- Title: Found – Pilot
- IMDb: link
NBC’s Found falls into the genre of increasingly bizarre police consultant shows. Prodigal Son offered us an unstable profiler making some questionable calls by often making use of his serial killer father. Found goes even further down the rabbit hole with Gabi Mosley (Shanola Hampton) secretly keeping her childhood kidnapper (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) chained up her basement using his experience to help with her team who operate with, but outside of, law enforcement in their search for missing children. While the “Pilot” episode keeps the reveal of her house guest a surprise for its final scene, every commercial and promotion gave away this pair being the primary dysfunctional relationship on the show.
The episode is notable for introducing the various members of Gabbi’s team who include those touched by the same tragedy including a younger woman (Gabrielle Walsh) who was kept with Gabbi by the same kidnapper but is unaware he is now her prisoner. We’re also given flashbacks to Gabbi’s captivity and the fear she lived under while being held against her will before her eventual escape.
The show largely ignores the questions of how Gabbi gets crucial information and just how her business, which has no real cash flow, is funded in such luxury with a throwaway line telling us the computer wiz kid which apparently does both. How convenient. We also see examples of Gabbi willing to go as far as embarrass local police and even blackmail officials to get the gears of justice to grind a little faster. She’s certainly not making friends in her quest. Given her antics, including keeping someone prisoner in her basement, she’s not exactly the easiest protagonist to root for which could be a serious problem in trying to bring back repeat viewers every week.