'High Potential' Meets 'Shameless' in Kaitlin Olson's Hilarious 2-Part Sitcom

Published Sep 20, 2026, 11:54 AM EDT

Lenny Burnham grew up in Missoula, Montana. From an early age, he was obsessed with TV and loved creating websites and participating in fan forums for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He attended New York University, where he studied Dramatic Writing with a focus in Television Writing.

He hosts two podcasts about television,* House of House: A House Rewatch Podcast* and Chapter Surfing, a podcast discussing TV shows adapted from books. He’s previously had freelance articles published in Paste and Inverse. He is a gay trans man who is an expert in looking at television through the lens of LGBT representation. He’s also an avid shipper.

***High Potential ***star Kaitlin Olson is most known for her iconic performance as Dee Reynolds on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She also gives a great performance as DJ on Hacks, playing alongside the incredible Jean Smart. But one of her most interesting and hilarious performances was on a lesser-known show, the underrated 2017 Fox sitcom The Mick. Unfortunately, *The Mick *was cancelled after only two seasons, but while it was on, it was the wildest sitcom on network TV. It seems hard to believe now, because she fits in so perfectly to a network procedural on High Potential, but Olson admitted to Variety that when she first took the role in The Mick, she was nervous to do a network show after so much time in the cable world. But from The Mick’s very first episode, she proved she had nothing to be nervous about.

With a concept similar to Shameless, **Kaitlin Olson plays Mickey, a self-absorbed slacker **who becomes the guardian of her sister’s spoiled children after her sister and brother-in-law are arrested in The Mick. **Sofia Black-D’Elia *plays Sabrina Pemberton, Mickey’s teenage niece. They have an immediate rivalry that develops into a grudging mutual respect. Thomas Barbusca *plays Chip Pemberton, the middle child of the Pemberton family, and Jack Stanton is adorable as her 6-year-old nephew Ben. For a sitcom that is oftentimes very edgy, it’s a delightfully classic setup.

*The Mick *pushes the limits of how cruel a sitcom can be. Ben is injured horribly in almost every episode, and the season finale cliffhangers are brutal. In the pilot episode, Mickey secretly gives Sabrina tranquilizers, makes Ben swell up with allergies, gets Chip into a fight that gets his entire face bloodied, gets a neighbor tasered, is brutally attacked by an owl, and then cooks that owl and feeds it to her niece and nephews. The rest of the show more than lives up to the gauntlet thrown by the wild pilot.

Your answers point to the iconic universe your values, your instincts, and your particular way of seeing the world were built for. This is where you would find your people — and your purpose.

You believe in the cause — in the idea that freedom is worth fighting for even when the odds are impossible and the empire is vast.

You understand, in the deepest part of yourself, that the journey matters as much as the destination — and that the world’s beauty is worth protecting even at great cost.

You believe that love, loyalty, and doing what’s right are not naive sentiments — they are the most powerful forces in any world, magical or otherwise.

You see the world clearly — its power structures, its hypocrisies, its brutal arithmetic — and you are not paralysed by that clarity. You use it.

You believe the future is worth building — that curiosity, cooperation, and the expansion of understanding are not just ideals but the most practical path forward for any civilisation.

Episodes of *The Mick *typically portray Mickey trying to help the kids, but coming up with a totally misguided plan. When she finds out Sabrina isn’t using any birth control with her boyfriend, she tries to trick Sabrina into thinking she’s pregnant. When she can’t find the right school for Ben, she tries dressing him up like a girl to get him into a private all-girls school. Kaitlin Olson is hilarious as she gives Mickey an energetic spark and a certainty that these terrible plans will work. She plays Mickey with the same kind of overconfidence that makes her so much fun to watch on High Potential, although, of course, on *High Potential *the confidence is much more warranted.

Like High Potential,* The Mick* shows off Olson’s ability to play off young actors. But, while the scenes she shares with **Amirah J **— who plays her daughter on High Potential — are more melancholy and tinged by the tragedy hanging over their heads, her scenes with young actors on The Mick have laugh-out-loud comedic chemistry. Sophia Black-D’Elia matches Olson’s sardonic style, while Thomas Barbusca is great at playing up how exasperated and disgusted Chip is by her.

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