Found Season 1 Episode 5 Review: Missing While Undocumented

While the personal focus of the show continues to be on Gabi’s past with Sir, Found Season 1 Episode 5, “Missing While Undocumented,” also dives a bit more into Dhan’s past. 

This move ensures that the cast of characters remains multi-faceted and ever-moving instead of just being there to make Gabi shine. This team is truly a family, and that means sometimes talking about the things that hurt the most.

With these revelations about Dhan, we also get a bit more bonding between him and Zeke. This is great, considering how hard Gabi has been pushing them together since Found Season 1 Episode 1, “Pilot.”

In the end, “Missing While Undocumented” gives room for much-needed character development while also showing the team at their best.

Gabi Continues To Shed Layers

When Gabi gets the call about Satcha being a missing person, she has to deal with her increasingly complicated feelings about Sir as well as a request from her father. It is very apparent that these are two people she hasn’t ever been able to reconcile in her head.

On the one hand, her father always did the best he could to provide for and love her. In fact, the way Gabi talks about him in the episode’s final moments makes all the earlier moments centered on him make more sense. 

After all, this man raised her and did his best, and yet, when she was taken by Sir, his best wasn’t enough. That’s something that isn’t easy to just brush aside and forget about — despite the danger of her time with Sir passing.

Viewers are taken on a journey with Gabi as she contemplates taking her father’s ashes and spreading them where he instructed her to. That’s a wish that is hard enough on a family that doesn’t come with the complicated feelings Gabi and her father never completely dealt with.

Grief is hard, and you can very much grieve a person who is still alive. For Gabi, she is clearly still grieving the person she used to be, and the person he made her become, even if it was only for a short while.

Hampton’s performance during Gabi and Sir’s final exchange sends chills down our backs. You can feel her confidence and reclamation for herself through the screen.

Satcha’s Case Brings Out Dhan’s Demons

Out of everyone on the team, besides Zeke, Dhan is the one we know the least about. Up to this point, we’ve only gotten crumbs from conversations he has with team members or contextual clues.

However, during Found Season 1 Episode 5, “Missing While Undocumented,” Gabi reveals that Dhan has a partner named Ethan, and then Dhan reveals that he has gone away for the week. Something in the way he says it clues us into the fact that Dhan might not do well with his partner being away.

So, when it is revealed that he doesn’t, in fact, take being alone well, it doesn’t surprise us, but it does give us more compassion for his struggles. Up to this point, we’ve never seen him be anything more than put together, and yet this entire episode, he is disheveled and clearly sleep-deprived.

The way Ethan’s absence and Satcha’s case bring up some bad memories for him indicates that he still has some growing and healing to do, which, hopefully, we will get to witness this season. It would add another layer to this team, and the overwhelmingly optimistic and hopeful vibe of the organization.

This case further unpacks Dhan’s previously silent struggles when he’s pulled into a physical altercation with the suspect and a gun is put to his head. It clearly unsettles him, and only a hug from Gabi pulls him out of it enough to complete the job they were there to do.

“Missing While Undocumented” does a great job of showing that Gabi knows everyone’s secrets, but they barely know each other. This isn’t going to hold up well for the team in the long run, so I hope that this case is a sign that things are shifting.

Zeke and Dhan Do Some Important Bonding

One of the positives to come out of this slip for Dhan is his bond with Zeke. Because he can’t imagine going home to an empty house he decides helping Zeke comb through footage is a better idea. 

It allows the two to better understand one another and their own personal mental struggles. So much so that by the end Dhan and Zeke are together for the “Welcome Home” part of their case closing tradition. 

It’s a move that proves, Dhan doesn’t dislike Zeke, just that until now Zeke’s troubles were too similar for Dhan to handle. Dhan is someone who has gotten by thanks to boxing up his past instead of dealing with it.

Now that the box has been opened he knows that he needs to be honest with the team because he is going to need them in the future. As he mentions during the closing moments, sometimes people can’t be alone, and that’s okay.

Stray Thoughts:

• It’s great to see that this time, Mark’s homicide case and Gabi’s missing case are one and the same. It allows them to team up — which we love.
• Mark extending a hand to Dhan after apprehending Manny is HUGE. I hope it means further bonding between Mark and the team in the episodes to come.
• Sir has some balls to tell Gabi that he’s not the monster. Sure, she shouldn’t be keeping him locked up in her house, but he kidnapped and possibly killed young girls before her. So, he’s not completely innocent.
• I need to see Lacey confront Gabi about what she knows. Just letting it continue to fester is going to complicate the team.
• Poor Margaret, I was really pulling for her to finally have some kind of lead on her son despite it being unlikely he will ever be found.

 

What did you think of this episode of Found? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Found airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC.

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