‘High Potential’ Episode 6 Recap: “Hangover”

By
Rebecca Murray
-
High Potential Episode 6 Recap
Daniel Sunjata, Judy Reyes and Kaitlin Olson in ‘High Potential’ episode 6 (Disney/Carlos Lopez-Calleja)

ABC’s High Potential episode six opens with a young woman named Sam waking up in her boss’ office, hungover with no idea what happened the night before. It looks like the office has been trashed, but that’s not the worst of it. Nope, not by a long shot. Sam’s boss, Elaine, is lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood.

Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) is in the middle of a little spring cleaning when Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) calls requesting her presence at Metkair TechCorp. The company leases the entire floor, and last night they hosted a party celebrating the launch of a new product. The murder victim is Founder and CEO Elaine Barton who was killed with her Female Innovator of the Year Award. A video on a loop reveals Elaine seems to have modeled herself after Elizabeth Holmes/Steve Jobs.

We get another Apple reference when it’s revealed the assistant’s last name is Wozniak. Sam claims she doesn’t remember anything as she’s not much of a drinker and she’s on new meds. Elaine was Sam’s hero, and she says she liked working for her. However, Morgan notices her fake smile and Sam confesses Elaine wasn’t easy to work for recently. Elaine was getting increasingly paranoid as they approached the launch of their new product, Canary. “Every day was hell,” says Sam, and Adam reveals he thinks she’s the prime suspect.

Morgan looks through Sam’s laptop and sees her latest search was at 10:21pm for [gsd ;imhd. Morgan assumes the gibberish search means she was too drunk to type. Adam finds a notebook on Sam’s desk and inside is a drawing of Sam standing behind Elaine, holding a knife. Morgan, who has been on Sam’s side, admits that’s a little suspicious.

Adam interrogates Sam as Lt. Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) and Morgan discuss whether Elaine possibly pushed Sam too hard, even though Sam was totally committed to the company. Despite how it looks, Morgan still believes Sam is innocent.

Adam and Morgan break the news to Eric, Elaine’s husband. Eric praises his wife and reveals he was her first investor. They’d been getting along fine, and he stayed at the party until 10pm. Eric asks for details on his wife’s death and then confirms she had enemies among her employees.

Mayans M.C.’s JD Pardo shows up 10 minutes in, playing Tom, a janitor at LAPD. He accuses Morgan of leaving orange, cheesy smudges on the doors, but Morgan points out she’s not the only one with fingers. Tom chuckles and walks off.

High Potential Episode 6 Recap
Kaitlin Olson in ‘High Potential’ episode 6 (Disney/Carlos Lopez-Calleja)

The team, including Detectives Oz Osman (Deniz Akdeniz) and Daphne Forrester (Javicia Leslie), go over what they’ve learned. Sam’s toxicology report indicates a mix of Diazepam and alcohol that could trigger amnesia. Daphne reveals Elaine wrote a check last night for $45,623 to cash. And no one knows why “FOREVER” was written in large letters on Elaine’s office wall. Adam’s money is still on Sam being the murderer.

Party guests show up to answer questions, and while some describe it as nice, Amanda the receptionist said the vibe was weird. Elaine wasn’t in a great mood. Multiple people report hearing an argument in Elaine’s office and not checking on it. It wasn’t unusual for Elaine to cuss people out.

Morgan gets her hands on the karaoke playlist. The argument in Elaine’s office was heard while the entire sales team sang “Since You’ve Been Gone,” ending at 11:01pm. “Nothing Compares to You” was performed at 11:03pm, and no one heard anything from Elaine’s office during it. So, she must have been murdered between 10:58pm and 11:01pm.

Morgan works on getting more information out of Sam by being genuinely nice to her. Sam becomes emotional and admits she’s scared that she might have killed Elaine. Morgan assures her she didn’t, but they need to figure out what happened.

Sam discovers a strip of photos in her bra that includes one of her posing with a magazine cover of Elaine’s face made to look like a devil. The photos also show Sam with red lipstick that matches another employee named Denise. Adam questions her and Denise admits that her job is boring. After she signed everyone in on the invitation list, she left her post and went into the party. She’s always had a thing for Sam, and they kissed a little. Sam went into the restroom and Denise waited for her, but an unidentified woman came out. Denise hadn’t checked this woman in, and the woman rushed to the elevator and took off before Denise could catch up with her.

Denise recalls she had brown hair, an average build, and something square stuck to her arm. That rings a bell with Morgan who points out an ad photo. Denise confirms that’s the woman. Her name’s Carmen Jimenez and the square is an insulin pump.

Daphne informs Adam and Morgan that they couldn’t pull prints from the murder weapon.

Adam and Morgan visit the Jimenezes and Carmen reluctantly admits she was at the party but wasn’t invited. Carmen refuses to say anything else, so Morgan points out that she noticed they just moved into this house which they can’t afford. Mr. Jimenez tries to end the interview but not soon enough as Morgan notices that Carmen is hiding her hands. Morgan deliberately spills a glass and Carmen reacts by reaching for it, revealing the bruises and cuts on her knuckles. That’s enough to make Adam bring her in for questioning.

