ABC’s High Potential episode 12’s case of the week involves a man who exited a private plane, began foaming at the mouth, and then died on the tarmac. The coroner believes it’s death by poison.
Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) joins Adam (Daniel Sunjata), Daphne (Javicia Leslie), and Oz (Deniz Akdeniz) at the airport and gets the rundown on the deceased. He’s Anson Pierce, founder of a tech company that developed a controversial social media platform. His app creates deepfakes from existing videos … deepfakes that can ruin lives.
Anson was traveling with his dog and a security team, and they’re all fine.
FBI Special Agent Ronnie Oliver (Jocko Sims) believes the death is in the FBI’s jurisdiction because it happened in US airspace. Oliver makes the mistake of speaking past Morgan to Adam to find out her name. Morgan introduces herself and notes that the popped blood vessels show Anson was recently in an argument.
FBI Agent Oliver tells Adam to back down and get his detectives off the plane. He’s confident this will stay an FBI case because the poison is likely more sophisticated than “cyanide in the soup.” The FBI has the resources to handle it. The LAPD is ill-equipped.
Adam reveals he’s not a fan of Oliver, telling Morgan he’s overbearing and thinks he can do no wrong. Morgan points out that Oliver called him Adam; no one does that. Adam reveals Ronnie used to be his partner, but he refuses to offer further details.
Back at the station, Oz has learned that Congress attempted to regulate Anson’s company for years. Morgan notes that his company can spread misinformation, affect politics, and destroy lives. Agent Oliver joins the detectives, and apparently, not everyone dislikes him. Lt. Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) has a huge smile when they exchange greetings.
Ronnie’s going to join Adam while he questions the witnesses and Anson’s family, and Adam’s face shows just how much he hates the idea of teaming up again. As the questioning is underway, Morgan asks Selena for the scoop on Adam and Ronnie. Selena reveals they closed more cases than any other team before having a falling out.
The coroner completed the preliminary autopsy but won’t have the full toxicology screen for a few days. She found a possible injection site on his shoulder, but Morgan disagrees with Oliver that it’s where the poison entered his body. The ME thinks the poison was in the anthrax family, and Oliver insists they get Anson’s body away from LAPD and to the FBI as soon as possible.
Anson’s security team includes a former Navy SEAL, a SWAT officer, and a member of the Coast Guard. The police have no idea how Anson was killed, and they can’t believe they are possible suspects. Anson dying while they were on duty will make it impossible to get jobs.
Adam checks out a printout of Anson’s calendar, and it’s incredibly detailed except for a two-hour meeting in Orange County. The security team claims not to know what it was about; they dropped him off and waited in the car.
Ronnie’s taking off, but first, he reminds Adam to transfer the body. Adam doesn’t exactly refuse, but it’s obvious he’s not going just to give in. When Ronnie suggests Adam trust him, Adam replies, “Trust you? Really?”
Morgan interrupts to ask where they got a flash drive that’s in evidence. She explains it couldn’t be Anson’s because Anson designed one that his company still uses. This drive is from his competitor.
They check out the drive and it immediately installs a virus and takes down the LAPD computers. Daphne runs multiple antivirus programs to try to get rid of the malware. Whoever gave this to Anson wanted to take down his computer. And whoever did it was close enough to poison him, too.
Oz gets busy pulling CCTV footage from the time around Anson’s meeting in LA up until he got on the plane. Ronnie volunteers to get the FBI to sweep the satellite footage, and Selena sends Adam and Morgan to work with Ronnie.
An FBI profiler believes the killer was an unemployed single white male who was in Anson’s orbit and could get close. Morgan makes a skeptical face and suggests the killer could have been pretty much anyone, including a shut-in who hated Anson’s technology. It was probably someone who hated what Anson’s company was doing. Morgan believes the killing was personal, not business.
Footage is quickly located of a man slipping the flash drive into Anson’s pocket. The FBI’s facial recognition software determines the man is Simon Keating, an unemployed single white male – just like the profiler suggested.
Ronnie questions Simon, and he insists he was just protecting Anson from his own cybersecurity personnel. Simon is a hacker who tried to protect Anson from hacking by hacking him.
Meanwhile, a masked person forces the driver of the coroner’s van transporting Anson’s body out of the vehicle. After the driver’s safely out, the masked person blows up the van, destroying Anson’s body.
Back at the station, Adam admits they don’t have any leads on who attacked the van. Ronnie barges in and confronts Adam in front of everyone, upset that the LAPD had the body in the first place. Ronnie’s surprised when the team sticks up for each other, with Selena backing her detectives up.
Morgan reins everyone back in and reminds them they need to concentrate on the two-hour meeting prior to Anson’s death. Whoever killed him also destroyed his body, which means it’s not Simon since he’s still in custody. Also, Adam thinks it’s more than one person.
Ronnie and Adam get into it again, with neither backing down. They question each other’s motivations, and Adam thinks Ronnie shouldn’t be withholding anything the FBI’s discovered from them. Ronnie can’t believe Adam wants him to share info with Morgan, and Adam insists Morgan needs to be looped in.
Adam finally makes Ronnie a deal: if the FBI shares all their intel and the LAPD comes up empty after pouring through it, then the LAPD will back off. Ronnie agrees.
