Found Episode 1 Review And Recap- Hampton And Gosselaar Are A Match Made In Heaven

One of the few shows to premiere on network television as a result of the strike is Found, a procedural that appears pretty standard at first glance. It’s like you tossed a bunch of our favorite procedural dramas into a blender and whipped up something familiar and yet utterly unique. It is spectacularly delicious to boot, thanks to a good-looking and talented cast with charisma for days. Found Episode 1 introduces all the major players in a tightly-paced, well-conceived story that has me wanting more.

Gabi(Shanola Hampton) is a take-no-prisoners, driven activist filling holes in the system to find those who are missing and exploited and who might otherwise fall through the cracks. As a victim of an abduction as a child, she knows firsthand what it is like to feel left behind. She has assembled a team of dedicated and talented people who assist her in finding those forgotten souls who have no one else to count on.

She does it with the help of an agoraphobic IT specialist whose sizable financials bankroll the project, a retired military man turned private investigator, a behavior specialist played by Kelli Williams who played a similar character to perfection in the criminally underappreciated Lie To Me, and a lawyer with ties to Gabi’s past that we learn in just one of many twists. Gabi is a spin doctor. She is a PR maven who has no problem exploiting situations and people to save lives.

This is a talented crew as characters and in real life as performers. All of Gabi’s team has baggage and experience being lost. Williams’ Margaret Dean had her son abducted when he was just a toddler and still searches every face in the crowd for her lost child. Karan Oberoi’s Dhan Rana is brash and overtly aggressive, but his standoffishness hides deep trauma. Brett Dalton is Detective Mark Trent, who acts as the liaison between the two groups.

Lacey Quinn, Gabrielle Walsh is a law student with ties to Gabi in a twist revealed at the end of Found Episode 1. We see flashbacks to Gabi’s time in captivity. Her abductor, a tightly wound and radioactively hot Mark-Paul Gosselaar. He vacillates between reptilian calm and explosive, unpredictable anger. Gabi was not alone, however. Lacey, her girl Friday, was the second child. That makes the other big twist even more interesting. How much does Lacey know about how Gabi solves these cases?

Found Season 1 opens with Gabi’s team finding a young boy being held hostage by a sleazy-looking dude. Gabi is a gifted liar, and after tracking down the boy, her team went to work laying a trap for him and rescuing the boy. They were even kind enough to call the police, who took credit for the whole thing until Gabi intervened and told everyone the real truth. Some might call them vigilantes. Others saviors. They are there when no one else is to save the forgotten and ignored.

It’s the kind of gritty, feel-good story that sits neatly in the zeitgeist today with statistics to back up their claims of white abductees versus brown victims. It’s long been a problem, and we don’t need to look any further than the coverage of Gabby Petito. Missing White Woman Syndrome is a systemic problem in this country and arguably many parts of the world. Found doesn’t argue that these white people don’t deserve to be found; rather, everyone deserves to be found, but very few are fighting for POC.

When a young boy comes to the group for help finding his fourteen-year-old sister, the team immediately begins working the system and interviewing the foster family. Instead of finding the missing girl, they find her birth mother on top of a building, ready to jump. This woman has made her share of mistakes and feels guilt for everyone. Rather than place judgment, the woman is talked down, and the search continues.

At the same time as Gabi’s team is searching for a fourteen-year-old girl who almost everyone but her brother believes has run away, the world is searching for a senator’s blond toddler. Gabi’s team wants the toddler saved, too, but she has the police and the country looking out for her, and the teenager has no one. Worlds collide conveniently when the toddler is found safe wearing the missing teen’s jacket. It wasn’t anything Camilla did to get taken. She was a hero who intervened when she saw the senator’s daughter being taken. The senator’s son, a drug addict, was tied up with some bad people, including a drug dealer who thought he could make some quick cash by taking a high-profile victim. Misconceptions are deadly, and that’s what Found Episode 1 wants you to remember.

In the closing moments of Found Episode 1, everything changes. Gabi isn’t all good, and there is a villain lurking. Gabi found Sir, the man who took her and the other little girl years ago, and has been keeping him hostage in her basement. She uses his criminal mind to get inside the minds of the abductor. It is a sick but symbiotic relationship like Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter. Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s Sir is the role he has been waiting to play. Playing way off type, he is an evil man doing very bad things, but in God help me the sexiest way possible. Think Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal but without the lush imagery and surrealism. We know Mads Mikkelsen’s cannibal is eating people, but we kind of understand what all the Hannibal fuss is about.

Gosselaar seethes and simmers and exudes sex appeal. There is also something just under the surface that makes me wonder if, at some point, he might get a redemption moment. I’m not sure how you make a criminal who abducts young women and girls and does God knows what with them a good guy, but the fact that in two very brief scenes, I went from thinking he was terrifying and then moments later sympathetic and unbearably hot is a testament to the writers and to Gosselaar who infuses just enough of his signature charm to make him effortlessly appealing despite his obvious character flaws.

Gabi is equally magnetic. Hampton meets Gosselaar beat for beat, and their moments together are electric. Her team loves her. They would walk off a cliff for her and vice-versa, but I wonder what will happen when they invariably find out how Gabi seems to know where to look for her lost charges. That underlying tension and the bizarre, sometimes antagonistic, sometimes sensual quality of Hampton’s scenes with Gosselaar will keep me coming back.

This is the sort of procedural show you have seen, but never quite like this. Think a combination of Breakout Kings, Scandal, Lie To Me, or Bull, but without the problematic working condition rumors. Will it be a hit? Undoubtedly. It should be this season’s must-wat, partly because of the slimmer pickings since the strike decimated scripted programming but also because the talented cast is immensely watchable and believable. The scripts are exciting, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar is a star who has been waiting for a vehicle to showcase his sizeable abilities.

This is the right cast and the right story to tell. It is fresh and exciting, and there is no shortage of star power. If Found Episode 1 is anything to judge by, we are all in for a wild ride. One with a very sexy devil. Find all our Found coverage here.