“Vanishing Point” – Aired on January 21, 2019
Written by: Jeff Rake & Gregory Nelson
Directed by: Millicent Shelton
Grade: 4,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

After last week’s stellar “Contrails,” showrunners delight the viewers again with the second game-changing episode of the season, first one being “Connecting Flights.” It’s another solid outing of Manifest that expands the parameters of Flight 828’s mystery. In fact, it appears that the mystery’s modus operandi has just grown bigger and transcended the flight itself. It has evolved into multiple time dimensions across more people than just the passengers.

We pick up right where “Contrails” ended, with Cal’s disappearance from the house. We dive into what is, in my opinion, the best first 10 minutes of any Manifest episode thus far. Hats off to Jeff Rake and Gregory Nelson, the co-writers of the episode, and to director Millicent Shelton. The narrative advances at a brisk pace yet, thanks to coherent dialogues performed passionately by the actors, and timely transitions between scenes, the sequence flat out works. Let’s unpack these first ten minutes because it aptly sets up the search for Cal that occupies the rest of the episode.

Police have arrived at the Stone household to investigate Cal’s disappearance. A detective named Chris Jackson (Lisa Ferreira) is questioning Grace. From Grace’s half-assed answers, she suspects something is not right. Grace vaguely implies that someone wants to harm her son. When Ben arrives, Det. Jackson pursues the avenue of “someone wanting to harm Cal” with him and asks his whereabouts the night before at which moment Grace immediately interjects, saying that this has nothing to do with Ben. Guest actor Lisa Ferreira depicts the portrait of the suspicious detective with dexterity while Athena Karkanis and Josh Dallas successfully convey to the viewers the precarious position of Ben and Grace who struggle to provide answers of substance to her questions because they have secrets to keep. Olive is in the background listening and she senses that Jackson’s pointed questions are targeting Ben as a suspect. She calls Michaela and asks her to come to the rescue.

The lovely sister that Michaela is, of course she will come, even though she is in the middle of jerking Autumn around and handcuffing her. Autumn’s cover as the mole for the Major is blown and Michaela is furious to say the least. She is harassing Autumn, demanding that she reveals Cal’s location, as well as the Major’s identity, but Autumn ain’t talking. When Olive calls, she heads to the house, bringing the handcuffed Autumn along in the car.

At the house, she joins Ben and Grace who are talking privately in the bedroom. Ben and Michaela reveal to Grace that Cal experiences callings and has visions stronger than that of any other passenger. Ben shows her Cal’s drawing book. At that moment, they realize that there is a page missing, reminding us of the moment Autumn stole the page when she was snooping around Cal’s room in “Contrails.” This leads to a powerful moment when the three of them notice another one of Cal’s drawings and realize that he drew the three of them in the present and now as they stand and stare at his drawing book. They explore the drawings further and come to the realization that Cal drew them a map of where he could be found. He drew images of a town that Grace recognizes as Tannersville, in upstate New York. 

Mixed in all of the above, there is a brief scene with Jansen (Brandon Schraml), the dubious black-suited all-purpose assistant of the Major, who enters a high-tech surveillance facility. Apparently, the Major and his agents have not located Cal either. Jansen is alarmed that Autumn has been taken into custody (because the high-sci-fi-tech cameras told him so) and calls the Major to alert her.

In the meantime, Ben, Michaela, and Grace need to get rid of the police at the house. Michaela cannot intervene directly, but knows who to call, and boy can we guess who that is. The faithful Jared puts once again his career on the line and shows up at the house in his NYPD uniform. He has a neat story concocted about Cal being located his grandpa’s house. Heck, he even produces a photo of the two of them together to assure Det. Jackson that it is a false alarm. Jackson appears unconvinced, but hey, who is she to doubt the all-magnanimous Det. Jared’s word, right? Never mind that he is pulling a false false alarm of the highest order. Jackson and her crew leave the house.

Ben and Grace decide to leave for Tannersville in search of Cal, in Danny’s truck no less (!) to avoid detection by authorities. Michaela stays behind to work the Autumn angle. And thus, we get past the first 10 minutes of the show, a suitable mix of scenes and dialogues that concretely set in motion the events that will occupy the rest of the episode while giving a purpose to each of the main or recurring characters. There is not one second of irrelevant action or pointless chit-chat. The sequence requires full attention, but the effort yields its rewards. Thanks to it, there are no fill-the-gap-in-the-narrative-with-your-imagination requirements on the viewer during the next 30-plus minutes. It’s a smooth and entertaining ride.

