“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…