NCIS: Los Angeles: “Found” – review

This episode continues the storyline from “Missing”, in which three Colombians kidnapped Agent Dominic Vaile (Adam Jamal Craig), but handed him over to more sinister captors who escaped the OSP team’s grasp. The team reconvenes in “Found” upon receiving video of Agent Vaile being held by Muslim extremists. The extremists want to trade Vaile for one of their imprisoned comrades.

While we had hardly gotten to know Agent Vaile when he disappeared, his loss weighed on the team realistically, and the chance to rescue him brought out their protective feelings and guilt. For his own part, Dom showed some initiative, standing up to his captors and even befriending one of them, who turned out to be Sam’s young friend Mo.

The turning point of the episode came when the team got one of their suspects to talk by fake-torturing a fellow NCIS agent. This trick wasn’t given away early; I had just seen it on Burn Notice a few seasons ago.

One of the suspense elements in this episode was not knowing where Dom was being held. Against the clock, the team couldn’t mobilize a rescue effort until they were sure where Dom was. As I said about the NCIS episode “Obsession,” because this is an hour-long TV drama, some plot concessions had to be made. And indeed, Dom was being held in a theater somewhere in Los Angeles, made to look like a Middle East hideout.

This episode didn’t lack action or intensity, but I would have liked to see Vaile’s character developed further. For all his heroics this episode, in the big picture of the series as a whole, I have to say his character was mishandled.