In order to convince the stubborn Autumn to turn over the missing page from Cal’s drawings, Michaela first needs to learn the nature of the Major’s stronghold on her. Apparently, she promised Autumn that she could reunite her with her long-lost daughter. To negate that leverage, Michaela tracks the daughter’s location and tells Autumn that she no longer needs the Major to reunite with her. In exchange, she gets Autumn to first call Jansen and steer him in the wrong direction to capture Cal, and then, to hand the drawing over to her. Autumn complies. Apparently, Cal foresaw their reunion because he drew Autumn and her daughter together, even though he was not aware of the daughter’s existence. On the backside of the page, Cal drew a cabin in the woods. It is where he is currently hiding? Michaela heads to Tannersville alone, much to Jared’s dismay, to join Ben and Grace in their search.

There is a scene that shows Jansen and his team locating Cal thanks to their high-tech surveillance equipment. But they lose time tracking down his exact location due to Autumn steering them in the wrong direction.

In the meantime, Olive, who performs the ultimate passive-aggressive form of teen angst in every scene that she appears, finds a note from Cal in a secret place in their room back home that only the two knew about. Cal obviously meant for Olive to find the note and it says, “I left,” with an odd-shaped “I.” She texts the photo to her parents in Tannersville.

Ben and Grace figure out that Cal had the whole thing planned out. He was not kidnapped. He departed the house on his own and left clues behind for them on the location of the cabin in the woods by Tannersville where he is in hiding. Even the shape of the “I” had a purpose. It’s a quasi-map that, when coupled with the word “left,” instructs Ben and Grace to take a left at a certain intersection. They realize this at the tail end of a sequence filled with contrivances, consisting of a car chase sequence and a show of Superman-like perception and memory on Grace’s part, that puts them at the exact spot where the “I” map would actually be relevant.

They find Cal and have a happy parent-child reunion moment. Michaela joins them in the cabin shortly after. But “Vanishing Point” is a lot more than an episode focusing on the simple task of finding Cal. The kid is apparently expecting someone else to show up. That individual, named Zeke (Matt Long), is suffering from frostbite as he arrives. Ben, who knows by heart the names of the 191 souls aboard Flight 828 (and probably their favorite brand of toothpaste and shampoo) confirms that he is not on the flight manifest.

The first revelation is that he is the person in Michaela’s callings – “Find her” – in the last two episodes. He also appeared in Cal’s visions, holding Michaela’s picture in his hand as he was walking in the snow. Michaela joins them in the cabin shortly before Zeke wakes up. The next revelation arrives when he remembers falling into a cave while hiking two weeks ago, according to him, during a blizzard. He was stuck in the cave, but eventually got out and began walking in desperation. He claims to have found inspiration in seeing Michaela’s face on a picture in a magazine that he randomly found in the cave. Seeing her face kept him alive, he says, although he can’t explain why. He cannot believe that Michaela is alive though, which makes it clear that he is not aware of the reappearance of Flight 828. It turns out that Zeke fell in the cave in 2017 and somehow lost a year during that blizzard while he thinks it was two weeks ago.

This extraordinary turn of event is presented in five-star fashion, through a conversation taking place in the dim-lighted cabin during which the camera work by Shelton and the low-toned (yet malaise-filled) music by composer Danny Lux blend together to amplify the crescendo effect of the final revelation.     

“Vanishing Point” begins and ends strongly. Despite couple of minor hick-ups, it is another stout addition to Manifest and, as noted above, the second game-changing one. It shifts the nature Manifest’s central mystery around Flight 828’s disappearance. With the new revelations, the nucleus of the mystery can no longer be confined to the flight. Zeke’s appearance suggests the possibility that there are other people experiencing a loss of time and that they are potentially connected to the passengers on the flight, or at least, to Cal.

Did I even mention that other revelation, the one through which we finally get to see the Major’s face? Well, I just did. Whatever her name is, she is played by Elizabeth Marvel, a ‘marvel-ous’ choice for the role!

Bring on next week!