Morgan and Adam head to the FBI offices again and Ronnie turns over a “handful of terabytes” of intel. She gets to work, scanning photos and reports and trying to connect the dots. Morgan works throughout the night, with Adam there for support. Morning arrives and Morgan hasn’t figured it out, but Adam points out she keeps circling back to Kenneth Sutton as the source of the poison. Sutton quit his job at California Poison Control three years ago after his 24-year-old daughter, Julie, committed suicide. She killed herself after Anson’s platform spread lies about her. However, the FBI already questioned him and he only leaves his house on Wednesdays to visit his daughter’s grave.
Morgan and Adam look at stills from footage at the cemetery and confirm he leaves flowers there on Wednesdays. But Morgan realizes that in the photo taken two days before Anson’s death, Kenneth wore gloves when placing the flowers on the grave. He’d never done that before.
Maybe the poison was hidden in the flowers and someone else picked it up.
Morgan and Adam head to Kenneth’s apartment, and after they reveal what they know, Kenneth takes off running. Unfortunately, he falls in the stairwell and dies before answering any questions. Morgan and Adam inspect Kenneth’s apartment as Morgan reveals the deepfake video that convinced Julie to kill herself was only 31 seconds long.
Adam points out that her profile of the killer was correct. Morgan describes Kenneth’s organizing style as a “butterfly,” which is someone who likes all his stuff out in the open–not stored away in boxes. Although it looks like he’s a packrat, everything they see had a purpose.
The FBI arrives and Ronnie and Adam argue over whether they’re one step closer or further away from solving the crime. Adam knows Ronnie wants to solve this case for all the right reasons, and Ronnie calms down.
Morgan and Adam are back at the station when Morgan gets Adam to admit he misses having Ronnie as a partner. Adam finally reveals that they were the two top detectives, and someone in the department was jealous. Evidence from one of their cases went missing, along with some money. They were set up to look like they were on the take.
It turned out the money was just logged in wrong. It never disappeared. Ronnie took a job at the FBI and left Adam to clear both their names.
Adam’s looking at photos of Anson’s autopsy as they’re talking and suddenly realizes that the encounter in LA might not have been about business. The marks on his body might have been from pleasure. He’ll have Ronnie pull more footage of the building, and Morgan suggests he pull footage from the back exit. Maybe Anson was meeting in a hotel nearby and not the office building.
Later, Morgan and Adam attend a meeting with the FBI and Ronnie actually thanks them for leading them to Aria Vale. She runs a non-profit that wants to regulate AI and wants to shutdown Anson’s company.
Morgan’s son calls and is super upset. Ludo, her ex who’s paid by the LAPD to watch the kids, has collapsed. He won’t let Elliot or Ava call 9-1-1 so Morgan rushes home. When Morgan gets there, Ludo claims he’s lightheaded and fainted. Morgan asks what’s really going on and he doesn’t want to talk about it. They agreed to be a team raising the kids, and she doesn’t need to apologize when she needs his help.
Ronnie interrogates Aria and his gut reaction is that she’s lying when she says she met with Anson a few times and they decided they were wasting each other’s time. She admits that during their recent meeting, things got heated. He was in collar and wrist restraints, and one mark on his body was from her earring poking him.
Ronnie and Adam review what they know and confirm that neither Simon nor Aria went near Julie Sutton’s grave. They have a photo from the cemetery of the person who picked up the flowers, but it doesn’t show their face. Morgan joins them, and Adam thinks they’re missing a clue in plain sight from Kenneth’s apartment (since he was a butterfly).
Morgan scans the photos, sees the books, and quotes Louisa May Alcott: “It takes two flints to make a fire.” Parker, one of Anson’s security guys, had a flint on his keychain that was probably from Julie. She believes Parker and Julie were in a relationship, and Kenneth and Parker teamed up to kill Anson in revenge for Julie’s death.
Morgan further believes Kenneth placed the poison in a dog collar and then Parker placed the collar around Anson’s dog’s neck. The collar touched Anson’s skin during the flight.
An FBI team goes to arrest Parker, but he’s already on the run heading to the Valley airport and Anson’s jet. Parker beats them to the jet and orders the pilot not to talk to the tower. However, Adam called Daphne to get Simon to hack the plane’s electronics, and he’s able to shut it down remotely. Parker’s surrounded as soon as he exits the plane and surrenders.
After it’s all wrapped up, Ronnie apologizes to Adam for leaving him to clean up the mess. He knows he owes him one and offers to put in a word with the special agent in charge.
Later, Adam tells Morgan that Ronnie offered him a job, and he turned him down. He’s happy with his new partner, and Morgan smiles, happy he’s finally admitting she’s his partner.
Morgan gets home and the family surprises Ludo with a taco night and a screening of 2001, his favorite film. Morgan realized they all needed to slow down and appreciate each other.
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 1 Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 2 “Dancers in the Dark” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 3 “Dirty Rotten Scoundrel” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 4 “Survival Mode” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 5 “Croaked” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 6 “Hangover” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 7 “One of Us” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 8 “Obsessed” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 9 “The RAMS” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 10 “Chutes and Murders” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 11 “The Sauna at the End of the Stairs” Recap
- High Potential Season 1 Episode 13 “Let’s Play” Finale Recap
