State of the Reintroduction… (And a “High Potential” review in under 800 words)
Welcome!
Hopefully you’re here on purpose, and not because you took a wrong turn looking for my long-running series of posts about The Good Doctor known as “State of the #Shea”. (If that’s the case, no worries… you can find them here.)
(And if you're thinking: Good Doctor…?!? Um, no, I’m looking for the blogs about skating music choices, I’ve STILL got you. Find those here.)
While I will be sharing something slightly TGD-related later on in this post– a brief, semi-serious review of the new ABC offering High Potential that now occupies TGD’s Tuesday time slot– I’m mostly taking this space to reintroduce myself, as well as explain my plans for this website (and the blogs within it) going forward.
Without further adieu… my name is Kelli, and I’m a freelance writer/author currently residing in Indianapolis, Indiana (USA). I’m a married Gen-X’er with two young adult children.
Want some more? Let’s see…
I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois (immediately west of Chicago), which is the birthplace and/or hometown of Ernest Hemingway, Betty White, Dan Castellaneta (aka the voice of Homer Simpson), and a ridiculous amount of other celebrities.
I majored in Radio/Television at Drake University, and spent the first 25 years of my career doing all the things TV production people do (cameras, audio, direction, production, writing, etc.) at many of the places TV production people go if they don’t have their sights set on LA or NYC (network affiliates, corporate video, independent production facilities).
I’ve been involved with dance since I was 3, musical theater since I was 5, and figure skating since I was 7 or 8, depending on how quickly I got into lessons after seeing Dorothy Hamill at the ‘76 Winter Olympics.
In 2011, I wrote a 244-page book about the U.S. broadcast history of figure skating called Skating on Air (McFarland Publishing) that is still in print.
Prior to that, my biggest claim to fame was being featured with four other girls in an ad for Nestle Semi-Sweet Morsels that ran in Seventeen magazine in 1984.
(I’m the one on the floor in purple PJs.)
I’ve also written nearly 200 songs you’ve never heard.
As for these “State of…” blogs, I launched the first one (for general figure skating news, opinions, TV coverage, and predictions) in 2008. State of the Skate was its name; and officially stayed as such for over a decade– even when I shifted gears in early 2020 and wrote occasionally about skating, but more often about ABC-TV’s The Good Doctor.
After 18 months or more of that, I took the leap to this website/blogging platform on which you’re reading and created two separate spaces: State of the SkateMUSIC (focusing on deep dives into skating music choices), and State of the #Shea (for The Good Doctor commentary).
While figure skating and the music that accompanies it returns season after season… unfortunately, the same cannot be said for TV medical dramas. TGD ended its 7-season, 126-episode run earlier this year, and while my writing for that blog is ongoing… it obviously doesn’t require the weekly updating it once did (sigh).
So, I’m writing about other things. What kind of “other things?” Several of you gave me ideas (via this brief survey I posted in the spring; you can still take part in it if you like) that I’ll tap into at some point. Much of it will be shaped by who comes along for the ride as I flesh out both the formal (professional) and informal sides of this site. But for now, I look to pair every post with something TV-related… and as I said earlier, I’m starting with a quick review of ABC’s new series High Potential. Read on…
One thing I’ve come to notice in 21st-century TV is the number of shows (mostly dramas) where differently-abled characters are the lead protagonist, with their unique abilities treated as a “superpower.” Has that ramped up more in recent years as superhero franchises shape so much of mainstream film? Or is more about trying to remove stigmas?
Arguably, the program that previously occupied the 10PM Tuesday night slot on ABC (The Good Doctor) was one such show, given how often Dr. Shaun Murphy– a surgeon with ASD and savant syndrome– managed to save lives that others could not. Kinda interesting, then, that ABC’s new offering High Potential is led by a character with a new set of “superpower” initials: HPI (High Potential Intellectual). In fact, HPI was the name of the French series upon which this new one is based. TGD was borne from a series in another country as well (South Korea), but the similarities between the two shows essentially end here.
High Potential stars Kaitlin Olsen, who many know from the long-running comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia but also got an Emmy nod for her recent work on the Comedy of the Year Hacks. So why come to network TV? I can’t help but wonder. I assume it’s the chance to headline a show, a job she handled with ease in the pilot episode I watched (9/17/24).
For Morgan (played by Olsen) is the paradox around which the show is built: Covergirl-beautiful, but with a genius IQ… dresses like a 20-something carefree clubber (you’ve surely seen her faux furs/micro-mini skirts/combat boots in the promos), but is a devoted mom of three… “gifted,” but doesn’t have enough cash to get her beloved Oldsmobile out of the shop. She’s partnered (of course) with a buttoned-down, by-the-book detective who finds her irritating at best, but gives her props for her considerable skills by the end of the pilot. Is it the showrunner’s intent to partner them up in more ways than one? (Maybe, but that’s a future I have no plans to see.)
Morgan is at her most vulnerable when she’s a) downplaying her gifts, or b) dealing with her daughter, currently going through it as only a teenage girl with abandonment issues (and a lack of her mom’s HP “gifts”) can. The abandonment stems from zero contact with her biological dad, who Morgan says vanished rather than left deliberately… and there you have the undercurrent plot for season 1, as Morgan makes “finding out what happened to him” a term of her deal to work full-time as an LAPD consultant. (She also conveniently gets her more recent ex to be a paid “Manny” as part of the deal, alleviating this single mom of responsibilities that might otherwise keep her from taking the best job offer she’s ever had in her life. It is TV, after all.)
But most of the time Morgan is as bubbly and upbeat as she is observant and knowledgeable, which allows the show to exhibit her gifts in entertaining, tiny flashes of video that are on par with the breakneck-paced gimmicks of other shows. (They’re clever and well done, yes, but gimmicks nonetheless.)
Those flashy little “asides” aside, High Potential treads territory familiar with fans of consultant procedurals (The Mentalist, Bones, Medium) and especially those with “quirky” consultants (Monk, Elementary, and the currently running Elsbeth except she’s not exactly a consultant).
What I suspect most pro TV critics are saying about the show is that Kaitlin Olsen lights up the screen as Morgan– and she does– but the rest of the characters/cast/show is rather generic at this point. As for me, I’m hardly a connoisseur of the consultant “formula”; of the shows I mentioned before, I only watched the early seasons of Bones and all of Elementary in addition to the 10 episodes thus far of Elsbeth (with more coming later this fall). Can High Potential cultivate the staying power of its hit predecessors? Maybe, if it remains a work in progress and ABC gives it time– Morgan could really use a distinct personality to play off of and share the heavy lifting, for instance. In all honesty, it’s not a bad show… just one that I don’t feel compelled to add to my watch list.
For now, I’ll be content using 10PM on Tuesdays to rewatch The Good Doctor.
