High Potential season 1, episode 7 recap and review: "One of Us"

The High Potential fall finale delivered an impactful episode. How did Morgan and Ava get out of trouble in High Potential season 1, episode 7.

Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from High Potential season 1, episode 7.

What does Morgan decide to do on her day off? Well, take Ava to her work. Ava is interested in seeing what her mom does for work now, but she gets far more of a nightmare than she expects. It is a chance to see the lengths that her mom will go to protect her, though.

At first, Morgan doesn’t realize that Ava is still in the building. She was supposed to get out when the two criminals came in with the threat of a bomb. Even Karadec believed that Ava was out based on a statement Morgan made. Fortunately, nothing happened to Ava, but it did make Morgan work harder to solve the case.

A look at the problem of having just one suspect in High Potential

The High Potential fall finale gave us that reminder that the cops aren’t always the best at solving crimes. They tend to have a suspect in mind and then look for all evidence that points to that. It can lead to ignoring other pieces of information and evidence.

We saw that happen with Karadec earlier in the season. While Karadec ended up being right, that’s not always the way it plays out. In this case, the cops got it wrong, and it was up to those inside the precinct to figure it all out. Karadec, Soto, and others were outside of the precinct doing what they could from there.

As we suspected, Morgan helped to figure out the real suspect. It was still a case of everyone working together. Morgan needed Karadec to work her clues from the outside, and Karadec needed Morgan to figure things out from the inside.

Morgan’s brain doesn’t always work in real time

One thing that I’ve loved about High Potential is seeing that while Morgan takes things in, her brain doesn’t always connect the pieces immediately. We get to see that it sometimes takes time for Morgan’s brain to connect the pieces. That’s what happens in this episode, but it’s not about the case this time. It’s about the situation in the precinct.

Morgan notices a lot about the two people threatening to blow up the precinct. One of those is that the female is pregnant. That’s why she’s so determined to get her boyfriend off the hook for murder—and she knows that he didn’t to it.

This should have been the big clue from the start when it came to the bomb. It was only when the other guy took a beat to say if there was a bomb or not that Morgan was able to put everything together. The sniffer dog didn’t see anything wrong with the package that was delivered to the precinct, and there’s no way a pregnant woman would risk being around the chemicals needed to create a bomb. There wasn’t a bomb in the box at all.

Morgan’s momma bear comes out in High Potential

I was surprised to see Morgan be nice toward the woman threatening her and everyone else in the precinct. That was until the very end, and we got to see how Morgan’s momma bear comes out at times. As soon as she realized Ava was in the precinct, she needed to step up the game and she needed to play the people threatening the precinct.

At the very end, she made it clear that it was all an act. She was never going to support someone who put her daughter at risk. She could fake it until the end, which does suggest that a bit of others are rubbing off on her. She’s taking some tips from Soto and Karadec considering she got herself in trouble in the very first episode.

Over the course of seven episodes, we’ve watched Morgan grow in her role as a consultant. We’ve seen how various members of the precinct have started listening to and respecting her. This was a turning point for some of the others in the precinct, and she’ll no longer be known as “The Cleaning Lady” anymore.

It’s a great way to end the 2024 episodes. We’ll have more coming back soon, but this was certainly an intense and dramatic episodes despite mostly only being in the precinct.

High Potential returns on Tuesday, Jan. 7 at 9/8c on ABC. Catch up on the series on Hulu.

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