TV Recap: Morgan Closes Her First Case in “High Potential” Episode 2

As an honorary member of the LAPD, Morgan Gillory is about to work her first official case from start to finish in the second episode of High Potential. The hit new ABC mystery series follows a single mom of three with an IQ of 160 and the ability to pay close attention to detail. How did she do on her first official case? Find out in our recap.

Episode 2: “Dancers in the Dark” – Written by Todd Harthan & Marc Halsey

A 1981 Buick Regal with a custom paint job pulls into an alley on a moonlit night. Two young men – Damian (Alaman Diadhiou) and Roland (CJ Salvador) – get out wearing all black and climbing a fire escape ladder with duffel bags. Once on the roof, they change their shoes, pull out a tripod, and begin filming themselves performing a tap dance routine. The next thing we know, Damian has fallen onto the roof of his car.

In the morning, Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) gets dressed for the first day of her new consultant job with the LAPD, asking her baby Chloe for input and having to change when she spits up on her. Going to the kitchen, Morgan is touched when her other kids, Ava (Amirah J) and Elliot (Matthew Lamb), surprise her by having breakfast ready, even if the sausage pucks are inedible. Her ex-husband, Ludo Radovic (Taran Killam), arrives to watch Chloe and take the kids to school. Morgan takes the bus to work and chats with another one of the regular riders, Samson (Harrison White).

Morgan arrives at the alley where Damian had his accident the night before. Officer Lin (TJ Lee) gives Morgan a hard time at the caution tape, knowing her as the cleaning lady. Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) is already on the scene, filling Morgan in on what happened. Damian Ross fell three stories onto the roof of his car and is in surgery. They’re not sure if he’ll make it, but the fall is believed to be a suicide. Morgan looks at the custom car and thinks otherwise. Karadec asks her to tell him what she’s thinking. Morgan asks to see the roof.

The team hasn’t yet checked the roof. Karadec gives Morgan a pair of gloves as she examines the tripod, which has been knocked over. There’s no phone on it, but she follows the line of impact to a vent and finds a phone there. It has a sticker of a bulldog on the case, which Karadec recognizes as belonging to a Mexican baseball team. Morgan examines the smudges on the screen and determines that the phone’s user is left-handed. Karadec turns on the phone, and Morgan recognizes the wallpaper – an image of Michaelangelo’s “The Torment of Saint Anthony,” indicating that its user is Catholic. Karadec gets confirmation that Damian’s phone is on his person at the hospital. Morgan deduces that Damian wasn’t dancing on the roof alone and is confident that he was pushed.

At the LAPD, Lieutenant Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) asks her team for updates on the case. Daphne (Javicia Leslie) is waiting on an update on Damian’s surgery, while Oz (Dennis Akdeniz) puts pressure on the CSI to obtain information from the cellphone. Lieutenant Melon (Garret Dillahunt) arrives to talk to Soto, asking her to lend him a team member on a high-profile jewelry store robbing spree. Oz volunteers to help out.

Morgan and Karadec arrive. In photos from the roof, Morgan notices what looks like a butt print that suggests the other person fell and likely has an injured tailbone. Daphne gets an update on Damian, who is out of surgery but on life support. Soto asks her to get security camera footage from the buildings around the alley. Soto asks Karadec and Morgan to go to the hospital to talk to Damian’s family. Morgan asks to speak with Soto for a moment.

In Soto’s office, Morgan gives the Lieutenant more information about her missing first husband, Roman Sinquerra. He never returned from an errand to pick up diapers for baby Ava. Morgan gives her the make and model of his car – a 1995 Mazda RX-7. They hadn’t had any fights when he left, but the police didn’t believe her.

At the hospital, Karadec prepares Morgan for the worst, saying since the body wasn’t at the crime scene, this could get gruesome. He allows her to hang back, but she chooses to join.

They meet Damian’s mother, Winnie Ross (Shelley Robertson), outside his room. The doctors don’t know if he’ll be able to dance again if he lives, but she says her son has overcome the odds before and will do it again. Karadec tells her they think Damian was pushed. She says nobody would want to hurt her son. He had made mistakes in the past, but working at BSB (Body Shop Brothers) has helped him get his life together.

Just then, Damian’s friends and coworkers from BSB arrive, hugging Winnie. Morgan instantly notices that two of them are lefthanded, but only one wears a cross on a chain around their neck. He also has a tattoo of a baseball stitch covering a scar specific to surgery for a torn ligament, likely from pitching. They overhear him telling Winnie that Damian got him out of trouble when he joined the BSB, helping him turn his life around through dance. Karadec interrupts the crowd, speaking directly to the man – Roland.

Karadec and Daphne interrogate Roland while Morgan and Soto watch from behind the two-way mirror. Roland says he didn’t push Damian but also isn’t being very helpful. Morgan notices Roland wince when he shifts in his chair, telling Soto to ask about his tailbone. She goes on the intercom to tell Karadec, and he tells Roland that he can either be helpful willingly or they can put out a warrant for him. He comes clean, saying that Damian was teaching him to dance when someone else came out of nowhere and pushed him. He fell in the process, and when he got up, the assailant was gone.

Daphne receives surveillance footage from around the building. Damian’s car can be seen driving into the alley, but no other cars follow in or out. But as Morgan looks at some documents, she gets an idea, asking to go see Damian’s car at the impound lot. Damian took exquisite care of his car, but paint was found in the trunk, a type that doesn’t match the exterior of his car. She theorizes that somebody else was in Damian’s trunk when he left the body shop. Karadec points out that trunk escape latches weren’t part of this car’s design. Morgan crawls into the trunk to prove a point, escaping within a minute. Somebody modified Damian’s trunk. Soto asks them to go to BSB.