Last-minute thoughts:

– Once Jackson and her crew leave the Stone household, Michaela thanks Jared for finding a way to get rid of them. Jared sarcastically replies, “Yeah, no biggie. Just my career.” It’s almost like he is aware of how absurdly implausible it is becoming that he still has not gotten caught abusing the privileges of his rank, and lost his job in disgrace, considering the numerous schemes that he has been pulling off, all in the name of helping Michaela. To top things off, Michaela says one second later that she wants to bring Autumn to the precinct for questioning. Jared asks the most relevant question du moment to Michaela: “You want to take a kidnapping suspect into the precinct after I just told half the NYPD there is no missing kid?” Watch J.R. Ramirez’s sarcastic smile as he delivers the question. It’s almost like he is asking, “What on earth are the writers doing to my character?” It is hilarious.

– His hectic life of late will not allow it, but when things calm down, I want to be Ben’s sponsor in scheduling some much-needed sessions with a therapist who can help him with interpersonal communication skills. For all the qualities he possesses, he is dismal when it comes to providing clear answers to questions. I’ve already touched on his communicative skills in my review of “Dead Reckoning,” and it shows up again here. Take for instance, the scene at the house when Grace, Ben, and Michaela are talking in the room with the police present in the house. Grace, obviously exasperated at the flood of half-baked information flowing her way, asks one logical question after another. Ben replies by either stuttering, murmuring, or uttering a few general sentences, if he finishes them at all. Michaela intervenes more than once, thankfully, and duly provides concise answers to Grace, or at least complements Ben’s utterances with the necessary information. It happens again later in Tannersville when Ben has an opportunity to tell Grace something more than the generic “Everything I’ve done has been for you and the kids” line. Alas, he stares at Grace after her next question (a legitimate one from her point of view) for a couple of seconds before the phone rings. Ben, we all love you man, but come on, stop being stingy with your word count!  

– On the plus side, the intimate conversation at the table in the cabin is a beautiful moment for the Stone couple.

– Lourdes seems to have disappeared. I can barely remember the last time that she played a significant role in a scene. Danny does not appear in this episode either, his name getting mentioned only thanks to his truck. These two continue to serve no significant purpose other than the emblematic “third-wheel” character, confined to the role of complicating the love story between two others who are meant to be together.

– For that matter, Saanvi’s role in the show, as well as her presence on screen, continue to diminish for better or worse.

– After Jared goes out of his way to help Michaela, again, he is firmly “dismissed” by her, again. She tells him to stay behind when she leaves for the cabin. I don’t know whether to feel bad for him, or to believe that he is better off this way.

– I am glad that the Major is a new character and not someone already mentioned for shock effect in a show that already possesses its fair share of shocks and twists. Plus, ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Marvel…

​Until the next episode…

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“Contrails” – Aired on January 14, 2019
Written by: Matthew Lau & Bobak Esfarjani
Directed by: Marisol Adler
Grade: 5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

So, did Captain Daly and Fiona get blown out of the sky by the Coast Guard? Or did they vanish and get transported in time? If it’s the latter, why did the Coast Guard use the term “neutralized”? Are they in on the conspiracy too? And why are they reporting on TV no plane wreckage from Daly’s plane has yet to be found? We know that Cal has a special connection of some sort with other passengers, but how can he foresee events in the future? Which drawing did Autumn remove from Cal’s drawing book?

As you can see, plenty of question remain.

At the same time, “Contrails” does not neglect to address key issues and solidify the narrative of some previously not-so-fleshed-out plots. It is a down-to-earth outing, letting us breathe after the wild ride of “Crosswinds.” It moves at a reserved pace, focusing on a few key developments. It serves to reassemble the scattered parts of that which constitutes the linchpin of the show’s overall arc, the Flight 828’s disappearance. It gives Michaela much-needed depth through meaningful interactions with her close ones. It showcases the directorial dexterity of Marisol Adler and astute dialogues written by co-writers Bobak Esfarjani and Matthew Lau. Last but not the least, it is centrally driven by an outstanding performance by a guest actor in the role of an essential recurring character.

For all these reasons and more, it’s perfect…

The episode begins with a flashback of the frantic moments in the cockpit when Daly and his co-pilot struggled to navigate through the ferocious storm that appeared out of nowhere in front of them. The scene provides a bit more information on what occurred during the mayhem, except that we get the cockpit point-of-view this time. Daly apparently had no time to circumvent the suddenly materializing storm and decided to wing right through the heart of it. In the flashback, we also see Daly giving his account, after the landing, of those moments to Vance (RIP) who does not believe him because of the NTSB report that contradicts his account.

