Found Season 1 Episode 11 Review: Missing While Interracial

Kelli Williams shines in her performance as Margaret on Found Season 1 Episode 11, “Missing While Interracial.”

Margaret has been working to overcome the trauma of losing her son over the past several episodes, with the first step being to break the nightly habit of going to the bus stop where he disappeared.

With the help of her therapist, she started small by arriving an hour later to the bus stop on Found Season 1 Episode 10. It’s a small detail on that episode, but this has been building all season. 

While she’s able to arrive later several days in a row, her attempt at trying to skip an entire evening proves to be too difficult. With Gabi by her side, she agrees to try EMDR with her therapist, which forces her to relive the day she lost her son. 

It’s a visceral, emotional scene that reveals the deep guilt Margaret has been carrying. Her anger at herself and then her desperation when faced with a vision of her boy makes for one of the most emotional scenes I’ve watched on network television in a long time. It’s raw and heartbreaking, and Kelli Williams hits every note perfectly. 

The other piece of this that’s key is that Gabi makes it a priority to be by Margaret’s side — even if that means pushing off something important to her and her own healing. 

Gabi is there for everyone else, but she’s been suffering through her own trauma alone. She’s so invested in helping others and putting herself off to the side that she’s made an entire career out of it, after all. 

In dealing with her trauma, Gabi has continued to try to find out the truth about Annie. Sir insists he didn’t kill her, and it turns out, he’s been telling the truth all along. 

And a slip from Gabi on the phone with Trent shows how close she is to losing control of her situation. Then we’re left with a cliffhanger as Gabi decides she no longer has any use for Sir. She makes a phone call inviting someone to come over.

It seems too obvious that it would be Trent. My money is on Lacey — to bring her into the fold, or Dhan — who seems like he could be the one person who already knows Gabi’s secret. I’m reaching on that second guess, but it does feel like Gabi would have had to have help from someone at some point to set everything up for Sir.

Or, perhaps, when Gabi answered Lacey’s question about what’s in her basement by saying it was herself, that was more true than we realized. 

This episode also reveals how Sir caught Gabi in the first place years ago. He manipulated her, abusing his authority, to get her to willingly go with him to that farmhouse. It’s only when she starts asking to go home that she realizes she’s in trouble. 

Even in those first moments, Sir — “Mr. Evans” to her at that point — seems to think he’s caring for Gabi in his own twisted way. Had it not been for her crush on a boy at school, maybe he wouldn’t have taken her at all. 

Every step is horrifying, from the way he lures her in with her eyes closed, holding her arm in arm, to when he insists she must have been drawing the letters “HE” on her notebook to stand for “Hugh Evans.” 

The way the story is unfolding means that with every answer, there are that many more questions. It still feels like we’re only scratching the surface — and that’s a good thing, because it means the characters and the story will just become that more complex. (It’s a good thing the series has been renewed.)

Of course, we also have to discuss the case of the week, and this one has its own emotional moment that rivals the scene with Margaret.

The firm is dealing with not one, but two missing persons cases simultaneously. First, a young Black man, Brandon, and then a young white woman, Allison — which has the public assuming the man had kidnapped the woman. 

Instead, it turns out that neither is a victim — at least not in the traditional way. The two had been in a secret relationship, which they’d been hiding in large part because of their differences in race. Had they not felt the need to keep their relationship hidden, they could have been found much more quickly.

Luckily, it’s another happy ending, though it’s touch and go there for a moment. The team finds the two of them injured — Allison impaled, and Brandon connected to her by make-shift IV, providing her with his own blood to keep her alive. It’s the ultimate sacrifice, knowing that he could die in the process. 

Their families are forced to come together after all of this, and there are plenty of apologies to go around. It’s a love story with a happy ending when it’s all said and done, and it’s a unique missing persons case as well. 

That’s another thing this show has continued to do well: the cases don’t ever feel redundant. They do, however, all seem to bring Gabi just a little closer to being able to deal with her own demons. 

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Found airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC.

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