'Professor T' Recap: Season 3 Episode 6

Professor T is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue.

As soon as the professor cedes his overnight vigil at the hospital with his mother to the dean, Adelaide wakes up – she has been avoiding her son. She was heading to her attic to destroy diaries and a trophy of the professor’s that would reveal the truth about his father’s death when she fell and had to go to the hospital. The dean will go to her house to destroy the items for her.

But the professor, curious why Adelaide was in the attic, beats the dean to it. He summons his therapist and sends her to search the attic, saying he cannot do it himself. She agrees because she’s hoping that the professor is on the verge of a breakthrough. She brings down diaries and a nearby spelling trophy won by the professor. He doesn’t want to read the diaries and she refuses to without Adealide’s permission, so she returns them and the trophy to the attic – but not before they notice traces of dried blood on the trophy.

The trophy brings back a memory: of the professor seeing his father’s body hanging from a noose, while hearing a male voice talking.

The professor sees the dean entering Adelaide’s house after he leaves. The dean tells Adelaide he has burned the diaries and thrown away the trophy.

Meanwhile, a woman has been found dead at the scene of a car crash. Dan and Lisa have to inform Marianne Tierney’s husband Peter of her death. She had internal bleeding and head trauma, and a trace of silver paint and a dent on her car suggest she may have been hit and veered off the road. Her airbag had been used and not replaced, so it didn’t protect her.

Seb Vermorel comes into the police station, accompanied by his parents, to make a statement about Marianne. He is the star of the national gymnastics team that Marianne’s husband Peter coaches, and had recently argued with Peter. Marianne called him to meet in order to patch things up; she had done this before.

Seb drove to meet her in the dark and rain but missed his turn and glanced against another car while turning around. He saw the car leave the road in his rearview and saw a woman get out, so he assumed she was fine. He had had a few drinks and so didn’t want to report the accident. He went to the restaurant where he was to meet Marianne and couldn’t get a hold of her, so he eventually went home. He passed the accident and saw an ambulance, and it was only then that he recognized her car.

Mud on Marianne’s shoes and clothes confirm Seb’s story that he saw her get out of the car after the accident. The case seems straightforward – until an autopsy shows that the true cause of Marianne’s death was suffocation, not her injuries from the accident. She was also six weeks pregnant.

The professor is present when the detectives inform Peter of this fact, and the professor guesses that Peter’s incredibly surprised reaction is because he didn’t think Marianne could get pregnant – Peter must be infertile. Was Marianne having an affair – with Seb?

But when the detectives go to ask Peter, he’s gone. He has sped to the Vermorel home and begun smashing one of their cars with a wrench. When Seb emerges from the house, Peter attacks him until Lisa and Dan arrive and arrest him. He admits that there were signs of an affair between Marianne and Seb but he ignored them. He’s so upset to learn that Marianne was murdered and didn’t just die in the crash that he knocks himself out by slamming his head against a wall.

Marianne called the landline at the Vermorel home to arrange the meeting with Seb. He explains that his phone was dead and charging. His father Duane says that he and his wife Leah, a former gymnast whose career was cut short by an injury, watched TV while Seb was out. When Duane is told that Marianne was murdered, the professor surmises from his reaction that he already knows.

But the professor is then summoned away by his therapist. She has retrieved his father’s autopsy and contacted the coroner who prepared it – and he remembered the case. The neck bruising suggested the noose may have been put on his neck after death, and the head wound may have been what killed him, even though the final report said it came from him being cut down from the rope. The coroner didn’t refer the case to the police because the dean, a young criminology professor then, gave an eyewitness account disputing those oddities. The male voice the professor has just recalled hearing when he saw his father’s body was the dean’s.

The professor goes to the hospital and finds the dean but not Adelaide in her room – she’s in therapy. He accuses the dean of killing his father and framing it as a suicide, but then Adelaide appears. She decides to tell the truth.

The professor’s father was drunk on the professor’s seventh birthday. He threw the cake, then hit Adelaide for shouting at him. The professor grabbed his arm, and he picked the professor up by his throat. Adelaide thought he was going to kill her son, and hit him unexpectedly hard with the professor’s trophy, killing him. The professor fled to the cellar and Adelaide called the dean, who had the idea to make it look like suicide.

The professor doesn’t remember any of this. He has blamed himself his whole life for his father’s “suicide.” He calls Adelaide a narcissist and goes outside to call the police. His therapist urges him to consider things first. While waiting to reach Maiya, he has the realization that Leah, Seb’s mother, killed Marianne. And then he hangs up on Maiya and cries. The tears soon turn happy.

He returns to his mother, who says she’ll turn herself in – but he refuses to let her. He takes off his ubiquitous glove to hold his mother’s hand – in a germ-ridden hospital, no less. He has finally had his therapist’s hoped-for breakthrough.

Dan has also made a major stride. He has proposed to Lisa right before she transfers to another station, using his late mother’s ring, and she has accepted.

Lisa herself has figured out who murdered Marianne, independently of the professor. Duane’s mother lives at the same retirement community as her father, and she has confronted him there after releasing him from custody and finding that he seemed reluctant to leave.

Who will visit your mother if you’re in prison, she asks him, before telling him that he was going to be a grandfather: Marianne was pregnant with Seb’s son. That’s why Marianne called Seb, to set up a meeting where she could tell him. Duane answered the landline when Marianne couldn’t reach Seb via his charging cellphone. Leah overheard the call and became suspicious. She looked at Seb’s phone and saw numerous messages from Marianne revealing their affair.

Seb grabbed his phone from his mom and went to meet Marianne. Leah followed and came home an hour later to tell Duane that Marianne had an accident – and that Leah took advantage of it to kill her.

Lisa calls Dan to meet her at the Vermorels to arrest Leah. Duane calls Leah to tell her that he told the truth. The professor video-calls Lisa to tell her the culprit. She’s happy to tell him she figured it out, and surprised to see he’s not wearing gloves and is calling her simply “Lisa” instead of DS Donckers. He warns her not to confront Leah alone; she’s dangerous.

Leah rushes out of the house into her car. Lisa stands in the way – and Leah hits her. She then speeds over Lisa’s body to flee.

The professor witnesses it via the video-call and frantically calls an ambulance. He arrives first, to see Lisa die. When Dan gets there, she’s already gone.

The professor puts his gloves back on, tears running down his face.