Found Season 1 Episode 9 Review: Missing While Scamming

If Found Season 1 Episode 9, “Missing While Scamming,” proves anything, it’s that the audience is absolutely meant to feel some level of sympathy for Sir.

Instead of flashbacks of Gabi’s being held captive by Sir, this episode uses flashbacks to reveal Sir’s troubled childhood.

Hugh (it seems better to use his real name in this case) grew up with a mother who neglected him, who’d take away food as a punishment, and who expected him to grow up too soon.

Flashbacks from Hugh’s childhood

This gives some insight into why he became the twisted person that he did. Our hearts break for the little boy whose mother admitted she didn’t love him, and they break a little more as we watch this grown man recalling those memories in his feverish state.

The memories aren’t all bad, though. The memory that seems to lift him up is of his neighbor, a woman who sees something is amiss and wants to help however she can. She brings Hugh food when his mom isn’t there and perhaps is the woman responsible for Hugh calling himself “Sir” later on.

When asking him if he wants seconds, she says, “A little more, Sir?” They also talk of literature during this dinner — setting the scene for something Hugh tries to create later on.

His mother finds the journal shortly thereafter, confronting her son for writing awful things about her.

He stands up to her at this moment, and as she berates him and tells him why she doesn’t love him — in an inside out and backwards nightgown, which is a detail that tells a story all its own — he lifts a large knife and leaves us wondering if he might have killed her. 

The case of the week

While Sir isn’t able to help with the case of the week as much as usual, he does offer some comments. Those comments, of course, are regarding the type of woman Melissa Derr, the influencer gone missing, really is.

He disapproves of her marriage, which is part of a throuple, and he disapproves of how she puts herself in the public eye. He says everything about her is fake; he tells Gabi he knows women like that well — that his mother was one. 

From the look on Gabi’s face, we can glean this is one of the first times Sir has ever spoken of his childhood.

The case involving Melissa Duerr is a complicated one. It’s also one that wouldn’t have ended up on Gabi’s desk had Gabi not become so much more publicly known.

The fact that Gabi had become a public figure, with everyone knowing about her, her team, and her team’s “mysterious benefactor,” makes them more vulnerable in many ways.

Here, it’s a kidnapping that’s done by the same person who goes to Mosely and Associates with the assumption that they’d help pay the ransom.

That assumption is correct because of course, they’ll do anything to help a missing person. But things really become a problem when the DCPD finds out about this case.

It’s a more high-profile case, and because it’s kidnapping, the police have protocols that Gabi and her team are already breaking. Trent’s boss even goes so far as to offer him his job back if he can get Gabi to stand down, but he won’t do it. 

This has been a common thread since the beginning of the season, and it’s one that makes the series that much more compelling. The police have their way of doing things, and Gabi has hers.

Which is better? Or is it better if they find a way to work together, as Trent suggests for this case? What Gabi does proves that the DCPD doesn’t always work as well as it should — if it did, her firm wouldn’t even be necessary. 

But things take a turn on this particular case that sets the stage for bad press and more conflict down the road. Is Gabi doing more harm than good? 

And of course Trent calls the police when Gabi has a gun pulled on her. He’d do it for anyone, but he has feelings for Gabi and reacts based on instinct. 

Will Gabi confess?

Meanwhile, Gabi also seems to be torn over what to do with Sir. Now that he’s threatened Lacey — even though he says now that he wouldn’t really hurt her, that he was just angry — Gabi is reaching a turning point. 

She has a confession partially written, in which she admits to holding Sir captive. She also has a box of rat poison, and eventually makes the decision to burn the letter of confession she’d been working on. 

For a moment, it could even seem Gabi had been slowly poisoning Sir. She had already put something in his food once. This could explain why his illness is so much worse than hers and why he’s having those vivid fever dreams. And we never see exactly what she puts on his food trays.

On the other hand, however, that box doesn’t appear on her countertop until the end of the episode. It also has a label that suggests being immediately fatal. 

More than that, though, Gabi is angry with Sir because she spent so much time tending to his illness, blaming this for the fact that they don’t get to Melissa in time to save her.

She also seems quite desperate when she finds him in a feverish state, mumbling about his mother, and her puts herself closer to him than we’ve seen in order to hold a syringe to his mouth. 

On the surface, this is because she needs his help with the case, but it’s obviously all more complicated than that. Gabi’s dealing with some complex emotions here, and Shanola Hampton takes that challenge to a new level with her performance. It’s stellar. 

“What’s in the basement?”

Speaking of Gabi’s plans, she’s also finally confronted by Lacey about what she’s hiding. Lacey notes early in the episode that Gabi appears to be tying up loose ends for some reason, as though she’s going to leave. She is also considering taking her own leave of absence, which Gabi approves of now that Sir has threatened her. 

It’s one of the most frustrating dynamics on the series. Both women had been kidnapped by Sir, and Gabi clearly has felt the need to protect Lacey since she first arrived at the farmhouse. Yet the same time, their connection is one that keeps everything at a safe distance.

The vulnerability between them has only gone so far, but that changes when Lacey demands to know what’s in Gabi’s basement. 

Let’s not forget that Lacey has learned how to tell if someone is lying, and it’s a skill she’s become quite good at. But the thing is, Gabi doesn’t really lie when she responds, “I’m in the basement.” The place she says she goes within herself, to sit with her darkness and so on, that’s all true. And it’s heartbreaking. It’s a little terrifying, too.

Some good news 

Gabi takes it hard that she couldn’t save Melissa. The episode even reveals a separate wall Gabi has to herself. Unlike the wall of people the firm has brought home, this is a wall of those who couldn’t be saved. She lights a candle and sits with that feeling, which is weighted with guilt.

So the call she receives from Lacey at the end of the episode couldn’t come at a better time. Tony, the teenage boy who was shot and wound up in a coma during one of Gabi’s saves, has woken up. 

She’d been taking that outcome hard as well, and Tony’s father had blamed her. That incident also begs the question of whether she and her team should really just let the police handle everything. The news that he is awake, then, feels like a new beginning.

I also appreciate that this storyline has been carried through the season. It would be easy to forget such details and move on, as is often the case with procedurals. But this is no typical procedural, and this storytelling proves it. 

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Found airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC.

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