'Patience' Recap: Season 2 Episode 6

Patience airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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The head botanist for a tropical greenhouse presumably knows the dangers of the plants contained within. But when Alina Barbieri’s body is found in the greenhouse, she has a burn on her face caused by the sap of the tree under which she is lying. The burn occurred after she died; vomit suggests she was poisoned. 

There’s a message on her phone from Teo, her brother, who has a minor criminal record for things like shoplifting. He drowned Paco, it says; hurry to Rufforth. Alina has a property with greenhouses there.

Frankie rushes off to find Teo, while Patience urges her to follow normal procedures first. Frankie brings up Elliot, whose appearance at the greenhouse made Patience fall into some plants since she just broke up with him. Patience confronts Frankie over her cruel remarks and storms off when Frankie fights back. 

Frankie and Jake find Teo at the property in Rufforth. He’s unaware of his sister’s death, and explains that Paco is a plant she was researching for its “neurobiology.” He over-watered it. 

There are half-digested acacia leaves in Alina’s stomach. While normally not enough to kill someone, if the tree from which the leaves came sensed an attack it could have increased the toxicity in the leaves. There’s an acacia tree in the greenhouse, and it has scars cut into it. Clippers labeled “Teo” are underneath.

Teo is nowhere to be found at the Rufforth property, until Patience notices a garden hose stretching through a door into an underground lab full of marijuana plants. Teo is down there. He doesn’t have a license to grow weed, and so is arrested. 

But he says the farm was his sister’s idea, and that she sometimes borrowed his clippers, which she gifted to him. He had a breakdown and lived on the streets for some time; his sister took him in. They started the farm to sell weed to people with chronic pain, and then she used the money to fund her research – including into another plant in the weed lab that Teo doesn’t know anything about. Alina told him it would be safer if he didn’t know. 

Alina worked for the pharmaceutical company Brovexum until an abrupt departure 18 months ago. She filed patent theft and harassment claims against them, alleging that they sent her intimidating messages and broke into her house. Brovexum responded by suing her. When Frankie goes to meet Marissa Wilson, the lawyer who is the head of compliance at Brovexum, Marissa warns Frankie that they’ll sue the police, too, and bankrupt them if they try to accuse the company of anything. She even threateningly brings up a personal relationship with the police superintendent in Manchester, where Frankie previously held a job she left suddenly. 

Brovexum has been accused of harassment and intimidation numerous times in the past two years, and there’s a legal action against them from patients who allege unnoted side effects from an anti-malarial drug – whose key component is aconite, the non-marijuana plant the detectives found in Alina’s lab. 

The detectives search Alina’s emails and find correspondence with a Delphine Burrand, who worked with Alina at Brovexum and left at the same time. But when they locate Delphine, she’s in a hospital, and has been in a coma for 18 months, ever since she tried to take her life by overdosing on aconite. She had been trying to deliver her own homeopathic treatment based on the plant, but her husband Tobias says that she was depressed; she wasn’t caught up in Alina’s crusade against Brovexum. But Alina was a regular visitor to Delphine at the hospital. 

Throughout this investigation, Patience has been spending as little time as possible with Frankie. Jake has encouraged Frankie to apologize to Patience, and continually checked on Patience himself. She admits she was startled in the greenhouse because she saw Elliot talking to a pretty colleague. Jake says he’s trying out speed-dating and suggests Patience come along; she likes the idea of gathering data on potential partners efficiently and quickly. 

She goes home and puts off Douglas’ offer of dinner in order to practice for the speed-dating. Douglas wants to speak to Patience because the woman she and Elliot met at the address left for her by her mother has tried to drop off mail when no one was home – but Douglas spotted her and invited her in. She then tried to lie about how she knew Patience, and Douglas saw through her. She reveals…something…to Douglas, who begs her not to tell Patience right now – she’s vulnerable from her break-up. He asks to find the right time to tell Patience himself, but the woman is noncommittal.

Patience and Jake both struggle for different reasons at speed-dating. Frankie is rude about it the next day, once again leading Patience to leave. This time, Frankie follows her to the archive and tells her that she finds it hard to read Patience. Patience admits that she tried to hide her autism while speed-dating. Frankie eventually apologizes to both Patience and Jake, and invites them to her house for dinner as proof of her remorse. 

Patience has a sudden realization that the acacia leaves in Alina’s stomach might not have been the poison but instead the cure. They’re an antidote to aconite, the plant that poisoned Delphine and that they were both researching. A postmortem wouldn’t detect aconite unless a test specifically looked for it.

That test shows that Alina died from aconite, not acacia. She must have realized she was being poisoned and tried to take an antidote. The poison is fast-acting, but there were no signs of struggle, so Alina must have known whoever administered it to her. 

Alina registered a new plant species the day she was killed, calling it “Future Love,” the name of a book Patience recalls seeing in her lab. Inside the book are notes from Brovexum on their anti-malarial drug and a devoted inscription from Delphine. Alina and Delphine were lovers, and Alina stole research from Brovexum proving they knew about side effects. She was probably waiting to release it until she had finished her own research on aconite. 

Patience and Frankie visit the comatose Delphine at the hospital and Patience notes a striking blue rose in a bouquet left for her by Alina. Blue roses don’t exist in nature, but it seems that Alina had genetically engineered a new species, which she was registering the day she died. There was also a blue rose found near a smashed vase when Delphine was found by her husband Tobias after the overdose on aconite. Tobias said he knocked over the vase in shock.

CCTV at Alina’s greenhouse shows Tobias there soon before Alina died, looking at the label of a plant: the blue rose, which is named after Delphine. He gets upset.

But he has an alibi: he was at a restaurant when Alina died. In fact, he had dinner with Alina before she died, then stayed himself after she left, and he gave a big tip – perhaps so that the waitress would remember him. 

Alina’s inhaler has traces of aconite powder, and its serial number shows it was purchased with Tobias’ credit card the same day he visited Rufforth and saw the blue rose’s name. He poisoned Delphine when she told him she was leaving him for a lover, but he didn’t know who it was. When he saw the blue rose at Alina’s greenhouse, he finally understood, and resolved to kill Alina as well by poisoning her with her inhaler, making sure to give himself an alibi. 

The detectives give the files Alina stole from Brovexum about their anti-malarial drug to the patients suing the company. Teo asks Frankie to take care of Paco as he heads to prison himself for growing marijuana without a license. 

So Paco is at Frankie’s surprisingly nice house when Jake and Patience arrive for dinner, and have a laughing good time.