High Potential Season 2 Episode 12 Recap: “The Faust and the Furious”

By
Rebecca Murray
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High Potential Season 2 Episode 12 Recap
Daniel Sunjata, Javicia Leslie and Kaitlin Olson in ‘High Potential’ season 2 episode 12 (Disney/Jessica Perez)

ABC’s High Potential season two, episode 12 opens with a man going through his daily routine. It’s the same thing, repeatedly, until one morning the housekeeper arrives and he’s not where he should be. She finds him dead on the floor, a sharp object protruding from his chest.

(The following is a recap of season two, episode 12 and contains spoilers.)

Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) needs to hitch a ride to work from Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) and pops by his place after Ludo drops her off. Karadec refuses to let her inside, and Morgan spots Lucia (Susan Kelechi Watson) walking around his apartment. Morgan’s full of questions, but Karadec only allows her three on the ride to work. Karadec confesses it’s strange how comfortable it is being back with Lucia and admits he’s happy.

The dead man from the opening scene is Gabe Rafferty (Brad Raider). Morgan’s impressed that he’s 55 but doesn’t look it. She figures out the murder weapon is a phurba, a Tibetan dagger used to ward off negative energy and protect against evil. (It obviously didn’t work.)

There aren’t any signs of forced entry or defensive wounds, and the alarm was still set. There’s no indication of a struggle, either. Gabe’s phone is located just as Renata, who’s left 35 missed calls, barges in. She was Gabe’s assistant for eight years and reveals all employees have unique passcodes for entering the house.

Renata claims she was out of town when the murder occurred. When she checked a special app from Gabe’s company, GeneGevity, Gabe’s biodata was blank. Renata explains that her life changed after she went to Gabe’s seminar. Gabe’s mission was life extension, and GeneGevity is a pioneer in gene hacking to slow down the aging process.

Back at the station, the team watches his videos on health and Daphne (Javicia Leslie) admits she tried a GeneGevity cleanse once. She quit when they wanted a bio sample. Daphne recalls that pharmaceutical companies didn’t like Gene’s business so they could be on his enemy list.

Lt. Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) joins the group with news that a woman named Siobhan was suing Gene for child support. This secret love child gives Siobhan a motive. Oz (Deniz Akdeniz) has the day off so Daphne’s tasked with doing further research.

Speaking of Oz (Deniz Akdeniz), he’s at a cemetery making sure everything’s set for his father’s memorial service happening in a few days. The headstone hasn’t been installed yet, and a worker says it would have been installed the day they received the order.

The confirmation of Renata’s alibi keeps the team’s focus on Siobhan. However, Morgan rules her out as soon as she walks into the station; she’s about to give birth. Siobhan claims she didn’t know Gabe was dead until Karadec just broke the news, but she hopes it was painful.

It turns out Gabe’s not the father of her unborn child, and in fact she never met him. Instead, she was a GeneGevity customer and believed she was taking all the precautions not to get pregnant. But then she noticed GeneGevity’s pills had changed and included different ingredients. The new formula included St. John’s Wort, which screws up birth control pills. And that’s why she’s suing Gabe.

She was furious with Gabe but wouldn’t have killed him and left her baby with a mom in jail.

Karadec and Morgan head over to GeneGevity and learn that the board is now handling the company’s finances. A loud argument draws their attention, and they walk in on an employee meeting where different departments are blaming each other for funding cuts. Morgan picks up a report, scans the figures, and realizes they’re victims of “the check is in the mail.” Gabe was buying goods but then wiring the payments to himself. He’d then tell the companies he owed money that the check was in the mail.

In other words, Gene was bleeding the company dry without any of his employees knowing it. However, if someone did know, that would have been a reason to kill Gabe.

As Karadec and Morgan talk to the employees, everyone in the company receives a video message from Gabe. He says that upon his death he instructed his attorneys to share this message. He promises his successor will be announced soon.

Oz visits his mom and she confesses she doesn’t have any money to pay for a headstone. She met with a funeral director, got confused over all the costs, and now the life insurance money is gone. She was too embarrassed to tell Oz but thinks they can have the memorial without a headstone. Oz doesn’t take this well.

The next day at work, Daphne asks Oz if he’s okay. His mom called and asked her to check on him.

Daphne reports that the financial crimes team confirmed that Gabe was embezzling from the company. However, he didn’t keep the money. Instead, he bought other companies, including a nursing home. Since he purchased the Brookville Manor nursing home, all the money has gone there.

High Potential Season 2 Episode 12 Recap
Brad Raider, Daniel Sunjata and Kaitlin Olson in ‘High Potential’ season 2 episode 12 (Disney/Jessica Perez)

Karadec and Morgan pay a visit to the nursing home and it looks abandoned. The only staff member on the premises, Jesse, confirms he worked for Gabe. Jesse explains the patients were moved out because Gabe was investing in Brookville’s therapy team (physical, occupational, and speech), which has the best specialists and equipment. Gabe wanted to reach his full human potential with their assistance.

Karadec and Morgan are stunned when Jesse introduces them to Gabe in AI form. He knows his physical body is gone but with advancements in technology, he believes you can survive without your human body. And Gabe’s had the team create a “humanoid robot replica” that looks just like him. Gene believes his knowledge would be wasted if it died with him, so everything he’s ever read or written was uploaded into this form.