Daly runs later into Cal who asks if he can have the captain’s wings. Daly tells him it’s broken, Cal tells him “it’s ok” and thanks him for “bringing us home.” Daly is touched by the kid’s genuineness. It’s a clever flashback that gives us just enough extra information, except that it leaves out what happened in the final seconds when Daly dove the plane straight into the bright light. It also preemptively makes it clear to the viewers that when Cal mentions “the man from the plane” in the next scene to Ben and Grace back in the present, he means Capt. Daly. Every moment in that flashback is relevant to the rest of the episode and none of it feels rushed.

Enter Michaela who is having another vision of the snowy place with the calling “Find her,” a carry-over from last episode. Jared wants to know why Michaela is avoiding him since their steamy moment in the sack last week. Then, he spits out a few pre-teenager lines reminiscent of the ubiquitous “confused man.” He tells her that they are meant to be together and that he wants to be with her, only to turn around a minute later and say, “of course I do,” when Michaela asks him if he loves Lourdes. Oh, there is also the pathetic “tell me what to do” line. Jared, dude, why is it Michaela’s responsibility to tell you what to do? Are you not a grown up? You just declared your love to her and to your current wife in the span of a minute. No, buddy, you don’t get to wash your hands off the decision-making duties by designating Michaela for the job. You deal with it, you make up your mind, this is on you! Thankfully, Michaela stands firm and rejects his proposal (whatever it was supposed to be). Ok, putting my reviewer hat back on…

There are two more scenes in the episode with Michaela at center stage. The first one is with Ben, the second with Grace. Dialogues come across natural in both scenes and the brother-sister intimacy between Ben and Michaela, as well as the close friendship between Grace and Michaela, are conveyed with great dexterity by the three actors involved.

The star of the episode, though, is Captain Daly – and by extension, the actor Frank Deal. In “Crosswinds” we briefly saw Daly who now seems to be only the shell of the cool and witty pilot that appeared in “Pilot.” He is anxious and high-strung. This episode wisely fills in the details of what he has been doing since the reappearance of Flight 828. He desperately wants to clear his name because as Ben affirms “the whole world thinks he’s responsible for what happened.” He repeatedly runs simulations in the pilot training center, recreating the same conditions at the exact moment of the storm during the flight. He has been collecting official documents, media articles, photos, and has turned his desk at home to that of an excessively obsessed detective with a wall full of clippings about the flight.

Daly is on to something and needs Ben to prove his innocence. Ben, the mensch that he is, agrees to help the poor man who has now completely lost his family (with whom, according to him, he had a strained relationship anyway) because for five and a half years, the news media declared him as “the guy who took a plane full of people, and killed them.” Since the plane’s reappearance, he acquired a new title: “the guy who made them all disappear.” Deal is on top of his game here, you can’t help but feel sorry for the good captain. Even the guard at the entrance to the training facility has his laugh at Daly’s expense, calling him “Captain Future.”

Ben accompanies him into the cockpit of the simulation plane Daly runs the simulation under the conditions found described in the official NTSB report. Clearly, it is not what happened on that day because the storm is barely visible in the distance. Daly believes it’s a government cover-up. He points to the incident report’s date, April 8, 2013, which proves that the government started hiding things not on the day Flight 828 reappeared in 2018, but rather, on the day it disappeared. The co-pilot Amuta**, who is back in Jamaica, backs the official story when Ben talks to him on the phone later.

**Nit-pick moment: the co-pilot’s name in this episode is Amuta. In “Pilot,” he was credited as “Co-pilot Danny Clarke.” But it’s the same person and both are played by the same actor Leajato Robinson. In a show packed with unexpected twists and turns, one’s mind can wonder though. Is he indeed the same person? Or, is there also something behind this mysterious name change? Have I become paranoid? Ok, I stop! Enough madness!