The guys at BSB aren’t very compliant when Karadec and Morgan arrive, partially because Knox (Rafael Castillo) already had a run-in with Karadec for a previous crime. They don’t believe one of their brothers could’ve killed Damian, but Morgan offers something in return for their information – getting Damian’s car out of the impound lot so they can repair it when he recovers. One of the guys, Griff (Carlin James), seems particularly shaken up over what happened to Damian.

Back at the LAPD, Soto is impressed at all of the information Morgan got from each employee at the BSB as she reviews the info. But Karadec is a little annoyed, telling Morgan all she needs to do is give the information to Daphne so she can put it in a case file for the ACP (Alibi Confirmation Protocol). Karadec processes paperwork for Roland’s release since he is no longer a suspect.

Her first official day as a consultant complete, Morgan returns home to make dinner for his kids. Over dinner, Ava complains about her mom still not having her car back. Elliot tries to lighten the mood by telling his mom that Ava got an A on her art assignment. Morgan asks to see it, a very talented and creative painting of a cat. Ava leaves the table, dismissing her work as “Just ok.” Morgan takes Ava to the garage and pulls out a box containing photos of art murals from around LA. “Your father painted those,” she tells her daughter, who has been upset that she doesn’t share her mom and brother’s mental abilities. Morgan says she got her dad’s talent, but Ava is moody about that, believing her father abandoned them, despite Morgan’s insisting that he wouldn’t have done that.

Alone in bed, Morgan looks through Roman’s artwork, distracted by a mural showing stars around the moon. The next thing we know, she’s back on the roof of the building where Damian and Roland were dancing with Karadec. She realizes that last night the moon had its opposition effect, brighter than usual due to its direct opposition from the sun. She theorizes that the killer hid behind an air conditioning unit straight ahead of where Damian and Roland were dancing, which would’ve meant the brighter-than-usual moon was shining behind them. The killer likely couldn’t see who was who when they lunged forward, targeting Damian by mistake. She believes Roland was the intended target, the very person Karadec just released.

Karadec calls Roland, who is at a noisy club and hangs up on him, not answering his subsequent calls. Based on the music playing in the background, Morgan does a quick internet search and predicts that he’s at a 90s remix party at the Gateway Towers warehouse. They get their fast, moving through the club in search of Roland, finding the other BSB crew there. They split up, with Knox helping them search. Roland is found in a chair in a side room – shot dead.

Back at the LAPD, Morgan is very upset. Karadec tells her this is part of the job and it never gets easier, complimenting her work on the roof. Daphne has reviewed cellphone videos from the club, one of which captured the moment Roland was shot, the gun emitting a bright spark. The gunman’s back was to the camera, and they were wearing an all-black hoodie. Morgan decides to take a walk through the halls, but she stops outside of Lieutenant Melon’s office when she sees his suspect board, entering and interrupting his conversation with Oz. She looks closely at the hooded suspect, a still frame from a surveillance camera showing sparks flying from his gun. She asks Oz to show her the footage, and despite Melon’s objections, he pulls it up. She recalls learning about this type of muzzle flash while visiting Pioneertown with her kids, knowing them to be specific to old guns with copper or lead left in the barrel. Karadec asks Melon to let them borrow his board.

With the case Karadec and Morgan were working on next to Melon and Oz’s jewel thief, Morgan begins to analyze them together. She notices that the jewel thief’s first three robberies all had a getaway driver, a different car each time, but his last two had no reports of a getaway car. Both of those stores were on the Metro red line, so a bus would’ve been the getaway car. The lack of a getaway driver coincides with Damian joining the BSB. She believes Roland was the thief’s getaway driver, and that Damian convinced him to stop. So the thief planned to kill Roland to silence him, but pushed Damian off the roof by mistake. They brought their gun to the club to finish the job. Morgan doesn’t know which BSB did it, but she has an idea to get them to reveal themself.

The next day, a jewelry store is the target of the robber. But unbeknownst to him, Karadec and Oz are there in plainclothes, arresting him as soon as he tries to rob the store. They unmask him – Griff – and Morgan steps out, revealing another thing she noticed about the case. He would target a store whenever a Code 3 was out, which would keep the LAPD busy, so they sent out a fake one to catch him.

Back at the office, Karadec congratulates Morgan on closing her first case. He also has a treat for her, an early paycheck compliments of Soto. She looks at the cash value, her eyes going wide. Karadec receives a call that Damian is awake. They go to the hospital to meet him, learning that he moves his toes and is expected to make a full recovery with some physical therapy.

Morgan surprises Ava by returning home with her car back. That night, we see Morgan and Ava watching TV together, Ava asleep on the couch. Soto knocks on the door with an update for Morgan. She tracked down Roman’s car, which was impounded three days after his disappearance in a Costco parking lot near the address Morgan shared with her first husband. The inventory report showed that a new box of diapers was in the trunk. Morgan cries, realizing that Soto believes her. “We’re gonna find out what happened to Roman, I promise,” Morgan’s boss says. We see that Ava is awake, having overheard the conversation.

Next Episode: “Dirty Rotten Scoundrel” – Airing Tuesday, 10/8, at 10/9c on ABC

Morgan’s intellect and cleaning experience prove useful when the detectives are called to a hotel room murder scene, eventually uncovering the victim’s many cons. Morgan navigates Ava’s dating while Soto reveals details about Roman’s disappearance.

Songs Featured in This Episode: