Published Aug 27, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT
Ryan O’Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided’s CubbiesCrib. Whether it’s taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what’s going on. Outside of entertainment, he’s a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor’s in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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After only two seasons on ABC, High Potential has already established itself as the crown jewel in the network’s lineup, at least in terms of viewership. Kaitlin Olson’s return as the wicked-smart Morgan Gillory for Season 2 kept the momentum going from a red-hot debut, ending as the third-most-watched series on broadcast television for the 2025/26 season with 16 million viewers tuning in on average in 35-day multiplatform rankings. For the start of the 2026/27 season, however, the Disney-owned network will be without its biggest hit of last year. Season 3 is being held for the mid-season, but at least one of ABC’s colorful detectives is due to return this fall and fill that gap.
While delaying a flagship hit creates a temporary void in the weekly grid, it also gives the network an opportunity to pivot toward its broader stable of character-driven dramas. Holding major ratings drivers for mid-season is a deliberate strategy to maintain momentum into the spring, leaving early autumn open for reliable procedurals to anchor key time slots. To pull that off, ABC needed a proven performer capable of capturing immediate viewer interest and setting a high bar for the rest of the fall lineup.
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
After CBS pulled back the curtain on all of its fall premiere dates, ABC is now following suit and, in the process, confirming that R.J. Decker would return on Tuesday, September 15. That leaves less than two months until the former photographer and his team can start addressing that bombshell finale and, ultimately, clearing his name once again. It’s by far the earliest of the network’s scripted primetime programs to debut, with the next closest being Scrubs Season 2 on September 30. Scott Speedman will be back with his camera at the ready, rejoined by Jaina Lee Ortiz, Bevin Bru, Kevin Rankin, and Adelaide Clemens.
R.J. Decker Season 1 followed the titular ex-con after he was released from prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Disgraced and out of a job as a newspaper photographer, he takes up the mantle of a private investigator, solving the most out-there crimes in South Florida and finding a bit of personal redemption in the process. Helping him tackle this colorful, crime-ridden world are some familiar faces, including his journalist ex and her police detective wife, as well as the woman who sent him to jail in the first place and is now acting as his shady benefactor. Although its renewal came down to the wire, it immediately made a splash with critics and audiences and debuted with over 11 million views across Disney’s platforms.
Before the hot new procedural closed out Season 1, R.J. and his team revisited the incident that landed the P.I. in prison and got some semblance of closure. They were able to not only retrieve R.J.’s SD card with the incriminating photo that pinned Victor Ochoa’s (David Zayas) men to the scene of a murder, but also found enough evidence to send Victor to prison. However, that victory was short-lived when Victor was found dead in his pool, leaving a new mystery to solve and potentially more problems for R.J. and Emi (Ortiz), in particular. After creating the series loosely based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel Double Whammy, showrunner Rob Doherty will be tasked with formulating another comedic and intriguing chapter for R.J. Decker that builds off that bombshell, while introducing some other colorful crimes along the way.
R.J. Decker Season 2 premieres on Tuesday, September 15. Stay tuned here at Collider for more as ABC’s fall season approaches.
Paul McGuigan, Christine Moore, Holly Dale, Kenneth Biller, Michael Lehmann, Seith Mann