• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 2, 2023

Rarely has so much energy been expended to make a TV show so farfetched.

The show, “Found,” is a missing-persons drama premiering Tuesday on NBC. Like so many TV dramas these days, the show opens by diving right into a big case about to come to a violent, climactic conclusion.

This happens in the first two or three minutes of the series premiere, after which the show is off and running, and so are the characters, who rush around all day like they each drank a gallon of Starbucks.

This is understandable, since for them, every minute counts in their hard-charging search for the missing and the forgotten.

The main characters in “Found” are the members of a crusading team of missing-persons zealots led by Gabi Mosely (Shanola Hampton, above photo, right), who is described in the NBC press material as a “p.r. specialist.”

I have worked with a great many p.r. firms and “p.r. specialists” in my career, but as far as I know, none of them hunted down kidnapers and rescued abducted children on the side.

Naturally, since this is a network TV show, fierce Gabi is surrounded by a team of swashbuckling pros who are all the best in their respective fields, and who share her passion for shredding the rules, kicking down doors and punching out perps -- with brass knuckles, in Gabi’s case.

In the series premiere, we learn that Gabi has gone into the missing-persons business because she believes that local law enforcement neglects or ignores most missing-persons cases when they are people of color.

She feels so strongly about this subject that she becomes angered by the effort being made by law enforcement and the media to find and rescue a missing white tot who is the daughter of a United States senator.

While there is some evidence to believe otherwise, it is nevertheless possible to believe that based on how she reacts to the attention being paid to this missing white girl, Gabi doesn’t particularly care what happens to this child.

As the team runs breathlessly from place to place in the premiere episode of “Found,” the show throws a ton of information at us about the personal histories and motivations of each of the team members.

To say that the personal histories of these kidnapping crusaders are sad is the understatement of the year. 

This information helps build sympathy for the team members and serves as an excuse for their excessive methods.

But then -- surprise, surprise -- one of them turns out to be a sadist, which puts the excessive behavior in a whole different light.

“Found” premieres on Tuesday (October 3) at 10 p.m. Eastern on NBC.