'Professor T' Recap: Season 4 Episode 4

Professor T airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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A character is stabbed onstage in a play – and the actress dies. The knife is real.

Phoebe Sanders stabbed Tanya Loomis in front of her husband Bradley as part of a drama that turned all too real because the prop knife was replaced by an actual one. Backstage, Phoebe and Bradley’s daughter Francesca is found unconscious in a storage closet, having been hit in the head with a bust of Shakespeare.

Francesca was found by Georgina Galvin, who was supposed to perform the role that her understudy Phoebe ended up taking at the last minute when Georgina had a migraine. Phoebe has played the role before, but was too busy to take it this time as she has been preparing for a possible film role.

Georgina was backstage because her migraine had gone away and she wanted to pick up her script. She tells the detectives that she overheard Tanya arguing with her boyfriend, Fabian, in her dressing room and went over to check on her when she heard something smash. Georgina had previously dated Fabian and he had punched a hole in her wall, so she worried for Tanya’s safety. But Tanya said she was only making things worse, so Georgina left. She thinks Fabian engineered Tanya’s death.

Fabian doesn’t show up to work the next day.

Vance Markham is responsible for much of the running of the theater, but he went home after the play started. He had forgotten to put the block of knives from which the fatal one was drawn onstage, so Bradley had to do it himself at the last minute. All the other knives were glued in, so Phoebe could grab only the one that was supposed to be a prop. Everything had gone smoothly in the previous nine performances.

Francesca is in the hospital with a concussion and has almost no memory of her attack. Maybe she saw someone switch the knives, so they attacked her to keep her quiet. That means she’s still in danger, so a police officer is posted outside her door. But she has bonded with Chloe, and asks her to guard her instead.

So Chloe stands watch outside Francesca’s room that night, without asking any official permission. She falls asleep, and wakes as a man is entering Francesca’s room. She tackles him, only to find that it’s Francesca’s father Bradley.

Maiya berates Chloe the next day for several failings. Fortunately, Bradley will not press charges. Dan comforts Chloe with a story of his own stupidity as a younger detective.

It’s not the first time Bradley is attacked that day. While Dan and the professor were at the theater earlier, they heard arguing and found Fabian pushing Bradley against a wall, demanding to know where Phoebe is and blaming her for killing his girlfriend.

Fabian admitted that he and Tanya had an argument backstage – over Georgina. Tanya saw Fabian talking to his ex and got upset. He left and went to the pub, but he saw Georgina there and immediately went home.

Confronted with this story that contradicts her own, Georgina admits that she, too, was struck by jealousy over Fabian and stole some items from Tanya’s dressing room after having a drink or two.

The detectives have yet to speak with Phoebe Sanders, who did the actual stabbing. They learn that she was in a psychiatric clinic for six weeks last year, and that she and her family have sessions with the professor’s therapist, Dr. Goldberg – the doctor was even at the performance where Tanya died. Fearing for Francesca’s safety, Maiya asks the professor to convince Goldberg to break confidentiality and tell him about the Sanders family.

Goldberg reluctantly shares some information. Phoebe went into the clinic at the urging of her husband and the police after she lost a TV role she was all but guaranteed to get when the famous actor starring in it demanded a love interest who was younger. Phoebe then threatened him and spiralled into depression. Francesca was sent to boarding school, which she hated, while her mother was in the clinic.

The professor suspects Francesca is pretending to have amnesia after her attack. He goes to the hospital and conducts a simple memory test with her. She fails it 9 out of 10 times.

Meanwhile, Maiya and Dan are preparing to arrest Phoebe. They have learned that she once again was denied a part, this time for a film, that went instead to Tanya. The producer basically promised it to Phoebe, but the director wanted Tanya. And Tanya’s phone shows that she recently texted the director, “I think Phoebe knows. Call me.”

The professor says Phoebe isn’t responsible for Tanya’s death. Nevertheless, she arrives at the police station to confess.

Even after Phoebe’s confession, the professor claims that Phoebe is lying, trying to protect her daughter. Francesca is the one who switched the knives. She then injured herself to deflect blame. The Shakespeare bust had traces of blue paint also found on shelves in the storage closet but not on its typical plinth. Francesca placed it on a shelf and then pulled it off with a pole in the closet to hit herself on the head, giving her an excuse to fake amnesia. The professor’s memory test had a 50-50 chance – Francesca had to be purposefully trying not to make the right choice to get 9 out of 10 wrong.

She was trying to protect her mother from another breakdown brought on by once again losing a role – and to forestall her own return to loathed boarding school. So she switched the knives to kill Tanya, figuring the role would then go to Phoebe.

The detectives bring Francesca to the station and lead her mother past her in handcuffs. Francesca is shocked, yelling out “No” to her mother and telling her “sorry.” She then proves willing to confess.

Dan visits his dad, who ribs him for not visiting more often. But it’s his pushing Dan to talk about the death of Lisa that upsets Dan more and makes him leave.

The professor’s Aunt Zelda worries that her boyfriend Peter Snares might want to propose to her – he has booked a meal at a very fancy restaurant. But she still has affection for the dean, as demonstrated when he visits her and she has him sit for a photo shoot. They almost kiss, before he leaves.

Peter Snares is the father of the professor’s assistant, and she is conducting her own investigation on the dean. She runs into Lyndon, a man who has been brought back on a temporary contract to work in the life sciences department after being fired, and flirts before giving him some samples to test for DNA. He asks to see her again.

And Dr. Goldberg invites the professor to dinner to ask for help mitigating Francesca’s prison sentence. The professor suggests that Francesca lives in a fantasy world, growing up with actor parents; she didn’t think of the permanency of death. He reassures Goldberg that she did not fail Francesca. He also asks her about the books in her home, the number of which has suddenly been reduced; she explains that her husband has finally moved out after three years of them cohabiting in an amicable separation.

After she leaves dinner, the professor pulls out a tarot card given him by Zelda: the lovers.