Ben notices in the reports that a meteorologist named Roger Mencin (Bruce MacVittie) was studying coastal erosion in the exact area that the plane disappeared. Although he was called to testify at the Congressional investigation in 2014, he never showed up, and abruptly retired to Massapequa, NY. Ben and Daly locate him at his retirement home. Mencin is afraid to talk at first, but eventually agrees to help. He was studying a phenomenon called “dark lightning.” Mencin explains what it is, using meteo-technobabble. Suffice it to say that one has to be close to the phenomenon to see it. Mencin discovered it on his instruments the night of the flight’s disappearance. But the DOD “suggested” to Mencin that he takes early retirement when they found out that he was going to testify. They made him destroy every copy and file, except that Mencin did not.

Daly and Ben go back to the simulator and recreate the flight with the actual data they received from Mencin. Daly runs the simulation six times and each time the plane crashes. Daly is ready to go one step further. He claims again that Fiona is behind everything – he calls her “the missing link” to solve the mystery –, and if you listen carefully to the way he lays out the clues, “he makes a strong case,” as Ben later admits to Fiona. The dialogues between Ben and Daly throughout the episode are full of pertinent innuendo and invite the viewer to contemplate on what is being said. Writers Lau and Esfarjani deserve all the accolades for effective dialogues between those two, as well as the intimate ones between Ben, Grace, and Michaela.

While Michaela is at the precinct, a police bulletin flashes on her computer screen with the picture of Mencin. He is reported dead in a boating accident. Michaela alerts Ben and this triggers the action part of the episode. The Stone siblings suspect that Mencin was eliminated by someone who knows that Ben and Daly met him. They do not realize yet that the mole is Autumn who was with Michaela when Ben called about Mencin earlier and overheard the conversation. Autumn apparently shifted her position once more and went back being the mole on behalf of the bad guys. This is given away by a brief scene in the episode when she gets accosted once again by the sordid man in the black suit working for the Major.

In the meantime, Ben and Michaela rush to Daly’s apartment to warn him, except that he is not there. The good captain got busy drugging and kidnapping Fiona. He drags a passed-out Fiona with him to an actual plane. He plans on flying into a storm similar to the one during the flight. According to the forecast, one such storm is supposed to appear off the coast. Ben and Michaela drive to the small airport to prevent Daly, but they are too late. He is already in the plane with Fiona who wakes up and tries to talk sense into him, to no avail.

During that time, Autumn is in Michaela’s house snooping around. Later, as she goes through the pages of Cal’s drawing book, she becomes startled by one of his drawings (that we do not see on screen). She rips it out and puts it in her pocket.

The Coast Guard is called, and two planes fly in pursuit of Daly who will stop at nothing. He believes that he will end up in the future and ignores Fiona who vehemently attempts to convince him that she had nothing to do with their disappearance. The warnings by the Coast Guard planes are ignored by Daly who flies straight into the storm. Through clever use of angles and cuts, director Adler shows us Daly and a panicked Fiona flying into a vaste bright light, the same kind that appeared on the night of the disappearance, then switches to Ben and Michaela’s point of view as they notice a resemblance of an explosion through thick clouds in the sky, followed by the voice of the Coast Guard saying on the radio that the “threat has been neutralized.” Gone are Daly and Fiona, but where exactly, we can’t be sure. Well done again by the writers and the director.

The question of how the bad guys found the meteorologist lingers on as Ben and Michaela reassess what happened. The only people who knew about Mencin were Ben, Michaela, Daly, and Fiona. It dawns on Michaela that Autumn heard her phone conversation with Ben about Mencin and Massapequa. We know already that the mysterious Major is after the “holy grail,” meaning Cal. And guess who Cal has been with this whole time? Yep, Autumn.

The episode ends with the best closing shot of Manifest so far, Grace walking up the stairs to Cal’s bedroom, seeing his bed empty and the window open. The camera work and the score are excellent here (as well as Karkanis) as Grace’s face tells it all.

Time to rescue Cal

​Until the next episode…

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“Crosswinds” – Aired on January 7, 2019
Written by: Amanda Green & MW Cartozian Wilson
Directed by: Michael Smith
Grade: 4 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Back in October, NBC ordered three more episodes of Manifest bringing the total number to 16 for the inaugural season of the show. Considering the overall mazelike story arc that the show was building throughout the fall, the news seemed to hit the jackpot. Showrunners now had more room to untangle the intricacies of Flight 828’s mystery.

