'Professor T' Recap: Season 4 Episode 6

Professor T is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
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At a pub, Dan’s dad is still pushing his son to attend a police fundraiser honoring Lisa when a man stumbles into the street outside and is hit by a car. Dan rushes outside in time to hear the man say, “I pushed him. I killed him,” before he dies. Dan has a flashback to Lisa’s death after being run over. 

Jay Morgan was a student at the local university. His blood alcohol level was just over the legal limit, though he was acting much more impaired. He also had a raised diuretic level that could indicate steroid use – diuretics can mask steroids. Despite his claim to have killed someone, there are no apparent victims in any hospitals. His mother says she was relieved when he got into a good university on a sports scholarship for rowing, removing him from the tough neighborhood where she lives. This year, his second at school, has been difficult financially.

His rowing coach, Tina Northam, doesn’t want to talk to Dan, or Chloe later. She left a different rowing team two years ago after being accused of encouraging steroid use. She claims to have only ever suggested natural supplements, but those contain diuretics that are often used to hide steroids. 

Since no victim of Jay’s supposed killing has appeared, Maiya tells Dan and Chloe that there’s nothing to investigate. She knows that Dan is obsessed with the case because of its similarities to Lisa’s death, but he yells at her when she suggests as much. She returns the anger, telling him that everyone is just trying to help him process Lisa’s death – and he keeps refusing.

He finally goes to Dr. Goldberg, on his own. He tells her he heard Lisa’s voice when Jay died in his arms. 

The professor has made his own visit to Dr. Goldberg, even though she has ended their therapy sessions. She saw him through the window of a clothier as he tried on a tuxedo for the dean’s upcoming wedding to his Aunt Zelda, and he worried that she would think he was getting married. So he stops by to tell her he is not. She asks if he’s delivering an invitation to her; he hasn’t thought of that. 

Zelda is having second thoughts about the wedding, worrying that she is coming between the dean and Adelaide, who are longtime best friends – especially because Adelaide has not been returning her or the professor’s calls. The professor assures her that it is worth it for love.

He delivers an invitation to Dr. Goldberg, who is coming to realize with the help of her own therapist that there may be mutual feelings between her and the professor.

When Miss Snares pushes the professor to attend a lecture by her possible beau Lyndon Collins, he demurs – until he sees that Dr. Goldberg is on the list of guests. Lyndon is pushing a gene-editing product that he says could help prevent crime, similarly to medicines that now help prevent substance abuse. He wants to give a separate lecture to the professor’s students, but the professor is skeptical of Lyndon – he quit the college a few years ago just before being fired – and knows such a lecture could help the product win regulatory approval. Miss Snares tells the professor Lyndon has recused himself from any profits.

Lab results show that Jay Morgan died of a cranial bleed – exacerbated by low levels of blood-clotting proteins. Anti-coagulants that decrease such proteins are often taken with steroids, which can cause blood clots. Now Maiya believes there is something to investigate – Jay may have died because of steroid use.

His coach, Tina, still insists she only encouraged the use of natural supplements. But the detectives have learned that Alex Healey, the captain of the rowing team, has just quit the team – he needed to take a second job because his student loan wasn’t covering enough. A housemate of Alex’s says she hasn’t seen him for several days, not since a friend of his came over with beer. She saw them an hour or so later by the river, seemingly very drunk. 

Chloe and Dan search the riverside and find empty beer cans – and Alex, dead. He has light bruising on his arms, and an even lower blood-clotting protein level than Jay – so low that even minor internal bleeding, say from a fall after a push, could kill him, given that he has a pre-existing condition of low platelets. Jay may have pushed Alex, as he told Dan, and Alex died from the minor incident.

The dean has heard that two students have died, and asks the professor if he has any more information. The professor shares the students’ names after Lyndon’s lecture, within earshot of Lyndon. The professor has agreed to consider letting Lyndon lecture his students, but he wants to see more of Lyndon’s research first. Lyndon says he’s busy, and agrees to a meeting early the next day – the day of the wedding. 

But when the professor arrives, Lyndon is distressed: his car has been broken into, and his laptop with all his materials on it stolen. The professor offers to drive him to the police station.

He tells the detectives that Lyndon has been paying students to test his new drug, among them Jay and Alex. The drug is already sold in nine countries – but only with a prescription and strict warnings not to drink or take anti-coagulants. When Lyndon heard the professor tell the dean Alex and Jay had died, he realized that his drug contributed to the deaths and staged a burglary so that his materials, including lists of students trialing the drug, could conveniently disappear.

Recalling Lisa’s death, Dan has a panic attack while interrogating Lyndon. But he insists on continuing after a break, and has an unrecorded, informal conversation with Lyndon, who also knows what it’s like to lose someone close to sudden violence. (His brother died of an unprovoked attack.) Dan tells Lyndon about Lisa’s death, and tells Lyndon that Jay and Alex were the same age Lyndon’s brother was when he died. Dan finally cries about Lisa’s death – and Lyndon agrees to go on the record. He just wanted to make the world a safer place. 

Chloe has retaken her national detective exam, and despite arriving late and not finishing, she has passed. 

After Lyndon’s confession of paying students to participate in his drug trial without proper warnings, the professor heads to his aunt and the dean’s wedding. Between the ceremony and the reception, he goes to the police fundraiser to join Dan and his father’s band in playing one of Lisa’s favorite tunes, “Danny Boy.” The professor takes off his gloves and plays the snare drum, having been driven to the fundraiser by his drum teacher – in the sidecar of her motorcycle.

He then goes to the wedding reception to make a speech – introducing a video of his mother, who admits that she engineered the reunion of Zelda and the dean in the hopes that they would get back together. 

As everyone dances, Dr. Goldberg arrives and sits with the professor. “Are you going to ask me to dance,” she asks him. He does – and they join the dance floor, holding hands without the interference of the professor’s gloves.