High Potential is back! High Potential episode 8 opens with a young woman (Nona Parker Johnson) being found at the beach with a pool of blood at her head. Morgan (Kaitlin Olson), who is on a breakfast date with Tom (JD Pardo), gets a text from Karadec (Daniel Sunjata, reluctantly forcing her to leave.
Karadec and Morgan arrive at the beach where they meet Oz (Deniz Akdeniz) and Daphne (Javicia Leslie). Morgan notices the girl is still alive because of a medical anomaly called the Lazarus Effect, which causes someone’s heart to start beating again after they have been declared dead. She’s taken to the hospital while the team goes back to the precinct to start working the case.
They receive a missing persons report that matches the victim for a woman named Heather Wallace, filed by her boyfriend Morris Jardine (Dana Ashbrook), who is significantly older than her. However, the woman’s name isn’t Heather Wallace, it’s Penny Hall. Selena sends Karadec and Morgan to Penny’s apartment to find out what she’s hiding.
Another victim
Penny’s landlord (Robert Arce) lets Morgan and Karadec into her apartment. Morgan notices a lot of designer clothes along with a lot of credit card bills. The landlord tells them Penny’s boyfriend, Lucas Phillips (Christopher Phi), was murdered.
In the back of Penny’s closet Morgan finds a crime board-style setup of photos and sticky notes. Penny was trying to solve her boyfriend’s murder.
Back at the LAPD, the team starts digging into the murder of Lucas Phillips. Lucas was also found on the beach, with a head wound. But his head wound had grains of rice in it and the toxicology report showed he had antifreeze in his nose.
The beach bros
Karadec and Morgan go to the Marina Azul Beach Club, where Lucas worked as a tennis instructor, to try and figure out who would want to kill him.
They meet with Edward Wilson (Charlie McElveen), who runs the club. They also meet his brother, Blaine (David Gridley), who works there. When Karadec shows them a picture of Lucas they admit to knowing him but have nothing else to say.
As they’re leaving Morgan asks the front desk clerk about his black eye. He says he threw a guy off the property yesterday and the guy got in a lucky punch. Morgan asks for the guy’s name, and the clerk tells her it’s Cameron Smith (Paul James Jordan).
Morgan and Karadec leave the club and go walking on the public beach, looking for Cameron, who they eventually find. Cameron tells Karadec and Morgan he saw Penny on his way into the beach club, but not after he was thrown out. While they’re talking Karadec gets a text that Penny is awake, so he and Morgan head to the hospital to talk to her.
Penny’s story
Penny tells Karadec and Morgan she got a call from someone who saw her billboard, so she went to meet them at the beach. They attacked her from behind, she never saw their face. She explains she just had to know who killed Lucas, for closure. Morgan can see a lot of her own grief in Penny. Penny also tells them that Lucas loved the beach club, but Blaine and Lucas didn’t get along; Blaine even suspended Lucas and threatened to fire him. Morgan and Karadec go back to the beach club and talk to Edward.
Morgan pokes around his office as they talk, noticing a shelf filled with tourist tchotchkes and travel photos. Edward tells her that each year he and Blaine travel to a new country and they always bring back souvenirs.
When they are leaving, Morgan notices a woman wearing a necklace identical to the diamond necklace Lucas gave Penny just before he died. Morgan figures out that the woman, Shelby Havertz (Monica Young), was having an affair with Blaine. Lucas found out about the affair, so Shelby gave Lucas her expensive diamond necklace to buy his silence and had a cheap copy made for herself so her husband wouldn’t notice it was missing.
No rest
Going back over the crime scene photos at the LAPD, Morgan figures out that Lucas wasn’t killed at the beach, he was dumped there. They need to find the real crime scene to figure out who killed him. Frustrated and burnt out, the team leaves the LAPD building to regroup and rest.
However, Morgan can’t rest until she solves the case. She goes to Karadec’s apartment, going over the case file all night, but they can’t come up with any answers. The next morning, Morgan sees a flickering light bulb in the hallway and all the pieces fall into place. She tells Karadec she knows who killed Lucas.
Driving to the beach club Morgan explains that Edward killed Lucas in his office. She explains that snow globes use rice for snow, and the rice is suspended in anti-freeze to keep it from freezing. The rice in Lucas’ hair and the anti-freeze in his nose came from a snow globe that Edward picked up from the shelf of travel tchotchkes in his office and hit Lucas in the back of the head with. Edward is ultimately arrested for the murder of Lucas Phillips.
Closure
Morgan goes from the beach to the hospital to tell Penny they solved the case. Penny is appreciative, as she needed closure to move on.
That night Morgan finally has a real date with Tom, which goes very well. But in the middle of the date she gets a text from Selena (Judy Reyes), summoning her to the LAPD.
Selena tells Morgan she’s been quietly digging into what happened to Ava’s dad. She’s finally found a solid lead, and she’s having a potential witness found and brought in. Morgan is one step closer to getting the closure that she needs.
New episodes of High Potential air Tuesdays on ABC. They premiere on streaming the next day on Hulu.
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