Well, “Crosswinds” is the kind of outing that makes you wish that NBC ordered yet one more episode from Jeff Rake and company. It carries multiple storylines that, for the most part, race toward compelling cliffhangers by the end of the hour. To that end, it also haplessly convolutes important details that could have been fleshed out so much better had it been a two-parter. Michael Smith’s stellar directing eases the plot-overloading to a point, but there is simply too much being thrown at the viewers’ faculties of perception. It’s an interesting contrast if taken into account the episodes that MW Cartozian Wilson and Amanda Green, co-writers of this one, penned earlier in the season. The former shared the writing credit for “Off Radar” that focused on a single storyline, and the latter was the co-writer for the game-changing “Connecting Flights” which was, in my opinion, the best outing of the show so far and advanced only a few plots while providing excellent sequences of character development.

“Crosswinds,” for its part, comes across like an athletic race – a sprint, more fittingly – in which there are six lanes for a dozen runners, and they are all zooming to the finish line but stumbling over each other in an attempt to fit into the limited number of lanes. As a result, it leads to a frantic crossing of the finish line, followed by confusion over what or who got lost in the shuffle during the race.

At the same time, it is undoubtedly the most ambitious episode of the season so far. For starters, it definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. It contains some storylines that blossom and others that lead to more questions. It introduces two new consequential characters and welcomes back an older one. It teases the viewers about the identity of a powerful and mysterious individual. Some regular characters behave oddly while others make questionable decisions. Family matters take complicated turns. Finally, a multitude of cliffhangers close the curtain. Did I say how ambitious this episode was?

It all begins with Michaela standing in front of her mother’s grave and monologuing about the crossroads at which she stands in her life. Her monologue is accompanied by a clever collage of scenes that are designed to help us refresh our memory on past events. Next, we shift to a facility with a five-star ocean view where Fiona, Saanvi, and Autumn are observing the passengers that were rescued from the shady warehouse at the end of “Dead Reckoning.” The passengers are in a catatonic state and seem to twitch at the same time, reminding us that in the world of Manifest, “it’s all connected.” Saanvi suggests that all the passengers need to be brought together and share their experiences to get a better understanding of the phenomenon.

The intrigue of this scene is less in its contribution to the narrative than in its impact on viewers by challenging their perceptions of Fiona and Autumn. Fiona was last seen informing Ben and the authorities that she was taking the rescued passengers to a facility in a van. Given her enigmatic character development, many suspected, as I did, that she was scheming to “confiscate” the passengers away. That is apparently not the case, so the quandary over her true intentions will continue to linger on, at least until the identity of the Major – or the “Ma’am” to whom the shady scientist in “Off Radar” was talking on the phone – is revealed.

Autumn, at first glance, seems to have had a change of heart over Manifest‘s Christmas break. She is now ignoring the orders that she receives on the phone (with Laurence dead, I presume someone else took his place) and shows signs of wanting to join the good guys. As I mentioned in my review of “Dead Reckoning,” the possibility of an inner conflict in Autumn as a result of helping Laurence was explored in the flashback that showed her being taken into custody after the arrival of Flight 828. That conflict is further developed here, and Shirley Rumierk is up to the task with her performance. Autumn appears to have been coerced into helping the “bad guys” only because of her past criminal record. Kudos to writers on the attention to detail in maintaining this particular continuity, but again, I am not sure how many viewers were able to put together the two sequences and perceive the complexity of Autumn’s situation. Judging from dozens of social media reactions that I saw, many missed it and wondered why in the world Autumn made a 180-degree turn in this episode (she did not). This is an example of how overtaxing an episode with too many plotlines can lead to an unintended lack of appreciation for quality writing when it comes to details because it may go unnoticed in the brouhaha caused by all the other simultaneous twists and turns.

One of the passengers named Paul Santino (Kerry Malloy) wakes up when Michaela touches him. As she does so, she has a vision of a snowstorm and hears the calling, “Find her.” Just like that, another B storyline begins, with implications that may – but probably won’t – spill over to the rest of the season. Paul cannot remember anything from his past, including the fact that he is married. At first, we are led to believe that the calling refers to finding Paul’s wife, but we know better by now.

