Found is a 2023 NBC procedural centers on Gabi Moseley (Shanola Hampton) and her crisis management team who search for marginalized missing people who do not attract media attention.
Gabi was kidnapped as a child by Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and is hiding a big secret: she's got Sir locked in her basement and is forcing him to help with the cases by providing insight into the minds of the kidnappers.
Brett Dalton, Kelli Williams, and Gabrielle Walsh also star.
Tropes
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Gabi recently kidnapped Sir and is using him to help her find the missing people.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Margaret talks to her therapist about always going to the bus station every day in hopes she'll spot her grown son somehow returning. Her therapist asks the simple question of what makes Margaret think that, for any reason, her son would go to that place rather than to her or the police. Margaret can't answer, showing how deeply ingrained this compulsion is.
- Broken Bird: Gabi and every member of her team suffer some form of trauma either due to them or a loved one being abducted in the past.
- Consulting a Convicted Killer: Invoked by Gabi. She's holding Sir hostage and forcing him to help her on her cases by giving insight into the kidnappers.
- Creature of Habit: Margaret still goes to the bus station every day at the same time in hopes she'll spot her now-grown kidnapped son in the crowd. It's such a compulsion that she will drop everything she's doing for this routine, even when in the middle of a time-sensitive case or a therapy session.
- Damsel out of Distress: Gabi rescued herself and Lacey as a kid after they were both kidnapped by Sir.
- Entitled to Have You: This is bound to come up a lot stories about kidnappings. In Sir's case, he believed Gabi was too "special" to belong to someone as mundane as her father, which gave him the right to steal her away.
- Family of Choice: The team has also suffered traumas related to kidnapping and have become a family as a result.
- Friend on the Force: The crisis management team regularly works with Mark Trent and the other cops in his precinct in order to solve the kidnappings. Deconstructed as Mark oversteps the boundaries in trying to help the team so many time he's suspended from active duty indefinitely.
- Freudian Excuse:
- No one can deny anyone on the team has a boatload of issues but no one can also say they aren't completely justified after all of the individual trauma they've been through.
- It's revealed Sir had an abusive, distant mother as a child who never loved him and cruelly told him no one would ever love him because he was "broken". The only one kind to him was a neighbor who resembles Gabi. This led to his craving for a family he could create who he could love and would love him back, which led to him kidnapping Annie, Gabi, and Lacey.
- This is also why he's obsessed with classic literature. It was his only escape as a child, hence the reason he pushes his captives to read what he tells them to and gets angry when they refuse.
- Hourglass Plot: The reversal of Sir and Gabi as ruthless kidnapper and helpless victim has already happened by the time the show starts but flashbacks reveal just how this happened during their initial time together.
- Hypocrisy Nod: In the season 1 finale, Dhan confronts Gabi on how he helped her find Sir and when she didn't turn him in to the cops, he assumed she killed him. Gabi expresses horror at the idea Dhan could ever think her capable of that and Dhan fires back that he also didn't think she could hold a guy prisoner for months on end.
- I Reject Your Reality: Sir in spades as he still doesn't seem to grasp how badly he treated Gabi in her captivity, that she thought of him like a father and that he's her "partner" not her captive.
- Internal Reveal: The Season 1 finale has Gabi finally telling the team the truth about Sir. They don't take it well.
- Lima Syndrome: Sir developed it to a point with his captives but never all the way to where he would let them go. In the present, Gabi staunchly keeps an emotional distance from Sir so as not to develop this, though she's becoming more entangled in interactions with him as time goes by.
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: Discussed. The team takes on many marginalized victims that the system and police overlook, like POC, runaway teenagers, and the homeless.
- Mystery of the Week: The team solves kidnappings every week.
- Pet the Dog: A stray kitten finds its way into where Gabi was being held. She plays with it and when Sir shows up there's clear tension as she's afraid he'll hurt the animal simply to punish her. Not only does he simply stroke its fur, he even lets her release it back outside so the kitten can go back to its family.
- Known Only by Their Nickname: No one knows what Sir's real name is, as he never told the girls, and so even the police simply refer to him only as "Sir." It's finally revealed his first name is Hugh.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Tony's father yells at Gabi about how his son is now in a coma thanks to her actions after she promised she would keep him safe. He says she's no hero and just makes things worse. Gabi clearly takes this to heart.
- The Reveal: The Season 1 finale reveals Dhan helped Gabi hunt down Sir, assuming she'd turn him over to the police. When she didn't, he figured she finally went and killed him and horrified she's been holding him hostage.
- Scars Are Forever: Lacey has some scars on her arm that Sir gave her just before Gabi rescued them.
- Sherlock Scan: Margaret is an expert at this to spot the smallest details from how a person is lying to a vital clue.
- The Shut-In: As trauma from his own abduction, Zeke only communicates with the team via video from his home. His agoraphobia is so bad that he literally can't take a step out of his house to pick up a package at the bottom of his stairs.
- Stockholm Syndrome:
- Sir tried to invoke this with his captives but his controlling nature prevented them from forming any sort of bond with him as they lived in fear of him instead of growing to love him like he wanted.
- Despite being bitter about being held in captivity, Sir starts to bond with Gabi in the present, even with her insistence of maintaining an emotional distance from him. It makes sense since all he's ever wanted is a family who loves him, so he's willing to accept even being held hostage if it means he thinks Gabi cares about him on some level.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Two In-Universes examples.
- Annie was Sir's previous victim who hid notes all over the house that Gabi found when she was kidnapped. When she tried to escape one too many times, Sir killed her. Her body was never found. Gabi is still working on her case as an adult but still hasn't found out her real identity or where her body is buried.
- A teenager named Tony is shot during a rescue of a boy he was coerced into trafficking. He ends up in a coma. Gabi visits him every day but eventually despairs of him ever waking up again. He does.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The entire team gives Gabi this after they learn she's been keeping Sir prisoner all this time.
