TV Recap: ‘High Potential’ — "In the Driver's Seat" Puts Car Data at the Center of a Blackmail Conspiracy
High Potential fires on every cylinder this week — a clever, car-centric whodunit that unfolds like a slow-burn engine revving to full speed, a tender domestic subplot for Morgan as Ava’s college years loom on the horizon, Karadec and Lucia taking a meaningful step forward, and a jaw-dropping final scene that blows the long-simmering Roman arc wide open. Here is a recap of this week’s episode of High Potential.
Season 2, Episode 13: “In the Driver’s Seat” – Written by Jordan Rosenberg, Story Collaboration with Bob Goodman
The episode opens inside a luxury car dealership, where two masked robbers are mid-heist. When one of them, Elba (Jaelin Taylor), spots a half-million-dollar Astren supercar on the showroom floor, he overrules his more cautious partner, Huey (Ahmed Bharoocha), and changes the plan. They climb in, pull off their masks—and the car, syncing to Elba’s phone, lurches into self-driving mode. It tears through the showroom at top speed, pinballing off displays, before the airbags finally blow. The chaos has only just begun.
The next morning, Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) and Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) arrive on the scene. A body has been found beneath one a car, run over in an apartment heist-gone-wrong. Curiously, the victim has a bullet wound to the chest.. No wallet, no phone, no ID, and a face too damaged to identify. The victim’s overalls carry grass stains that catch Morgan’s attention. Karadec’s, too, though he’s distracted by a strange, stifled sneeze he refuses to explain. Dealership owner Glen Gannick (Tim Baltz) arrives and is permitted onto the scene, since his prints and DNA would already be present. He doesn’t recognize the body. Surveillance footage from Glen’s office tells them something important: the body wasn’t killed here. It was dumped, not long before the thieves arrived.
Back at the LAPD, Lieutenant Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) and Daphne (Javicia Leslie) are briefed. The John Doe’s fingerprints don’t match anything in the system. With the robbers potentially having witnessed something crucial, Morgan heads out with Oz (Dennis Akdeniz) to track down a lead on one of them. They find Elba.
Elba sits across from Karadec and Soto with an angry red rash across his face — airbag dermatitis, though he claims it’s a skin condition. Karadec lays out the charges: grand theft auto, destruction of a corpse. Soto offers a deal: give them the John Doe’s identity, and they’ll put in a good word with the DA. When Elba asks how they found him so fast, Karadec walks him through it — green tennis court clay on the car’s floor, expensive scalp moisturizer residue on the headrest, and the rash itself, which all led Morgan to one specific tennis club near by. Elba admits he saw the victim in the headlights when the car was careening toward him. He’d also noticed the man casing the block on foot in the days before the robbery. Soto thinks he lived nearby. Karadec sends Elba to the sketch artist.
Meanwhile, Morgan comes home to find Elliot deep in a science experiment and Ava doing homework. Over plans for baked ziti, Ava asks her mom to take her to the Overland Design Center — a high school design program with college connections. Morgan realizes with a start that it’s her daughter’s senior year. When Ava offers to help make dinner, the moment quietly breaks Morgan.
Oz and Karadec canvas the neighborhood with the sketch. Three people recognize the face but can’t place him. Then Karadec’s allergies flare up again, and this time, he recognizes the trigger. Swiss chard. They’re standing near the Huntview Park Community Garden, and a posted flier for a “Tomatoes for Tots” program names the man in their sketch: Joaquin Horrero, with an address.
At Joaquin’s house, the door is already ajar, the lock popped. Karadec and Oz enter with guns drawn. They find blood on the couch: the original crime scene. Graded papers confirm Joaquin was a professor. A neighbor pulling into her driveway, Katie Millay (Joy Osmanski), calls him “The Crunchy Professor” and admits he was a source of friction — an eco-activist who protested constantly and made it hard for her to sell her house. She’s cooperative enough to produce an alibi and something more useful: a flier alleging that Glen Gannick’s dealership had been illegally dumping toxic waste, putting the dealer at ods with the resident.
Morgan and Karadec return to the dealership, where they spot antifreeze leaking into a drain and meet Molly (Jasmine Ashanti), a computer diagnostics technician with a circuit-board tattoo on her arm. Morgan asks about the cars under the guise of needing one for her daughter, getting Molly to explain that modern cars are “like iPhones on wheels” — tracking location, speed, and behavior. The comment lodges in Morgan’s memory.
Glen and his lawyer (Kelvin Han Yee) face Karadec and Oz with Joaquin’s online photos documenting Glen’s employees dumping waste illegally. The dealership’s recent sales slump and a planned second location give Karadec a motive. But the photos are blurry and a civil court already ruled in Glen’s favor. The lawyer calls it a frame job. Glen comes off the suspect board, at least for now.
