Spoilers ahead for Episode 3 of NBC’s Found, called “Missing While Widowed.”
Found is only three episodes into Season 1 on NBC in the 2023 TV schedule, but the drama is wasting no time in building the backstory between Gabi (Shanola Hampton) and Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) all while the team searched for the missing person of the week. Their interactions had some new layers in “Missing While Widowed.” Sir convinced Gabi early on that she had asked him to kidnap a somebody for her because she was lonely, making her believe that it was her fault that Lacey was taken. There was much more to the story, however, and the result was some intriguing reveals about Gabi… and possibly a hint that Sir is even worse than we knew.
The Reveals About Gabi
Gabi has been pretty unshakable throughout Found so far, but Sir threw her off her game when he led her to believe that she was responsible for Lacey’s kidnapping. She went so far as to keep her distance from Lacey and ask Margaret for some suggestions about how to jog long-lost memories. Ultimately, it was Lacey confirming that Gabi had been shocked when Sir kidnapped her that led Shanola Hampton’s character to realize that Sir had deceived her again.
And two full episodes were already enough for me to know that Gabi was not going to take that well. She punished him for trying to exert power on her again by taking away his books as well as his toothbrush and soap. We learned last week that cleanliness is important to Sir, so losing his toothbrush could well be a bigger punishment to him than losing the reading material.
This whole plot gave away some details about Gabi, not the least of which is that she’s not afraid to punish Sir even though she made the point in Episode 2 that she’s not going to treat him like he treated her. Apparently, taking his books and toothbrush is different for her than withholding food! The storyline also gave away that she is an unreliable narrator in the Found flashbacks, and can be susceptible to suggestion.
Of course, there’s the question of whether this experience will make her less susceptible to suggestion in the future when it comes to her memory. I can certainly imagine Sir not trying it again anytime soon after she made it clear that there will be consequences for his actions when he attempts to manipulate her. I’m also wondering if Lacey’s memories are unreliable to a certain degree, although she of course doesn’t have Sir locked in her basement to try and mess with her head.
The Minor Moment From Sir
There was an important scene between Sir and Gabi before she realized that he’d lied to her about Lacey’s kidnapping, when she consulted him for his help on the case of the week. As expected, he had some insight, noting that there were two people breathing hard on the other end of the line of a phone call. He took it to mean that the kidnapper was panicking, and therefore an “amateur.” Scornfully, he said:
There are two people wheezing on that call. The higher-pitched one, that’s not illness-related. That’s fear. That’s your kidnapper and they’re terrified… Everything about this case screams amateur hour, likely their first one. That’s how it was for me. Isn’t that why I’m here? To provide my personal expertise? This person is scared and unstable.
Gabi picked up on his line of thought and noted that unstable people are more likely to kill. The episode then jumped forward with this new breakthrough, but I was stuck on this exchange between the two characters. Was it a clue that he was terrified for his first kidnapping, who wasn’t actually Gabi? And could her immediately saying that unstable people are more likely to kill be a hint that Sir is a killer?
He hasn’t really seemed prone to panicking in the flashbacks so far, although he clearly had a temper. Is his behavior in those scenes a sign that he’d already unsuccessfully tried to build a “family” with another girl he’d kidnapped, and Gabi was just the first time that it worked because he was no longer an amateur?
I could definitely be reading more into what seems like a minor moment, but there are already a lot more questions than answers about Sir and Gabi’s time together when she was kidnapped. Plus, after how she had to doubt her own memories in “Missing While Widowed,” can we even be 100% confident of absolutely every detail she recalls?
I can’t say for sure, but the Gabi/Sir dynamic definitely has me hooked. New episodes of Found continue to air on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC following The Voice, with the earlier episodes available streaming via a Peacock Premium subscription.
There’s a shortage of new scripted series this fall due to the WGA writers strike and ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors strike, but Found (along with The Irrational on Monday nights) is certainly an option that is spinning a mystery each week.