A New Heart-Pounding Case! Here’s What Happened on This Week’s ‘High Potential’
A New Heart-Pounding Case! Here’s What Happened on This Week’s ‘High Potential’
After a three-episode arc built around The Game Maker wrapped up last week, Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) and the detective squad have a fresh case on their hands. The team is tasked with finding out who attacked and suffocated a seemingly unsuspecting man innocently waiting for someone on a restaurant patio.
With few people to question about the crime, and the mystery man resuscitated but unconscious, Morgan and Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) have their work cut out for them in this episode’s whodunnit.
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At the start of High Potential’s episode 3 of season 2, we see Morgan and the kids getting back into their usual routine now that The Game Maker is behind bars. Morgan is headed back to work full time, and the kids are resuming school as usual. But when Ava (Amirah J) asks if there’s any news on her dad’s whereabouts, it gives Morgan pause. She still hasn’t told her daughter the latest information about meeting Arthur (Mekhi Phifer), a friend of Roman’s, or what that might all mean.
The Nathan Gould investigation begins
At the crime scene, paramedics who arrived to provide medical aid to the victim tell Morgan and Karadec that his name is Nathan Gould. They refer to him as a “frequent flier” because he has ridden in their ambulance on more than one occasion. Nathan always had an unexplained burn or a broken bone that he attributed to his own clumsiness. The paramedics, however, weren’t buying it.
A search of Nathan’s apartment turns up tons of sports books and stats research, plus collection notices. This leads Morgan and Karadec to presume he is a gambling addict. While they search, a man tries to break into the apartment, prompting Karadec to chase him out of the building and finally catch him outside.
Not surprisingly, they learn the perpetrator was trying to break into Nathan’s apartment to kill him. Ultimately this sends Morgan and Karadec to an illegal card room. Here they meet Ray, a man to whom Nathan owed a lot of money and who Nathan had recently made the beneficiary of his life insurance policy to repay his debts. However, it was decided that if Ray had sent the man trying to break into Nathan’s apartment to kill him after the restaurant attack, then he was not the person responsible for the attack earlier that day.
Back at the precinct, Karadec and Daphne (Javicia Leslie) question Nathan’s daughter Jessica, who was the person who stood to inherit his $100,000 life insurance benefits upon his death until he switched it over to Ray. Jessica insists she no idea he had a life insurance policy, or that she was the beneficiary. According to her, they had just gotten back in touch after being estranged for years. When they tell Jessica he was holding a ladybug pin at the time of the attack, she tells them Ladybug was his childhood nickname for her. She said they were supposed to meet that morning at a restaurant clear on the other side of town from where Nathan was found.
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Is there any movement in finding Roman?
At the hospital, Nathan is pronounced brain dead and Jessica consults with a transplant coordinator about organ donation. Considering Jessica and her father had just reconciled, it makes Morgan think about an estrangement that hits closer to home—Ava and Roman, especially since Ava just asked if there was any news about her dad.
Morgan decides to tell Ava what she knows so far about Roman before school, then leaves to go to work. Meanwhile Ava, looking uncomfortable with the latest information, is left to stew over the fact that her dad is still alive, living just one state over.
Back at work, Morgan is considering her most recent conversation with Jessica, who she learned is pregnant. Jessica and her father had commiserated over the many doctors appointments they had each experienced recently, with Nathan telling her about a series of cardiologist visits. The thing that’s strange is that the cardiologist said Nathan’s heart was in great condition, so why all of the appointments?
When the team goes through Nathan’s phone, they notice an alarm that was set on it for 8:01 am the morning he was attacked. It appears to them that someone wanted his body to be found not long after the attack. Morgan believes that Nathan was murdered because the attacker wanted his heart. Adding to that, she thinks that while Nathan initially planned to take his own life because of his many gambling debts, once he realized he was going to be a grandfather, he changed his mind. No longer wanting to kill himself, the person he made the deal with to get his heart for a transplant still staged the attack. And they did so in a way that ensured he wouldn’t get help until he was declared brain dead.
Who wanted Nathan’s heart?
Neither the hospital’s transplant surgeon or transplant coordinator will tell Morgan, Karadec and Soto who is going to be the recipient of Nathan’s heart when he’s taken off life support. The fact that this very simple question keeps going unanswered raises suspicions about the attacker. But that’s all put on hold because … Morgan gets a call that Ava has been arrested.
Ava skipped school to vandalize one of her father’s murals. When Morgan and Karadec arrive, they ask the arresting officer to let her go, but he refuses. In true Morgan fashion and as a protective mom, she ends up making the situation worse. Both she and Ava end up in a holding cell. Fortunately, Karadec springs them not long after their arrests.
Back at the house Morgan and Ava have a heart-to-heart, then pore over some possible suspects Morgan is eyeing. They settle on a Hollywood producer who also happens to be a major hospital donor. Karadec and Daphne pay a visit to his house where he is heading to get a transplant, but not Nathan’s heart. He was told it wasn’t a good match so he’s going elsewhere. Meanwhile, Morgan makes a trip to the hospital where she finds out that someone has stolen Nathan’s heart.
Through a process of elimination that really only someone with Morgan’s mind can process, she narrows it down to four people on the transplant list before zeroing in on one. That person just happens to be the mother of one of the paramedics known for helping Nathan after his “accidents.” The paramedic is apprehended while delivering the heart to the hospital where his mother is receiving care, and that means another solved case in the books for High Potential.
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