The interrogation begins with Adam describing what he thinks happened. Medkair paid her to fabricate a story about the product’s success, but then something went wrong. He’s got probable cause to arrest her but gives her a chance to come clean. Carmen remains silent.

Selena asks Daphne to look into who’s paying Carmen’s mortgage. As Daphne’s typing, Morgan realizes what she thought was gibberish in Sam’s web search wasn’t gibberish. Her hands were just shifted over. If they were in the right place, she would have typed “pfas lungs,” leading to a report on Forever Chemicals causing lung disease. And that’s why FOREVER was on Elaine’s office wall.

Morgan asks to speak with Carmen alone and asks if it’s true Medkair was buying her silence because their product was hurting kids, including her son. Morgan believes Carmen reached the limit of what she could ignore since it affected her son. Carmen admits that’s true. She just couldn’t live with herself and went to the party. She was angry that people were dancing and celebrating, and she went into Elaine’s office to wait for her. She admits to writing Forever on the wall and stabbing a stuffed bird, cutting her hand in the process. Elaine walked in and threatened to bury her in lawsuits if she said anything. Although Carmen wanted to hurt her, she chickened out. She punched the photo on the wall as she walked out.

“I swear, she was alive when I left,” says Carmen.

Carmen recalls “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers was being sung when she left. That would mean it was at 10:15pm. Carmen also recalls that she ran into Sam in the bathroom, and she can corroborate her story. When Carmen told her what happened, Sam got angry.

Although it’s not looking great for Sam, Morgan and Selena pick up on Carmen saying that Elaine’s husband, Eric, disagreed with paying her off. Maybe that led to an argument between Eric and Elaine since Eric was the money behind the company.

High Potential Episode 6 Recap
Daniel Sunjata and Kaitlin Olson in ‘High Potential’ episode 6 (Disney/Mitch Hasseth)

Adam and Morgan barge into a board meeting and confront Eric about the payouts to Carmen and other families. Eric’s lawyer claims they’re not illegal, but Morgan points out the Securities Act “doesn’t look kindly on companies that have materially false statements in their investor prospectus.” Since that makes what they’ve done illegal, that could lead to a fight between a husband and wife.

Eric dismisses his lawyer and agrees to talk. He admits to providing hush money to Carmen’s family and others when health issues popped up. Elaine promised to fix the issues, and the FDA was never involved because Canary isn’t a medical device. He didn’t think they were ready for the launch, but Elaine disagreed. Eric tried to stop her, but she was full steam ahead. He claims he loved her but didn’t like who she’d become.

Morgan watches Elaine’s promo video again and doesn’t buy her act or her story about helping her niece. Thomas, the janitor, interrupts, asking to clean Morgan’s desk so he can take off for medical school, and Morgan promises to clean up after herself.

Before Thomas leaves, Morgan asks if he had a niece, wouldn’t he have photos of her. Thomas agrees he would and has tons of photos of his nephew. Morgan continues using Thomas as a sounding board, asking why Elaine suddenly switched to Chinese medicinal herbs for Canary when her background is in Western medicine. Between Thomas and Morgan, they come up with a new theory that Nina, her former assistant, is into Chinese medicine and has a daughter. Morgan believes Nina made the first prototype and shared it with Elaine, and Elaine was going to make millions off it.

Adam interrogates Nina and she confirms she came up with the idea, but Elaine paid her for it. She wasn’t angry and enjoyed a nice life. Plus, she believes Elaine genuinely wanted to help people. Morgan and Selena are observing, and Morgan’s convinced by Nina’s smile that she really loved Elaine.

After Nina describes it as horrific that Elaine was murdered with her own trophy, Adam asks how long she’s been sleeping with Eric. He’s the only one who knew how she died, so either she’s the murderer or she’s sleeping with Eric. Nina admits it looks bad, but they were both fighting for Canary and didn’t mean to fall in love.

It now seems the best suspect is Sam, but Morgan remains firmly on her side. When Sam’s brought in, Morgan reminds everyone they still haven’t figured out what the $45,623 check was for. Sam becomes physically ill and runs for the bathroom. After vomiting, she tells Morgan that’s the amount left on her student loans. Sam realizes this means she killed Elaine and that her life is over.

Morgan’s taking down the murder board when she suddenly remembers Sam saying that Elaine became paranoid and had eyes and ears everywhere. She and Adam return to Elaine’s office because it doesn’t make sense that Elaine hung a mirror behind her desk. Morgan’s suspicion is correct; it’s a two-way mirror with a camera behind it.

Morgan and Adam inform Sam that the video shows she told Elaine she was quitting and why. Elaine tried to bribe her, and when that didn’t work, Elaine attacked Sam. Sam fought her off, and Elaine wound up falling on her award, which killed her. Meanwhile, Sam hit her head and passed out. It was self-defense and Adam believes she won’t serve any time.

The day’s done and Selena asks Morgan to join them for drinks. At first, Morgan declines, but then she changes her mind. Before taking off, she uses chip dust to leave her phone number on the glass for Thomas the janitor.

Morgan thanks Selena for being a really great boss. This is one job she doesn’t want to run from.




RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR