Critic's Rating: 4 / 5.0
4
“You’re going away soon, and I want to make sure I can do this work without you,” is a haunting line from this hour.
M&A is broken, but is it broken beyond repair?
We all know there’s a way around this, or rather through it, and that the Found Family will find some middle ground, but these times look incredibly bleak.
And Found Season 2 Episode 5 sheds light on how fractured things are and even sets the groundwork for a world without Gabi at the helm of M&A and one in which their “vigilante” group is rendered obsolete.
We got a quick solution after Found Season 2 Episode 4‘s cliffhanger, which had us clutching our chests and wondering what happened to Lacey all over again.
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She needed some air and took off for a breather, something the characters relayed quickly at the top of the hour. The others have concerns about her but still don’t fully voice them.
Unsurprisingly, it was a fake-out, but it was frustrating, considering how much we sailed past it.
However, it was something else that established how Lacey is still struggling not only with the trauma of her time with Sir and all that it stirs up in her from her childhood but from a TBI as well.
The combination of both places Lacey in a difficult position. She doesn’t always trust her mind and often feels that others feel the same way about what she says and does.
It muddies the waters whenever she shares a tidbit, but we see how she mulls things over before she voices her thoughts as if she’s too afraid of people not believing her.
It lingers from her childhood, as we saw how everyone unwittingly gaslighted her whenever she attempted to share that Sir was stalking her.
Because Lacey already has a lot on her plate, it’s bothersome that she has to spend some time fielding other people’s strong feelings about what happened to her and emotions about Gabi.
Trent’s follow-up with her showed some sensitivity.
He always reaches the point where he allows his own feelings to override everything else, and that’s when it consistently becomes a problem.
Trent couldn’t resist prodding Lacey about Sir and Gabi despite their conversation draining her mentally and emotionally.
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Trent, on this fool’s journey, attempting to build a case against Gabi is one thing, but the way he insists on roping those closest to Gabi into all of this is absurd.
If he could find an ounce of chill in any capacity anywhere, it wouldn’t be nearly as grating, but sadly, he cannot.
It’s as if no one else around Lacey is considering how they’re placing more undue stress on her by trying to dictate or influence how she feels about Gabi for their own selfish reasons.
There’s nothing fair about Lacey needing to set aside her own traumas and issues at times because she feels compelled to draw a clear line regarding her sister and the judgment that Gabi is facing.
By the end of the hour, it’s enough to make you wonder if, deep down, Lacey recognizes that part of Gabi imprisoning Sir was on her behalf.
Maybe Lacey didn’t want Sir held in captivity the way Gabi arranged, but if there’s anything we’ve learned from the flashbacks, Gabi has always been Lacey’s protector and would do anything for her.
Gabi has seen Lacey through it all, and she’s been there through the darkest moments for her.
The flashbacks continue to be one of the season’s highlights as they build on the background we’ve learned and establish this dynamic between these two sisters and how deeply it goes.
It sets the tone for everything we know about the relationship between these two characters, whether as children or now.
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It also shapes so much about Gabi, who she is as a character, and how everyone around her reacts to her, never fully knowing the full extent of her journey in the first place.
Gabi has been Lacey’s advocate and protector since the moment she laid eyes on her, and Lacey couldn’t have thrived without the loving support and help from her mother and Gabi.
We see how deeply Gabi is protective of Lacey, but Lacey could potentially extend that to Gabi in the present day, and if she does, she’d be a rarity — who actually looked after Gabi when she escaped Sir?
It doesn’t seem like she ever got to process anything, and one thing about trauma is it will come back and bite you if unresolved.
Gabi is a protector and always has been, but this woman has been on such a slippery slope emotionally and mentally since well before we met her, and it’s only increased tenfold now since all of this has happened.
One can’t help but keep returning to the critical question: Who protects the protector?
Nearly everyone in Gabi’s life is so busy judging and indicting her for everything that there’s been little focus on whether or not she’s genuinely okay and needs some protection herself; it’s disheartening.
Maybe just an ounce of the empathy that she extends to others would be nice and essential here because it’s abundantly clear that this woman never actually had the full support network she needed after all of this.
Knowing that Bella/Lacey’s breakthrough in creating a happy picture that wasn’t cast in darkness was one of Sir behind bars certainly adds more context and a deeper layer to Gabi’s actions, and the slow unraveling of that is fascinating.
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Of course, the context means very little when M&A is a hot mess.
The case’s approach and formatting differed due to the issues plaguing M&A.
For starters, it wasn’t even a case that Gabi picked up herself, but rather Margaret.
There’s nothing wrong with Margaret working on some cases and bringing them to the attention of others, but the problem is that she didn’t tell anyone about it.
However, she still invited the Diazes to the agency anyway.
It was a bold move, and while we’ve all had to deal with her anger toward Gabi, how she undercut Gabi with this maneuver was still particularly difficult to watch.
If it wasn’t already a gut punch that she went behind Gabi and brought these people into the office without telling anyone else her intentions, the dig she made justifying why she did it was a total KO.
Margaret wants to ensure she can do the job without Gabi, as she assumes Gabi will go away.
It seems that Margaret feels she’ll be taking over the agency, presumably when Gabi is imprisoned for what she did to Sir.
That was enough to justify her not communicating properly or professionally with Gabi regarding the Diaz case.
The work that M&A does is incredibly important.
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Gabi is clearly a better person than I am and certainly better than some of the characters are actually giving her credit for here.
Gabi could still take that particular dig and plan to the chin because she would naturally want the company to continue without her if necessary because she believes in their work.
As a result, Gabi wouldn’t dare call Margaret out on her audacity nor stoop low and make some points about Margaret’s fragile state that may interfere with her properly executing things or leading the charge in Gabi’s absence.
Margaret was right about little Matty being Adela’s son, which meant Adela was alive.
But the others have adequate reason to be concerned about Margaret and her mental health because she looked utterly frazzled for most of the hour.
They all noted her harried demeanor and look, and we also learned that she stopped seeing her therapist.
It’s not a good sign that she’s stopped those sessions, and now she’s facing a larger stressor and more issues because of how she’s handling everything with Gabi.
She also has seemingly regressed when it comes to her sitting at the bus station every single night.
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Margaret has been having a rough time, and the problem is far deeper than what happened with Gabi and Sir.
One wishes that Margaret would even consider looking past that and getting to the crux of her issues because it only seems to be causing more harm and damage.
She’s hurting far too much to continue at her current pace, and hating Gabi isn’t enough, nor is it doing her any good.
Even her meddlesome nature with Dhan is frustrating.
Frankly, it’s not really her or Zeke’s place or business to harangue Dhan about whether or not he’ll tell his husband about his role in helping Gabi.
This desire to be judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to Gabi, or in this instance, Dhan, taking accountability for their actions and facing the consequences is irksome.
Unfortunately, Dhan is also having a tough time. Because of everything that has transpired, he’s seemingly avoiding his husband every chance he gets.
But it also feels like something that he has to work out for himself without the input of his displeased and righteous colleagues.
Margaret is on the warpath, but all of this is eating her up too much, which is why, as shocking as it was that Margaret landed herself in cuffs before Gabi did, there was almost a certainty too.
We don’t know what caused Margaret’s arrest, but she hasn’t been doing well, so she wasn’t headed anywhere good.
Trent is also still painfully obnoxious about Gabi, despite some of the ground made in Found Season 2 Episode 3, but at least this time, she finally shut him down so they could focus on the case.
How much abuse does he think she’ll take?
They can’t even work on a time-sensitive case without him taking moments to dig at her.
Trent is misguided, and it’s frustrating that a law enforcement officer fails to grasp what a GENUINE TRAUMA BOND looks like.
He keeps speaking to Gabi as if she’s choosing Sir, trying to serve Sir, addicted to Sir, or as if this game that she and Sir play is out of sport and entertainment for her and not freaking survival.