By the time this storyline gets solved, we find out that, according to his wife Helen (Frances Eve), Paul was an abusive husband. Michaela and Jared had trouble locating her because she went into hiding when Flight 828 reappeared. She feared for her life upon Paul’s return. It made me wonder for a while if the disappearance of the flight was initiated by someone or some entity who wanted one or more of the passengers to sink, or fly in this case, into oblivion (yes, it’s far-fetched, I know). In any case, the amount of time spent in Paul’s narrative would have been fine, in my opinion, if this were a two-parter. But with everything squeezed into less than 43 minutes, it appeared to distract from other significant developments that could have used more foregrounding.

One such example of a shortchanged sequence is when Fiona speaks to the passengers at the ocean-view facility, followed by Ben’s conversations with Captain Daly (Frank Deal) and Autumn.

Daly pulls Ben to the side and warns him about Fiona. He suspects that she is part of a conspiracy and that “this whole thing is her twisted science experiment.” It’s hard to blame Daly. After all, he just listened to Fiona inform everyone that she studies shared consciousness, that she believes to have been in the plane not by accident but because she was meant to be an “interpreter,” and that a “friend” of hers “lent” her the facility until the spring. Daly is indeed “aggro” as Autumn says after she approaches Ben following the captain’s agitated departure.

Autumn makes major revelations to Ben, confirming first that she did indeed hear “The Major” speak to Laurence over the speakerphone. Then, she says that the Major is a woman and that she made reference to a “Holy Grail.” Ben attempts to connect the dots, one of them being that the calling “Find her” may have to do with the Major. After he leaves, Autumn gets another text message, but throws her phone into the ocean in disgust.

Holy smokes! In that crucial sequence, apart from a major conspiracy theory advanced by Daly, the questioning of Fiona’s identity, three major revelations in relation to the forces behind the mystery of Flight 828 popping up during the Autumn-Ben dialogue, and the definite change of camp by Autumn, there is also the introduction of Adrian (Jared Grimes), another passenger who, by all accounts, will go much further than making a token appearance. Yet, these essential developments are compressed into less than three minutes. Again, I would have preferred to have seen this sequence, and the narratives in it, fleshed out a bit more, rather than having so much time sacrificed on Paul’s narrative that largely had no long-term consequences for one example, and on the Stone-family drama that had the same problem rehashed for another.  

Or is it that I am a fan of Frank Deal the actor (especially since his appearances on Law & Order: SVU and The Americans​), as I have noted in my earlier previews, and believe irrationally that Captain Daly deserves more time? Maybe. But if you want to judge for yourself the range of Deal’s prowess as an actor, consider the way he portrayed Capt. Daly in the initial two episodes of the show vs. in this one. In “Pilot” and “Reentry,” we saw a dexterous, composed pilot with a witty sense of humor, whereas Daly now appears to have metamorphosed into a perturbed man who appears to doubt everything and everyone related to that last plane he piloted. And Deal nails it each time, with flying colors. I cannot help but feel like Deal’s acting skills, and the scope of his character Daly, remain underused up to this point in the show. On the other hand, I know from the next episode’s teaser that he plays a central role in it, so I remain optimistic. We shall see.

Speaking of the Stone family crisis, I have officially quit my membership to ‘team Olive.’ It is hard to reconcile her behavior in this episode with that of the earlier ones. She literally guilt-manipulates Danny into coming to her house with the emblematic “If you still love us…” line. In doing so, she disregards her mother’s (and father’s) wishes, and seems to have forgotten that her brother exists. — Side thought: Not sure where Olive would be in the show, the cool Olive of the first few episodes or the idiotic one of late, without Blaise’s outstanding performance throughout the season. — Plus, it is not as if Danny has not already shown an inclination to drop by the Stone household – remember his ‘unannounced’ visit in “Connecting Flights”? He goes even further in this episode by accusing Ben of being “the whole reason this family is messed up” – whaaat? –  after Ben arrives to what happens to be his own family’s home and finds Danny there! Cal is the one who asked his dad to come to the house because, well, his feelings are ridiculously being ignored by Olive and Danny. As a matter fact, Cal, who is possibly the biggest outcast of the show, is the only one who does not behave oddly in this bizarre scene.

