‘Manifest’ (NBC) — Season 2, Episode 1 Review

“Fasten Your Seatbelts” – Aired on January 6, 2020
Writer: Jeff Rake & Bobak Esfarjani
Director: Joe Chapelle
Grade: 3,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

“Fasten Your Seatbelts” is an entertaining episode on a surface level in the sense that I was never bored watching it (quite the opposite) as various plot machinations kept frantically altering the narrative from moment to moment like if one was trying to walk at the edge of the volcano as it begins to stir and the ground starts shifting beneath your feet. At the same time, this process happens at such an unhinged pace that, while the plot advances incrementally, there are no substantive ingredients at the granular level of those narratives. Taken from this context, “Fasten Your Seatbelts” is not the first of its kind in the series (“Turbulence” comes to mind) but thankfully, there are enough other episodes focusing on attentive storytelling to make me feel at ease that this type of tumultuous plot-pacing is not Manifest’s core praxis.

If frequent injection of shockers and twisters through multiple brief scenes tickles your fancy, the second-season opener must have gratified your cravings. There is a plethora of revelations that (almost) redefines the notion of shock value. The downside of this methodology is the choppy nature of storytelling that it produces, resulting in the lack of substantial clarity within the several narratives the episode contains, which only hits you when you begin to look back on what exactly took place during the maddeningly murky 42 minutes of television entertainment. It’s hard to even distinguish the A or B stories here. There are a bunch of storylines running concurrently, each trying to outdo each other in terms of drastic revelations.

The effectively directed opening sequence brings us back to Flight 828 when turbulence hits and the plane begins nosediving. An astute observer could immediately notice that this scene may not correspond – “may” being the key word – to what actually took place in the flight because, according to “Connecting Flights,” Cal was sitting in the window seat** when he observed the phenomenon’s occurrence with the bright light in the sky, whereas here, he is in the middle seat between Ben and Michaela.

**Note: Error on my part. Upon a careful re-watch of “Connecting Flights” a few weeks later, I realized that Cal was indeed sitting in the middle seat. I am not that astute an observer after all (!)

It’s quickly understood, thanks to clever transitional-scene maneuvering by the experienced director Joe Chapelle, who helmed the camera work for many episodes of The Wire, Fringe, and CSI: Miami in the past, that this is in fact Michaela’s vision as she is bleeding from the stomach due to being shot by either Jared or Zeke at the end of season 1’s terrific closer “Estimated Time of Departure.” While Jared’s calling for help, Zeke presses on Michaela’s wound, but she tells him to “run.” Zeke does just that, letting the vexed Jared take over. Unless I missed something, it’s never made crystal clear as to which one of the two pulled the trigger. The closest to an explanation anyone gets is Jared saying to the Stones at their arrival to the hospital, “A shot went off as I tried to pull the gun away.”

Ben believes Michaela’s vision was a calling about their imminent death as he informs her of their discovery of an expiration date. Michaela does not have time to be thoroughly shaken by this news like most normal people would, nor does the episode’s pace allow room for it, so instead she moves on to say that her vision was not a normal calling and that “it felt different.” At that moment, Cal walks in to confirm that he had the same vision and was telling Michaela to “save the passengers” as the plane was nosediving.

Apparently that sentence becomes Ben’s next fixation – and a useful plot device to move forward two months – because we quickly learn that, since hearing Cal’s phrase, he has obsessively been trying to contact the other passengers. According to him, it’s an effort to discover more clues about how to avoid the expiration date and save everyone – because, that is what Ben does – although he is not letting any of the other passengers in on their knowledge of the “death date.”

Grace’s pregnancy is moving along and during an ultrasound the doctor asks her how many prior pregnancies she had. With Ben standing next to her, she answers that she had two, confessing to a bewildered (but only temporarily) Ben that she had a miscarriage during the previous year. Not only did she hop in the sack with Danny (no surprise there) but she had a planned pregnancy with him (much surprise here).