It’s infuriating that Sir terrifies Gabi, but people forget that because they don’t understand their connection.
She never chooses Sir, and she doesn’t consider him a partner, but ironically, Trent doesn’t even consider that he’s playing into Sir’s plans and giving HIM what he wants by alienating Gabi.
Even the debate over whether or not they would hear what Sir had to say about the case was frustrating.
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Understandably, people have bruised egos and hurt feelings over the realization that sometimes Sir was critical in helping them solve their cases.
But when someone’s life is on the line, and there is little time to waste, it doesn’t feel right to ignore anything useful Sir may have had to say.
Even Lacey could grasp this and trusted Gabi.
Interestingly, she and Dhan noted how Gabi processed what Sir had to say, down to envisioning his presence in the room and speaking to him as if they were mere feet apart.
It’s clear that Gabi has her own struggles regarding Sir, and that moment with Dhan and Lacey on the outside looking in clued them in. This isn’t fun for Gabi, nor something glamorous or that she desires; it’s supremely effed up and messy.
But, of course, they aren’t the ones that overlook her vulnerability.
It’s a relief that Sir didn’t somehow breach M&A and wound up in the room with Gabi and that close.
But Sir is no less evil and scary, and you know it’s bad when, besides being scared for himself, Christian is terrified of what Sir has planned for Gabi, too.
The two brothers have fascinating interactions because you never know where their conversations will go.
Christian needed time to process the news that Sir killed their mother, but he still insisted to Gabi that he’d somehow help because Christian definitely wasn’t the person helping Sir, right?
It’s unclear how he intends to help, and when he has moments where he crosses paths with his brother and fails to do anything, it’s hard to know where Christian stands.
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Christian isn’t long for this world, mostly because Sir doesn’t care for Christian’s interest in Gabi.
At this point, Sir could probably do away with his brother and still make himself a martyr in the process, as he did when all but confirming why he killed their mother in the first place.
Found still sometimes struggles to show how Sir’s insight is so essential.
He often shares things that Gabi would have already known or would have taken the others only a short time to figure out.
In this case, his connection and insight were on the weak side.
But so many other things were happening that it wasn’t too grating, especially since it delivered that wonderfully shot scene of Gabi imagining Sir there with her. Again, it perfectly encapsulates what Sir and Gabi’s trauma bond actually looks like.
The Diazes were victims of the criminal justice system and the media. Seven years of the general public believing that you killed your daughter based on a bar fight is deplorable and yet the EXACT type of scrutiny and judgment that BIPOC often faces.
It was far too easy to vilify these parents of color, perpetuate some violent Brown man narrative, and then not bother to find Adela, and then these same people wonder why there’s hesitancy to trust in and reach out to the authorities.
Sadly, because Trent was taking up this case this time, he was the one who had to apologize on behalf of the entire force for the actions of others who preceded him, including Edwards.
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The case brought his father into the mix, and the two have a strained relationship and different outlooks on life.
His father is charismatic and seems to have the respect of those around him, but he’s also more old-school.
He considers Trent a bit more sensitive to the nature of the job, but despite their different outlooks, he seems insistent on protecting Trent from Gabi.
I don’t know what to make of that, nor do I know how to process that Trent’s next order of business is a specialized task force for these types of cases.
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He’s probably trying to hurt Gabi by making her obsolete, but this, too, is laughable.
As we saw in Found Season 2 Episode 4, even with a specialized task force, only some respect or trust law enforcement.
If Trent had to apologize on behalf of law enforcement over the mishandling of a case seven years ago, what makes him think they’ll be any better equipped at helping people now?
And if Gabi had to have an entire agency because law enforcement drops the ball with disenfranchised missing people, how would a specialized unit do any better than what police have been doing thus far?
M&A and Gabi are in a precarious place right now, and it’s hard to guess what the future holds.
Over to you, Found Fanatics.
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What do you think is in store for the future of M&A?
Why do you think the police arrested Margaret?
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