Back home, Morgan finds Ava upset over what she thought was a college brochure in the mail, but it was addressed to Elliot. He’s been invited to Morland Academy, a prestigious prep school for gifted kids in Connecticut. As Morgan processes the news, she doesn’t notice the bearded figure outside watching through the window—or the dark shape approaching him, taser in hand. Arthur Ellis (Mekhi Phifer) has found the stalker and is making his own move.
At the courthouse the next morning, Morgan and Karadec speak with James (Zuri James), a clerk who remembers Joaquin threatening Judge Lyne (Leith Burke) during the civil case, vowing to expose the truth to voters. When Judge Lyne steps in and catches them asking questions, he agrees to meet privately. In his tidy office, Morgan notices a recurring calendar appointment simply labeled “Lunch – Stew,” a paper currency band on the floor — the kind banks use to wrap $2,000 in $20s — and tells Karadec to smell the judge’s hand. Vanilla body spray. His real lunch sits on James’s desk. When Karadec spots faint marks on the judge’s neck, Morgan concludes Stew isn’t a friend in need, but a dominatrix-for-hire. She thinks that’s what Joaquin had on him.
A tip sends the team to Katie’s house, where she is being arrested after allegedly trying to hide a gun in a blanket. She protests that she’s being framed. Inside, an email to a realtor offers to buy Joaquin’s house, and Morgan isn’t buying any of it as organic evidence. She spots fresh putty on the windowsill. A professional popped the window, planted the gun and sent the email, then resealed it. Someone with a truck and the skills to leave no signs of a break-in.
Daphne pulls security camera footage and identifies D’Arby Winters (Ryan O’Flanagan), a window installer with prior drug charges, who drives a car from Gannick’s dealership. Morgan connects the dots: D’Arby’s car. Katie’s car. Molly’s words echo back. “Like iPhones on wheels.” She asks whether Judge Lyne might also drive an Astren. Then she says the thing that reframes everything: someone did frame Glen—but Glen has known who the whole time.
At the dealership, Morgan and Karadec confront Glen beside one of his cars. “You framed yourself,” Morgan announces. Karadec walks through the full scheme: Joaquin discovered Glen was running a blackmail operation, harvesting location and behavior data from his clients’ cars — collecting leverage on a drug-addicted customer like D’Arby, and on Judge Lyne’s affair — to fund his second location. When Joaquin confronted him, Glen broke into his house and shot him. Knowing he’d be the prime suspect given their history with the civil case, Glen planted the body in his own showroom as a misdirect. When Lyne realized the detectives were closing in on his secret, he tipped Glen, who sent D’Arby to plant evidence on Katie.
Glen protests that dealers can’t access car data. Morgan says that’s where Molly comes in, and points to her circuit-board tattoo: a “glider,” a hacker symbol. They claim Molly already flipped, her statement secured a court order, and the very car they’re standing beside was at Joaquin’s house the night he was killed, its driver profile matching his. Glen is handcuffed as the team begins searching the vehicle.
That night, Karadec comes home to find Lucia (Susan Kelechi Watson) making Poulet Rôti and gently nudging him toward making his apartment feel more lived-in. She admits she’s been quietly looking at places in Lafayette Park and Carthay Circle — not rushing things, but wanting to plant roots. Karadec takes her hand. When she asks what changed in him, his answer is understated and revealing: “I think it has a lot to do with my new partner. She just helped me see some things about myself that I didn’t.” He agrees to come see her new place.
Morgan sits down with Elliot (Matthew Lamb) to share everything she knows about Morland Academy — the distance, the opportunity, her fears about him losing pieces of his childhood. Before she can finish, he stops her. “I’ve already decided not to go.” Ava had told him about the school, he’d asked her advice, and she’d told him that the experience would always be there later, but these family moments wouldn’t. The three of them share a hug. “When it’s time,” Morgan tells him, “it’s going to be really, really hard to let you go.” She seems to be talking to both of her kids at once.
Then Morgan’s phone rings. Soto has a development: Arthur Ellis is in custody following a noise complaint. He was found standing over a badly beaten man. The man in the photos from Roman’s backpack — the one Arthur claimed attacked him years ago. He’s in the hospital now. Arthur says he’s the man who abducted Roman sixteen years ago.
Next Episode: “If You Come For The Queen” - Airing Tuesday, March 10th, at 9/8c on ABC.
Daphne leads an investigation into the attempted murder of a beloved colleague and mentor, which is further complicated when it intertwines with another case. Later on, Ava comes to Daphne for advice and support.
Songs Featured in This Episode:
- “Heat My Neck” by Two Car Garage
- “One on One” by The Knocks & Sofi Tukker
- “Let Me Out” by Lila June
- “My Funny Valentine” by Ella Fitzgerald
- “Changes” by BIZ & BURNS