When Grace firmly tells Danny to leave, Olive yells at her mother and storms to her room. Grace goes after her while Danny ‘I-lack-common-sense’ continues to remain in the house. Never mind all the lying and deception by Olive, because nobody seems to want to scold her in any way. In fact, Grace consoles her at one point. Even Ben joins the bizarre parade of behaviors when he calmly tells Danny to stay in the house and decides to leave himself, not before hugging Cal, and Olive! Excuse me, Ben? No attempt to even take Cal with you? O-kay. Danny leaves much later in the evening, not without promising Grace that he will be there for her if she ever wants him back. It’s the weakest storyline of the episode, one that panders to mushy-melodrama lovers who are not concerned with whether the scene has any significant contribution to the show or not (this one, certainly not).

Hold on, there is more, a lot more. I will not go into the details of every plot line in “Crosswinds” or else my review will end up being too convoluted itself (it may already be so). I cannot, however, skip Jared and Michaela who finally had their major ‘moment.’ Yes, they finally caved in to their desires and hopped in the sack. It’s been a long time coming anyway, and quite frankly, what did everyone expect when Jared showed up at Michaela’s place after the emotional talk that they had at work earlier? Their storyline is handled much more adroitly in this episode than the one involving the Stone family. It also helps that both Melissa Roxburgh and JR Ramirez put forth some of their finest performances in all the related scenes.

At last, there is Aaron Glover (Marquis Rodriguez), a podcaster who has the looks of a someone who just had his high-school prom last week. He is particularly interested in the mystery of Flight 828 and runs a podcast named “828-Gate.” Aaron is well-connected. Very well-connected. We do not need to ask how or why, we just need to know that he is. Our young podcaster has “sources,” you see, and those sources feed him so much information that he knows about secret meetings held by the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Appropriations, as well as the nature of clandestine funds earmarked by them. Heck, he even knows about code terms mentioned by the higher-ups like “Holy Grail” because he named the next episode of his podcast after it, “Chapter 6: Closing In on the Holy Grail.” Of course, his “confidential” sources can rest assured because Aaron “won’t name names.”

Naturally, Ben is intrigued by what Aaron knows and decides to collaborate with him. Aaron shares his information with Ben who, in return, agrees to be the guest on one of his podcasts. Except that Ben only wants the podcast released “if this ends badly.” If not, Aaron does not get to “blow the lid” and enjoy the ratings, but still gets to have access to a “Deep Throat” for an indeterminate amount of time into the future. Smart proposition Mr. Stone, very smart. I have a hunch that Aaron did not make his final appearance on the show. It feels like Manifest would benefit from keeping this side story alive.

Add NSA Deputy Jim Powell to the slew of characters in this episode behaving in ways that are irreconcilable with their disposition in earlier episodes. He secretly collaborates with Ben although as Vance’s assistant for several episodes, he showed more interest in questioning his boss who was expressing his own doubts about the mystery surrounding Flight 828, than in helping him. This shift in behavior is explained away by a vapid line earlier in the episode by Ben who says that although he does not trust Powell, he trusts his loyalty Vance. And I ask myself, what loyalty? Vance himself did not trust Powell enough to let him in on his collaboration with Ben.

“Crosswinds” ends with another collage of beautiful cuts – credit to Smith, again – accompanied by the wonderful sound of Mansionair’s “Easier” playing in the background. Some of these scenes depict the dire situations in which characters find themselves, such as Jared contemplating his marriage to Lourdes while she is asleep, and Grace doing the same while watching her children sleep. Others target the viewers’ already (and excessively) stimulated senses by throwing their way a series of cliffhangers.

In a coffee shop, Autumn gets confronted by a man in a black suit who instructs her to join “the Major” waiting for her in the car outside. Powell is manhandled by four agents in front of his home and pushed into an SUV with tinted windows. Out of nowhere, Saanvi makes a gigantesque discovery about what, or who, the term “Holy Grail” refers to (let’s not dwell on how on earth she did that). As if that were not enough, the last shocker comes when Cal, who is revealed to be the “Holy Grail” according to Saanvi’s epiphany seconds earlier, experiences the same snowstorm vision that Michaela had, except that he can see a picture of Michaela being held by someone in the snowstorm while hearing “Find her.”

It’s simply too many 11th-hour shockers and cliffhangers to throw at viewers on top of everything else that took place earlier in the episode. If the idea is to produce the “WHAT?!?!” effect by bombarding the senses, “Crosswinds” succeeds. I am just not sure how much justice it does to the characters involved, as well as to the essential plotlines contained in it.

Now imagine if this episode had a two-hour allotment to match its ambitions…

​Until the next episode…

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