ABC Is Failing ‘High Potential’ and ‘The Rookie’ Once Again
Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories.
ABC's fall procedural lineup has just two weeks left until it airs its mid-season finales and goes on hiatus for the winter, but the premiere dates for the spring lineup have only just been announced. Like 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Nashville, Grey's Anatomy, and R.J. Decker, ABC's lineup of procedurals premiering their new seasons this January all concluded their most recent seasons last spring. Whereas fans of the aforementioned shows only had to wait for the length of the standard summer hiatus, though, fans of the second group of shows will have had to wait up to nine months by the time they return.
For a show like Will Trent, which has been on this timeline since its debut, this is to be expected. The Rookie and High Potential, on the other hand, initially got to air in both the fall and the spring, and have since been relegated to just the latter. For two of ABC's most popular shows, it's already disappointing that they only get to air for a few months of the year. Now, though, there are just under two months until these shows return the first full week of January, and it's frustrating that their return dates have not been announced until last week.
'High Potential' and 'The Rookie' Are Being Done a Disservice by Their Spring Release Schedule
The Rookie has been on the spring release schedule for three seasons now, but High Potential has only just been moved to this lineup. It's a particularly jarring choice for High Potential, considering the series is only on its third season, and the show's second season had monumental records of success. Just as the series was really gaining momentum, it was put on break for nine months, leaving fans to speculate on their own about the fallout of the Season 2 finale's intense cliffhanger ending. Fans of The Rookie, meanwhile, may be used to this by now, but it is still frustrating to watch a beloved Network TV show only air for about a third of the year, then go on break for the rest of it.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which The Rookie Character Are You? Nolan · Chen · Bradford · Lopez
Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you which one you are. Eight seasons in, the Mid-Wilshire shift has turned into one of the best ensembles on network television, and these four are the ones everybody argues about.
🚔John Nolan(Nathan Fillion)
🎭Lucy Chen(Melissa O'Neil)
🏅Tim Bradford(Eric Winter)
🕵Angela Lopez(Alyssa Diaz)
01
Why would you join up in the first place? Pick the one that sounds most like you.
02
How would your friends describe you? Be honest.
03
What would you be like as a training officer? One answer only.
04
How do you handle authority? Pick the closest answer.
05
Pick a shift. No wrong answers here.
06
What is your relationship with the rules? Pick the closest answer.
07
How do you handle a bad day at work? Think about the last one.
08
What do you want out of the job? Last one. This is the one that decides it.
Roll Call, Mid-Wilshire You Are…
The Rookie started as a show about a man starting over at forty-five and turned into a proper ensemble drama somewhere around season three. Here is which of them you are, and the case for yours being the best of the four.
John Nolan
You started late and you are not embarrassed about it. Nolan walks into the academy at forty-five surrounded by people half his age, and the show is honest that this is both his biggest disadvantage and the only reason he is any good at the job.
- You are relentlessly decent, and people keep underestimating how far that gets you.
- The series was inspired by William Norcross, who really did join the LAPD in his forties.
- Nathan Fillion has played him for eight seasons and the show has outlasted most of what ABC launched alongside it.
- Your flaw is wanting to solve the human problem when somebody just needs you to do the police work.
Lucy Chen
You are better at this than people expect and you intend to keep proving it. Chen goes from rookie to the best undercover officer in the division, which works because she is genuinely good at becoming somebody else and genuinely bad at pretending she does not care.
- You are ambitious in a way that lifts the people around you rather than stepping over them.
- Her undercover episodes are the ones the fandom rewatches, and the show knows it.
- Chenford has carried more internet discourse than any other relationship on network television this decade.
- Your risk is taking on the hardest version of every assignment just to see if you can.
Tim Bradford
You are hard on people because you have decided that is what caring looks like. Bradford is introduced as the worst training officer in the building and slowly revealed as the one who takes the job most seriously, which are the same fact seen from two angles.
- You hold a high standard and the people who meet it would follow you anywhere.
- The shop talk and the tests he sets his rookies became the show's most imitated running bit.
- Eric Winter has said the character works because the audience is allowed to find him annoying first.
- Your weakness is that discipline is easier to give people than warmth, and you know which one they need.
Angela Lopez
You said what you wanted and then you went and got it. Lopez wanted detective from the first episode, said so out loud, and got there by being better at the work than the people who were quieter about wanting it.
- You are direct, which some people find abrupt and the rest find enormously restful.
- She is the character the show most often trusts with the actual detective plotting.
- Her storyline with Wesley gave the series its best running argument about what the job costs at home.
- Your flaw is that being right quickly is not the same as bringing everybody with you.
There are a lot of benefits to being a fan of a Network TV show, from getting to watch the episodes live alongside other fans to getting to speculate each week about what will happen next. The best part, though, is loving a show with a predictable release schedule. When series then start changing their release schedule to only air for half the time, it is incredibly disappointing to fans. It means potentially fewer episodes for the new season, as well as a much longer wait in between seasons, dampening some of the excitement and anticipation earned by the finales of the previous seasons.
ABC Needs To Have a Better System for Its Spring Release Shows
In a perfect world, ABC would move High Potential and The Rookie back to its fall release schedule, but as it stands, the network just needs to do better by the procedurals in its spring lineup. Both of these shows excellently set up suspense ahead of their new seasons by ending their most recent ones with massive cliffhangers after two explosive episodes. For The Rookie, the fan-favorite pairing of Lucy Chen (Melissa O'Neil) and Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) finally got engaged in a beautiful beach proposal, only to both get abducted seconds later. High Potential, on the other hand, introduced another new twist in the ongoing mystery of what happened to Roman Sinquerra. After Captain Nick Wagner (Steve Howey) went to a meetup to get more information on this mystery, Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) found him shot and left for dead, leaving Wagner's fate up in the air over the hiatus.
When both of these series concluded their most recent seasons, fans were left champing at the bit to find out what happens next. While there are still devoted fans excited for these series to return, there has no doubt been a loss of momentum for both of these series after their unusually long break. Most fans will likely have to do a refresher on the events of the previous seasons to remember the main events ahead of their returns, and while that's become standard for shows on streaming now, this is still atypical of Network TV shows. ABC needs to do better with the shows in its spring lineup, and to stop moving shows to mid-season after they've previously been airing for the entire season.
High Potential returns to ABC on Tuesday, January 5, at 9:00 P.M. EST. The Rookie returns to ABC the following night, on Wednesday, January 6, at 9:00 P.M. EST.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.