It’s less the revelation here that comes as a shocker than Ben’s underwhelming reaction to it. All it takes for him to hug and kiss Grace again, and feel content, is around 30 seconds of her explanation about how she felt alone and Danny wanted a child. Just like that, Ben docilely accepts and moves on. If I did not know any better, I would believe that Ben is Charles Ingalls from The Little House on the Prairie reincarnated, the angel-y, exuberant, jubilant, mensch father-figure with an endless amount of love, happiness, joy, and optimism to sprinkle on to those surrounding him while absorbing their sorrows. Give me positive figures in TV shows, I am all for it, as long as their portrayals are contained within the boundaries of plausibility and do not swim in a pool of cloying sentimentality. Ben has at times flirted with those boundaries.

Saanvi, for her part, has been visiting “Ellen” the therapist, otherwise known to the viewers – but not to Saanvi – as the Major. In the first of two sessions between the two in this outing, Ellen attempts to pick Saanvi’s brain about her possible feelings for Ben. Saanvi hesitates in answering, instead of outright rejecting the idea, which comes across, in my opinion, not only forced, but also unrealistic. Never once throughout the first season have Ben and Saanvi appeared to have any type of romantic connection, not to mention that Saanvi’s portrait of the doctor-nerd-scientist completely dedicated to her work, combined with Ben’s representation of the man whose tunnel vision excludes anything outside the scope of his family’s happiness and his love for them, make this angle not only nonviable, but also silly. I did not know that the writing room was even considering this narrative, one that is completely out of character for two of the show’s leads. I can only hope that it will not be pursued in any significant way.

The second scene with the two women, on the other hand, provides a lot to chew on. The Major, through subtle manipulation of her patient’s fragile emotions, goads Saanvi into sharing more than she initially wanted to. She strongly advises Saanvi to even stop wasting money on seeing her unless she is “truly ready to heal.” Elizabeth Marvel is fantastic here and does more acting with the limited screen time she gets than some Hollywood stars have as main-cast members in their last three TV episodes combined. The Major’s reverse-psychology works. Unwilling to stop the sessions, Saanvi chooses to spill the beans about the events of Flight 828. Mission accomplished by the Major, although we will need to wait until future episodes to find out how much Saanvi actually shared with her.

Captain Kate Bowers (Andrene Ward-Hammond) is the new chief at the precinct and she means business. Her character’s introduction is one of the shining moments of the hour thanks to Ward-Hammond’s acting prowess and line deliveries, as well as the concise-yet-efficient dialogue inserted by the writers to get the point across on her authoritarian disposition. It occurs when Michaela enters her office and requests for the hunt for Zeke to be called off. It may have worked with good ole Capt. Riojas of the first season, but Bowers ain’t buying it. As Michaela attempts to justify her request with the flimsy “I know Zeke, he would’ve never…” line (after “it was an accident” and “he [Jared] was mistaken” ones fail miserably), Bowers interrupts her and proceed to scold her about her “new” boyfriend and “ex” fighting in her apartment and her getting shot as the result. Talk about Michaela exiting the office deflated. Bowers is indeed a sharp contrast to Riojas. She is there to tie up the “too many loose ends” and clean up the “too much muddy waters” lingering around the precinct, in her own words. Don’t mess with the new Captain in the house!

Speaking of the love triangle to which Bowers is referring, Jared has not lost a beat of his pre-pre-teenage-jealousy angst from the last two episodes of the first season. Michaela finally – yes, finally – sticks it to him in an icy tone at the precinct (as I cheer her on), accusing him of causing her to end with a bullet in her stomach because of his obsession with Zeke. She is not entirely wrong either.

As Jared leaves, all upset (too bad, so sad), Michaela notices the Vasik couple’s names on the list of missing persons on the wall and has a vision of the same two names on Ben’s Mulder-like investigative desk back at home. At the same time she also hears Cal echo the phrase “save the passengers.” Unless I am wrong in my interpretation, Cal is in his room having the same vision, linking the two together. This is not the only time in this episode that Cal and Michaela share visions. It’s almost as if they have now developed a unique connection to each other. I wonder if this was a bottle idea for this episode or if the writers plan to take this connection further. We shall see.

This storyline essentially revolves around Anson (Bryan Fenkart) and Trina (Samantha Steinmetz) Vasik needing to be saved. Besides being passengers on Flight 828, they are parents of three children who spent the last five and a half years with a neighbor across the street named Sharice (Gina Daniels). The reason why their names appear on the list of missing people at the NYPD is because they disappeared past weekend after they had recently been reunited with their children when Flight 828 reappeared. The question is, and it’s an interesting one, why would they abandon their children after such a short period of time following their reunion? More intrigue is added when Ben and Michaela find biblical verses on the basement wall inside the family’s house. Unfortunately, this story, otherwise founded on a captivating premise, does not get the breathing room it deserves due to the overcrowded hour of chaotic twists.

