'Professor T' Recap: Season 5 Episode 3

Professor T airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and 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.

The professor’s compulsory behaviors have returned, leaving him constantly adjusting the flowers he tries to leave on his mother’s grave. Dr. Goldberg guesses they are caused by his mother’s sudden death, and she shares with him the information for an OCD specialist his aunt Zelda recommended, to his chagrin. Zelda herself wants to help the professor by ensuring he maintains his relationship with Dr. Goldberg, whom Adelaide believed was good for her son. But the professor doesn’t want to discuss his feelings or issues with Dr. Goldberg, let alone his aunt.

As always, he has police work as an excuse for distraction. Kendrick Mailer has died after suffering a fall at a “spiritual retreat” hosted by a Lady Cynthia in an impressive manor. Phones are confiscated at the retreat, and you have to be invited to attend. Kendrick had been invited by a regular named Billy, who has been coming to the retreat for five years, ever since Cynthia reached out to offer a free stay after his mother died. Billy now affords the expensive retreat using funds he received from when his mother was hit by a police car.

All of the guests and staff say that Kendrick fell while dancing around a bonfire and refused an ambulance. He finally was taken to the hospital the next morning, where he died. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system.

The postmortem shows that Kendrick had an abnormally thin skull. But it also shows damage to Kendrick’s opposite ear from where he fell that could be consistent with assault.

No one at the retreat says anything about an assault, however. Flo, another returning guest originally brought by Billy, does admit to Chloe that she wanted to call an ambulance right away, but is interrupted by Cynthia before revealing who prevented the call.

The manor is an odd place. Stan, the driver and jack of all trades, is an unusual man, who has a hidden stash of biscuits and sugar for tea despite Cynthia’s prohibitions. As the detectives leave the manor, he says something about a “rope between the living and the dead” while looking at the professor.

That’s not the only strange encounter the professor has at the manor. Cynthia guesses that he has recently had a life-altering experience, then finds him again in the attic after he hallucinates a vision of Adelaide and her dog Kafka. Cynthia talks about visions; he thought his had gone away. And she suddenly mentions a scar on his head, proclaiming correctly that he received it when he fell off his bike as a child. 

The professor admits to Dr. Goldberg that he had a hallucination when she comes over for dinner, having been left waiting for the professor at a restaurant. But he won’t discuss it further and gets testy when she tries to help him process his grief and the return of his compulsive behaviors, leading in turn to her departure. She doesn’t want to be his therapist, but a relationship does require him to share some things. 

Dan is having his own romantic complications. He meets again with Leonie after learning that her father Chester is a member of a major crime family currently out on probation. She explains that she was afraid to tell Dan about her father, and insists that he’s reformed: he has his own business, and donates money to an addiction center. 

Dan later confirms these details, but Maiya still warns him that Leonie trying to date him could be a set-up by a criminal family. She also explains a taunt that an arrestee made to Dan. Chester’s brother was violent and died in police custody from a sudden heart attack; Maiya was there. But the family accused the police of brutality that killed him. 

The professor reluctantly goes to Zelda for advice on his relationship with Dr. Goldberg, which he doesn’t want to end. She says he has to be able to tell his partner how he feels. Zelda is sorting through Adelaide’s things, and the professor notices a photo of his mother with Cynthia from the spiritual retreat, although Adelaide has labelled it “Lady Cynical.” He realizes that Cynthia did not channel some power to have revelations about him: she knew his mother. 

Flo decides that she wants to leave the retreat. She grabs her phone and heads for her car, calling Chloe to tell her she’s on her way to the police station. But then she calls back, saying she’s being followed. Chloe hears a scream and the call ends. 

The police and professor rush to the manor, where they find Billy searching for Flo on the grounds – but he lies and says he was looking for Stan. The professor has figured out that the guests at the retreat take the illegal drug ayahuasca, which translates from the native Quechua roughly to Stan’s “rope between the living and the dead.” Cynthia insisted that they wait to call an ambulance for Kendrick so that the drug could leave his system, so that they wouldn’t be found out when medical tests were run on him. 

 But Billy won’t talk. The professor speaks to him, telling him that Cynthia exploited Billy’s grief for his mother, just as she manipulated the professor’s grief for his mother. She knew Billy had compensation money and so reached out to draw him into the retreat. Billy admits that he saw Cynthia order Stan to prevent Flo from leaving – or from coming back. Stan shot his own dog because its barking annoyed Cynthia; he would do anything for her.

Indeed, the detectives have discovered that Stan is the one who owns the manor; Cynthia came from little money. Stan has never been the same after a bad ayahuasca trip, and Cynthia has controlled him ever since.

Stan cries under interrogation, saying that he let Cynthia down. He reveals that he didn’t kill Flo but locked her in the trunk of her car. The police find and rescue her. 

Flo explains that Kendrick was very high when he took ayahuasca at the bonfire for the first time. He got handsy with her and Billy intervened. Billy barely touched Kendrick, but he fell and hit his head. Cynthia prevented anyone from calling an ambulance – as everyone will now testify.

The professor calls Dr. Goldberg to meet him at Adelaide’s grave. He explains that the return of his compulsive behaviors is not because of his mother’s death but because of the strength of his feelings for Dr. Goldberg. He stammers that he would like to kiss her, and she consents. He manages to break through the wall of his anxieties and do it.