'Professor T' Recap: Season 4 Episode 5

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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Adelaide has a painting on display in a gallery – and it’s splattered with red paint. On CCTV, the gallery owner Nolan DeMarco saw someone wearing a hood throw the paint and went to accost them as they wrote “PBD” on the wall, receiving his own splash of paint in return. He is now demanding police protection.

“PBD” stands for “Pale Blue Dot.” It’s a climate activist group that was founded a decade ago but has been dormant. It was started by Henry Doyle and Dee Wallace, and Nolan was a member. Dee was killed nine years ago when she fell through the roof of a power station while resisting arrest during an action; someone had tipped off the police. Everyone blamed Henry.

When Nolan leaves the gallery that evening, an assailant again hurls paint at him. He has a coughing fit and dies of a heart attack.

The professor insists that Nolan was murdered. He saw Nolan coughing after the first paint attack, and although Nolan has no known allergies, the professor believes his records have been falsified and that he is allergic to acetone, which was used to thin the paint. An allergic reaction can be stronger if it occurs twice, so the second attack killed him.

Another person’s blood was found on Nolan’s shirt. It’s from Henry Doyle, the surviving founding member of PBD. When he’s brought in for questioning, he also has paint on his shoes. He says that he saw Nolan on TV after the first attack and realized that he must have been the one to tip off the police to the action in which Henry’s girlfriend Dee died. Henry went to kill Nolan – but he was already dead when he arrived. Henry had cut himself, which explains the blood.

Dee’s mother has always held Henry responsible for Dee’s death – she never trusted him. But facial recognition software has found a photo of Nolan graduating from the police academy in 2012, under the name of Noel Darwin. He must have been the one to tip off the police to PBD after all; he may have been undercover.

Maiya sends Carol to London to speak to Milton Droy, who was in charge of undercover assets. He claims not to recall Noel, and sees that he was dismissed after six months for petty theft. He probably changed his name to start over. He was not a mole for Droy in PBD.

Carol and Maiya find Milton suspicious, especially because he is retiring in two days to Algeria, which has no extradition treaty with the U.K. A connection emerges: there was a PBD protest two weeks ago in London, and a Cambridge native, Jill Finch, was arrested and brought to the station where Milton works.

Jill admits to being the one who threw paint at the gallery and Nolan. She targeted him because he had turned his back on PBD, and then returned to hit him again when he disparaged her and the group on TV. She didn’t see him collapse, and says she didn’t know he was allergic to acetone; she added it to the paint to make it easier to throw.

In her own investigation, Miss Snares has sent in DNA from the professor and the dean for testing, under the suspicion that the dean is the professor’s father. But she has decided it’s not her place to know, so she gives the unopened results to the professor. He calls an urgent therapy session with Dr. Goldberg, telling her he appreciates the feeling of possibility that has opened up knowing he might have a different, more honorable father. But he doesn’t want to see the results; he’d prefer to keep that feeling of hope.

Miss Snares has reopened a relationship with Lyndon, who has returned to the university after resigning just before being fired. Under the influence of an incident in which his brother died in an unprovoked assault, he had published a paper in which he said a gene gave the government the right to stop lower class criminals in the womb – eugenics. He immediately regretted it.

The professor gives the dean the unopened DNA results, and the dean rips them up. He assures the professor that he is not his biological father, even if he has acted as something like a father for much of the professor’s life. You were almost my nephew, however, he tells the professor: the dean proposed to the professor’s aunt Zelda once. But when her current boyfriend, Miss Snares’ father Peter, came to the dean as an old friend of hers for advice, he reluctantly advised Peter to propose to Zelda.

The professor tells Zelda that the dean still has feelings for her as she prepares to go to the dinner in which Peter is planning to propose. The professor then calls the dean to tell him that Zelda knows he advised Peter to propose, and warns him that they are at the restaurant now.

The dean sprints there and accidentally spills Peter’s wine on him when he arrives. As Peter goes to the bathroom to clean up, the dean and Zelda reveal to each other that they have only been in love once: with each other. The dean proposes with the same ring as all those years ago, and Zelda accepts. Peter returns and they apologize; Zelda tells him she would have refused him anyway. Peter cedes the ground to the “better man.”

An annual police fundraiser is being dedicated to Lisa this year. Maiya asks Dan to say a few words at it, and then asks his dad to provide music with his band, of which Dan is a part. But Dan changes his work schedule so that he is no longer able to attend.

Maiya is under pressure from the DeMarco family, who are complaining that she didn’t get Nolan police protection quickly enough. Milton delays in answering which police officers interviewed Jill when she was arrested following her climate protest in London, then eventually sends a full video of the interview showing that he wasn’t involved. The detectives think his oversharing of information is hiding something.

Carol makes a connection: Dee’s mother fostered children, and mentioned that the last one she took care of was named Jillian Finch. It turns out Jill had a difficult time in the foster system until she got to Dee’s home, where she became close to Dee.

The detectives search files and find that Milton signed a medical record showing Noel Darwin was severely allergic to acetone – Milton knew he could be killed that way. They get Jill to admit that Milton spoke to her after she was arrested and convinced her to kill Noel/Nolan in a paint attack – after all, he is responsible for her beloved Dee’s death.

Milton wanted Noel/Nolan killed because he impregnated his daughter – one in a string of women he got pregnant while undercover. Noel broke promises to Milton’s daughter and it crushed her; she’s now in an institution.

The professor tells Dr. Goldberg that believing that he might have a different father, even briefly, opened things up for him. She tells him that this is progress, and so this should be their last session. He’ll benefit from a fresh approach. Indeed, he already has, in the form of drum lessons: he has now cut two fingertips off the gloves he wears everywhere.

Dr. Goldberg has been concerned by how much the professor’s therapy and wellbeing has consumed her. Her own therapist believes that she has been fixated on getting him to take his gloves off because it would mean he was cured – and then Dr. Goldberg would be free to date him. She is offended by the suggestion, exclaiming that the professor is an odious, tiresome man.