quite good, as these things go.
And the case of the week is pretty cool. Captain Alonso Padilla is an Air Force therapist and part-time skydiving instructor who is having the time of his life in his latest class until he mysteriously dies in the air. The team has to figure out how Padilla died before he hit the ground, which presumably has something to do with the death threat note crumpled up in his jumpsuit. But the investigation is complicated by the fact that Morgan’s habitual insubordination lands her in detective school, meaning that she can only help clandestinely, while risking her job.
The prime suspect in the case is one of Padilla’s students, Ethan, an aerospace engineer for Flagstone Defence Systems with a bee in his bonnet after the death of his brother, Silas, who died in a PTSD-related car accident as one of Padilla’s therapy patients. This quickly becomes a key lead, as several of Padilla’s patients all seemed to be suffering from the same condition, which wasn’t PTSD, and he was privately investigating it.
The common denominator is the prototype plane being worked on by Ethan’s company, which isn’t providing enough oxygen to the cockpit. The PTSD-like symptoms were caused by hypoxia. But that doesn’t explain how Padilla specifically was killed, and the likeliest culprit seems to be the prototype’s lead engineer, Randy Pike. It’s eventually revealed that Pike killed Padilla by tampering with his skydiving mask so that the material froze at low temperatures, prohibiting him from being able to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Without a reason to examine the kit, nobody would have noticed the swap.
Morgan’s contributions to the case are typically invaluable in High Potential Season 2, Episode 10, but she has to provide them from the unusual position of the detective training academy, where she’s sent by the needlessly antagonistic Solomon from Internal Affairs. In a funny detail, it turns out Karadec, ever the square, helped to devise the course with Sergeant Dottie Reynolds, who still runs it. Morgan doesn’t want to be there and keeps risking her job by not following the instructions, but it’s immediately clear to Dottie that, despite her off-kilter style, Morgan is uniquely suited to continue working for the police as a consultant.
Solomon nonetheless ignores this recommendation and fires Morgan. Since it’ll take the night to file the paperwork, though, she continues to work the case, as the rest of Major Crimes tearfully comes to terms with her dismissal, which now seems inevitable. Luckily, Selena isn’t having it, so after politely asking Solomon to change his mind and being met with more resistance, she instead blackmails him with photographs of him having an affair with the Chief’s wife. I suspect this might come back to bite her down the line, but anything for the team.
Wagner is also intimately tied to all this. He clashes with Selena about undermining her authority, and doesn’t take much responsibility when his insistence that Morgan keep working the case keeps getting her into trouble with Dottie, directly threatening her job. I’m still unsure of whether we should trust Wagner or not, and I’m still leaning toward him generally being a good guy who’s just difficult to work with, but time will tell. He seems to have some kind of agenda either way.
Karadec basically confirms this in a late conversation where he pokes at why Wagner, even as the captain, seems to be adamant on constantly being in the field. He surmises that he’s being forced to be by someone powerful enough to scare him, and I think we’re supposed to interpret this as whoever Wagner’s frightened of being intimately tied to what happened to Roman (and what’s currently happening to Arthur, who contacts Selena in “Grounded” to let her know he’s alive but in hiding). Again, time will tell, but if we keep getting episodes like this in the meantime, I’m happy to wait.
