For fans of TV comedy, one of the more promising new comedies on the 2024 TV schedule was ABC’s High Potential, as it’s the latest broadcast series to showcase the leading role talents of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Kaitlin Olson alongside small-screen vets Judy Reyes (Scrubs) and Daniel Sunjata (Rescue Me). The dramedy has avoided many police procedural tropes thus far, and its consistently excellent viewership stats have hit an impressive benchmark that puts it in company with The Conners.
With the first half of its season — five of the six episodes that have aired to date — High Potential has already cemented itself as ABC’s biggest new series in six years, thanks in large part to its impressive 7-day delayed viewing totals. All things told, Olson’s brilliantly observant Morgan is drawing an average of 10.42 million viewers for each episode across a week of watching!
The fifth episode "Croaked” hit a solid total of 6.8 million viewers solely from those watching linearly on ABC in the first week of availability, according to Deadline’s Nielsen data. That number rose up to 10.49 million when accounting for those streaming High Potential on Hulu or with a Disney+ subscription.
Not only is that a 2% increase over the numbers for Episode 4, but that final total denotes a 191% uptick when compared to the same episode's Live + Same Day numbers. No one should be surprised if this immediate success leads to ABC renewing the series for a spot in the 2025 primetime schedule, presumably even before the current 10-episode season has wrapped.
High Potential Is ABC's Biggest New Show Since The Conners' Debut Season
Created by Drew Goddard and based on the French series HPI, High Potential has already brought in a big enough audience for ABC execs to consider it the network's most successful new series in the six years sinceThe Conners' first arrived as a matriarch-less spinoff during the 2018-2019 TV season, drawing an average of 9.5 million viewers for that initial 11-episode run.
Considering High Potential still has a ways to go, it's obviously not clear yet whether or not it will remain on top, but no matter how it ends up, the hourlong series matching up with The Conners' numbers is all the more impressive given the fact that it's a brand-new option for U.S. audiences. Obviously The Conners followed the wildly successful revival season of Roseanne, which came to a sudden ending when its star was fired and her character was killed off, so there was a built-in audience there already, albeit a far smaller one without Barr involved.
Here's how Olson celebrated the win on Instagram:
You guys are just the best. Thank you for watching. ♥️
How cool would it be if Kaitlin Olson was able to make a cameo appearance on The Conners during its upcoming final season? It's expected to debut in early 2025, and has already filmed, so the chances of it happening are extremely slim. But hey, if the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia cast can cross over with Abbott Elementary, then it's theoretically possible that Olson could show up in Lanford. Or anywhere else for that matter.
But hopefully she'll be returning to High Potential for years to come. Just keep tuning in every Tuesday night on ABC at 10:00 p.m., even if it's just for the A+ cute baby reaction shots, of which this series has plenty.