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The next ‘Castle’ or ‘Mentalist’?

Published

2 months ago

September 18, 2024

It is a TV story as traditional as boy meets lady: Thriller-solving genius meets prickly detective in want of investigative assist. It is not love at first sight; extra like crime-solving at first homicide. Sparks fly. Glad endings ensue. The credit score roll. That’s, till there’s one other physique subsequent week.

You recognize what sort of TV present I am speaking about right here. “Citadel.” “Bones.” “The Mentalist.” All minimize from the identical Sherlock Holmes-inspired material, every has an uptight detective matched with an unconventional, dare I say downright irritating civilian with seemingly magical powers of investigation and deduction. We love to look at these prodigies discover clues the police miss, all whereas whipping out a witty retort to each suggestion that they observe process and the legislation.

In that venerable TV custom, ABC brings us “Excessive Potential” (Tuesdays, 10 EDT/PDT, ★★★ out of 4), one other cop-and-consultant present that may simply be worthy of point out with that record of hits. “Potential,” based mostly on a French sequence, is a bit foolish and a bit formulaic, but additionally lot of enjoyable. It is the sort of sunny detective dramedy we do not see that usually anymore within the broadcast sea of overly grim “Chicago” spinoffs and “Legislation & Orders.” Created by “The Good Place” and “The Martian” producer Drew Goddard and starring “It is All the time Sunny in Philadelphia” MVP Kaitlin Olson, “Potential” has the, nicely, potential to fill a comfortable thriller area of interest that we have all been lacking in our deeply critical occasions.

Within the duo of a unusual genius and a straitlaced cop, our smarty pants is Morgan (Olson), a single mother of three with a “excessive mental potential,” however sufficient flightiness and flakiness to imply she’s give up or been fired from each job she’s ever had. She stumbles into her police consulting gig when she oversteps her actual job as a janitor on the station, and is rapidly scooped up by commanding officer Selena (Judy Reyes, “Scrubs”). It’s totally “Good Will Searching,” however with Olson dancing to pop music and sporting leopard prints.

Morgan is paired with Detective Karadec (Daniel Sunjata, “Rescue Me”), a − you guessed it! − by-the-book, surly cop who has little interest in outdoors assist. That’s, till Morgan proves her data of random trivia (like what course the wind blows in Los Angeles on which days) and powers of commentary will help put the dangerous guys behind bars. He simply has to place up together with her antics, like taking her child to crime scenes and borrowing proof to “do business from home.”

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The odd-couple marriage works, in fact, and Morgan and Karadec are off to the races with their crime-fighting zeal. Morgan’s new profession is aided by her ex (Taran Killam) who acts as chief little one care supplier for her teen (Amirah Johnson), preteen (Matthew Lamb) and toddler.

The episodes rapidly fall into a straightforward sample, a minimum of within the first three made out there for evaluation. Morgan and Karadec swiftly set up a patter collectively, too, because the actors play off every others’ tics properly. The scripts preserve a straightforward stability between case-of-the-week mysteries and a bigger arc wherein Morgan and Selena look into the 15-year-old disappearance of Morgan’s boyfriend.

All the pieces about “Potential” feels simple, in actual fact. It is not like so many stilted and compelled community procedurals that lack charming characters, a way of caprice and even compelling murders-of-the-week. “Potential” feels enjoyable as a result of it is enjoyable, taking copious notes from sunny cop exhibits reminiscent of “Monk,” “Lucifer” and “Psych.” All that homicide feels just a bit bit much less grotesque as a result of everybody’s having such a blast searching the dangerous guys.

A sequence as predictable as “Potential” could be comfortingly acquainted, or it will probably really feel drained and clichéd. More often than not, Olson’s charisma and Goddard’s quick-witted scripts maintain “Potential” from feeling an excessive amount of like a rehash of the exhibits with which it shares a lot DNA. Whether or not you’ll welcome one other idiosyncratic crime-solving genius into your weekly TV rotation may be based mostly by yourself mileage for this subgenre of TV. Is Morgan lovable, or simply annoying?