Morgan asks who killed him and Gabe doesn’t know. However, he did receive death threats and less threatening messages and forwards them to Karadec and Morgan’s phones. He walks them through his daily routine, noting his house goes into Do Not Disturb mode at 10:15pm. Morgan recalls that it went on at 9pm on the night of his murder. Gabe connects to his home monitoring system and reveals someone signed in as him at 9:05pm and changed the setting.

When he delves deeper into who accessed the panel, the system starts getting all wonky and shuts down.

Selena overhears Oz on the phone threatening the funeral home and mentioning he’s a police detective. She calls him into her office and confesses she’s worried about him. He admits his dad’s $20,000 headstone is stuck in a shipping container in Italy, with fees continuously being added because his mom can’t pay to have it shipped. Selena thinks the funeral home took advantage of his mom when she was vulnerable. Oz blames himself for not being there for his mom. Selena understands and felt the same way when her mom passed away. She believes he’ll get through it in time but needs to quit blaming himself.

Karadec calls Daphne with the weird news that Gabe 2 passed along the threats Gabe received, and that one, Mika Astor, looks like a potential suspect. Gabe bought Mika’s company and then closed it, and Mika probably wasn’t happy. Mika has the tech skills to shut down Gabe 2, and Morgan believes the murder and the shutdown are related.

High Potential Season 2 Episode 12 Recap
Deniz Akdeniz, Javicia Leslie, Judy Reyes, Nadine Ellis, and Brandon Engman in ‘High Potential’ season 2 episode 13 (Disney/Jessica Perez)

Oz and Daphne interview Mika, revealing they’ve learned Mika was harassing Gabe to sell him back his company. And Mika has the tech skills to get into Gabe’s house and to shut down Gabe 2. Mika admits that Gabe lied and said he’d be able to keep working on his company. Instead, Gabe booted him and forced him to sign a non-compete agreement because of it. (Gabe 2 is running on Mika’s tech.)

Morgan and Karadec return to Gabe’s house and Morgan wonders why the plants in the room where Gabe died are also dying. The rest of the plants in the house aren’t. Adam’s investigating the control panel and suddenly the door closes, locking them in the room.

The air vents come on, and Morgan thinks she’s figured out Gabe’s murder. Someone locked him in the room and rigged the air vents to blow in toxic gas. (That’s why the bugs and plants are dead.) Adam confirms Gabe’s nasal passages and throat were inflamed. Morgan believes he stabbed himself rather than enduring the excruciating symptoms.

It’s possible they just turned the gas on again when the DND was triggered. Karadec calls Selena as Morgan panics after calculating they don’t have much time. Karadec tries to calm her, but she insists she needs to think of a way to escape this 10×10 death trap.

Karadec remains calm while Morgan absolutely crashes, thinking she’s going to die and leave her children without a mom. She can’t breathe and Karadec pulls her into a tight hug, even as she insists she can’t catch her breath. Karadec assures her she’s okay; he’s got her and isn’t going anywhere.

Karadec refuses to let her go and in his arms she calms down. He’s still taking care of her as the door opens. Selena got Mika to access the panel and open the door. Morgan thanks him for calming her down, but she’s still tense. She’s thankful the gas didn’t get to them, and Karadec thinks maybe the door locking didn’t trigger it.

Morgan quickly switches into analysis mode and believes she knows what happened and who set up Gabe.

Later at the station, Renata’s brought in and accused of killing her boss. Gabe had arsenic in his airways and Morgan believes it came from the candles he lit in the room where he died. Since Renata majored in 19th-century arts and textiles, she would have known candles could be used to kill people.

Renata didn’t even need to be there to kill him. And it turns out Renata’s sister has breast cancer and their mom died of it. Gabe’s GeneGevity was doing an important study on the same genes that Renata’s family carries until he started embezzling money and stopped the research.

Mika already confessed to his part in Gabe’s murder, confirming he’s the one who used Gabe’s password to change the time of the DND. Renata knows she’s caught and admits that she murdered Gabe because he stopped the research. Renata believes Gabe deserved to be murdered. Now that he’s gone, GeneGevity can get back on track.

Karadec returns home and Lucia confesses she’s surprised he kept her drawing.  He didn’t even say thanks when she originally gave it to him. Karadec hopes that he’s become the man she needs and deserves. Lucia says he’s always been that man.

The team and Oz’s family and friends gather at Oz’s dad’s gravesite. The headstone is in place and looks perfect. Daphne whispers to Selena that she heard she’d pulled some strings, and Selena admits she spoke with the funeral home, reminding them they’re violating the rules of predatory price gouging. They refunded Mrs. Ozdil’s money and provided the headstone she really wanted.

Oz delivers an emotional, moving speech honoring his dad. Karadec keeps his eyes on Morgan as Oz talks about how things don’t last forever. “It takes a loss to really know what you have,” says Oz as Karadec watches Morgan wipe away tears.

The episode ends with Morgan admitting she feels weird after falling apart at Gabe’s. Karadec can’t believe she’d apologize for being human and admits that when he does fall apart, he is certain she’ll be there for him.

He seems to have a tough time looking away as Morgan gets into her car.

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