'Professor T' Recap: Season 3 Episode 1

Professor T airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Prison is not an ideal place for an obsessive germophobe like the professor. He has to wear the standard-issue uniform, can’t protect his hands with nylon gloves, and must share a room – and a less-than-clean toilet. And yet he refuses to see his mother or the dean, denying their formal requests to visit. So Adelaide goes to his therapist and asks her to visit the professor instead. Adelaide is worried he won’t make it out alive.

The professor was put in prison for firing an unlicensed gun in a police station during a showdown with the corrupt cop Simon Lanesborough. The professor will await his trial in prison because he wouldn’t say a word at his hearing. He cannot lie, but if he told the truth – that he was interrupting a confrontation between his onetime girlfriend Christina and her boyfriend, Simon, in which Christina brandished a gun – he would send Christina to prison, as she herself told him. So he didn’t defend himself or even speak.

Rabbit saw Christina unlocking the police armory before that confrontation and has thus surmised all of this. He urges Christina to look past the professor, who will soon be out of prison, and make sure that Simon is finally taken down. An investigator who once worked with Simon has been sent in to interview Christina, and confirms that Simon has accused her of trying to kill her. She lies and says she didn’t have a gun, and indeed there is no record of her signing one out. Regardless, the investigator tells Christina that she has compromised the case against Simon.

While Simon is not yet in prison, his associate Kenny Holland is – the same one as the professor. And Kenny knows the professor is part of why he’s behind bars. He sends the professor’s cellmate, the reserved Omar, away and closes the door. Fortunately, Omar signals an officer, who interrupts Kenny before he shivs the professor but after he has injured his head via a shove. The officer offers to transfer the professor after dressing his wound, but the professor wants to stay: a prison is fascinating to a criminologist, discomforts notwithstanding.

Outside the walls of the prison, the professor’s confidants in the police continue to do their work. Lisa is now Dan’s boss, and Dan’s arm is in a cast, thanks to a gun fired by Kenny. They’re investigating the murder by baseball bat of Leo Moore at the business Leo owned. A distinctive blue-and-yellow Mustang was seen leaving the parking lot of the business just before Leo was found.

The police track it to Zeb Drakeford, who angrily threatens to sue them when he is interrupted in order to be questioned while visiting his wife in the hospital. He had bought his wife a new car from a company called Bernard Brothers; within days, she had hit a pothole and crashed into a wall, sending her to the hospital. But her insurance won’t cover the accident, as the car had counterfeit wheel rims. Zeb confronted Bernard Brothers, but they said they got parts from Leo. So Zeb also went to confront Leo that morning, but didn’t find him at his business.

Adam Bernard, an undefeated boxing champion who lost his chance at a world title because of a detached retina, now runs the car company with his brother Joseph. He confirms that Zeb came to see them, but explains that counterfeit parts are difficult to identify unless they’re put under the pressure of an accident or other stress.

Leo died at night, so Zeb – who visited in the morning – didn’t kill him, unless he was also at the business overnight. But Adam’s fingerprints are on the baseball bat that killed Leo. He and Joseph were at an all-night poker game, but Adam can’t name many people there, he says, because he drank too much. He explains the fingerprints by saying that he went to visit Leo after Zeb confronted him and had to grab the bat away because Leo was scared and swinging it around.

Lisa has doubts that Adam is the murderer, but everyone else believes the case is closed, so he is charged and sent to prison – the same one as the professor. Adam recognizes Omar, the professor’s cellmate, because they used to spar together years ago. Omar believes Adam’s claim that he is innocent, and asks the professor, as a criminologist, to help Adam prove it. But the professor refuses: he doesn’t know if Adam is innocent.

The professor even refuses after Adam saves him from another assault by Kenny and offers to protect him in exchange for his help. But the professor is intrigued enough to ask Lisa to bring him Adam’s case file. After reading it, he decides that Adam is probably innocent and tells him he’ll help. The murder was seemingly done in a passionate rage, but Adam is precise and cool under pressure, like the boxer he was. Rabbit and Dan are still skeptical of Adam’s innocence.

The professor also observes a strange dynamic while watching Joseph and Adam’s wife when they visit Adam in prison: Joseph has begun acting protective towards Adam’s wife, as if he is replacing Adam. The professor directs Lisa to look harder at the case, with an eye toward Joseph as a suspect.

She learns from cross-referencing bank accounts that Leo was paying someone at Bernard Brothers. He was selling counterfeit parts, giving Joseph a kickback to keep it a secret. Joseph got angry after Zeb threatened to sue. While his alibi at the card game holds up, during a break he could have snuck over to Leo’s business in ten minutes without anyone noticing. He momentarily lost control and killed Leo. He often wears gloves as a mechanic, and so his prints weren’t on the baseball bat.

When Joseph next visits Adam in prison, the professor speaks to him first and urges him to be brave and save his brother. Joseph then confesses to the police. Adam is released from prison, thanking the professor on his way out. He passes Joseph on the way in, and gives him a hug.

The professor doesn’t need Adam’s protection anyway, as Kenny has been transferred to another prison. The professor also gets a nice reward in the way of a care package from his secretary Ms. Snares. He gives her date loaf to Omar.

And he meets with his therapist, now protected with gloves and a handkerchief to wipe down the seat, thanks to the care package. She tells him that Adelaide asked her to visit. He explains that he constructed rules and habits after his father’s traumatic suicide, but now that protective regimen is buckling under the pressure of prison.