Shanola Hampton is on Found, which is a show about kidnappings — and also her own, from which she rescued herself from a man she is now keeping captive in her basement — and I have SO many notes on it. One of which is that Mark-Paul Gosselaar, her childhood kidnapper, is 50 and Shanola is 47. He plays himself in the flashbacks to when he was her high-school teacher, but she does not, which makes their lack of age difference in the present a little bit weird. They didn’t de-age MPG enough, so he looks too similar to the way he does now and it changes the chemistry in creepy ways. My OTHER note is that everyone on that show is stressssssssed all the time and Shanola is EXTREMELY INTENSE, and I think it needs some balance. Seeing Shanola here, looking light as air and so divine and lovely, makes me wonder whether they couldn’t just add a DROPLET of this charisma into her character. Look how glorious she is! I’m not saying they need to turn her into Elsbeth, or that she should be turning the world on with her smile while hunting down missing children, but I do think there’s room for a LITTLE of this to shine through.
See? Delightful, even with the sleeve indecision! Enjoy her smile while it lasts because it does NOT look like she’s experiencing joy on TV anytime soon.