I guess I should also mention that Olive and Grace run into Danny on the street. Apparently, he is not aware of Grace’s pregnancy and Olive is not on board with her hiding it from him. This happens barely haflway into the episode, and by then, multiple storylines are already attempting to zigzag through the hour like cars do at a busy Istanbul or Bogota intersection.

Besides the relentless callings they were hearing, the Vasiks were also spooked by a vision of a car going off a cliff with sounds of children screaming. This led them to believe that they would die as a family in a car crash. Thus, they decided to drive their Pontiac off the cliff without the children, in order to save them. They made sure to clean out their bank account and sent the money to Sharice before going on their way to end their lives. This dramatic story of the couple being driven insane by events they cannot explain comes across quite believable, even bringing about the larger question of how other Flight 828 passengers grapple with the dilemma of the callings.

Sprinkled into this storyline are couple of footnotes in the form of Michaela’s refusal to involve Jared in the particular investigation, choosing instead to lead it with just Ben, and a mysterious white van that Ben keeps noticing nearby passengers’ houses.

In the meantime, Cal stops by Zeke’s mom who at first denies that her son’s in the house, but gets called out on her lie because, well, Cal drew an image of Zeke in front of the house, which means he knows Zeke is hiding there. Dear mom, you cannot fool Cal, let him in. Once inside, he tells Zeke, who grew a hefty beard in hiding, that he and Michaela need each other because neither has much time left. Speaking of which, Zeke must have around 10 months left to live at this point, but his expiration date is hardly mentioned by anyone. Cal appears to be the only one to give a flip about it.

Cal must have been convincing because Zeke takes action. He blames himself for Michaela’s injury and wants to own up to his mistakes. He calls himself in but catches up with Michaela one more time on the street before being picked up by the police. This is a well-directed scene, adequately depicting the potent moment as an alarmed Michaela sees him across the street and joins him with the camera moving along with her from the side angle as she crosses the street. Melissa Roxburgh’s fine performance also enhances the sequence, conveying Michaela’s surprise in seeing Zeke at first, enthusiasm as she approaches him next, and finally, growing concern as she comes to the realization that the approaching police cars are about to interrupt their ‘moment’ – were they about to kiss? I believe so.

Michaela touches Zeke as the police arrives which sends her to another vision of the Vasiks’ Pontiac approaching the edge of a cliff by a bridge. As to the reason why Michaela would get a vision of the Vasiks by touching Zeke, don’t ask me. After all, that vision allows the life-saving Stone siblings to find the Vasiks in the nick of time and stop them from committing suicide. Michaela also spots a car already crashed at the bottom of the cliff, which explains the visions that were leading Anson and Trina to believe that they were going to cause the death of their children. The mystery is solved, the callings are gone, and the tormented couple can return home to the children.

This fairly compelling plot is squeezed into a stretch of about 18 minutes in the middle of the episode (with other storylines still chiming in), resulting in the pay-off being undermined because it feels like that one fascinating rare game you got to play for only two minutes at an amusement park, but can barely remember it at the end of the day due to the disorientation you feel from the topsy-turvy rollercoaster and other flashy rides that bombarded your senses.

The episode ends with an additional triple dose of shocker-slash-cliffhangers in succession. First, Ben gets kidnapped in the same white van that he kept seeing earlier. Next, Michaela touches Cal at the house and has one more vision of the plane nosediving with Cal saying, “save the passengers,” except that Zeke is also in the plane this time. Side note: One consequence of inordinate amount of twisters and shockers, one can become numb to them. Zeke’s appearance in the plane should have ‘felt’ like a major revelation, instead I was barely moved. Lastly, Ben is brought to some facility where his hood is taken off and he sees Director Vance in front of him, alive and well, telling him with a smile, “you’re not the only who can come back from the dead.”

I complained when Vance was written off because his character growth was a bright component of Manifest up to the point of his “death” and Daryl Edwards was a delight to watch. So, I am elated to see him back. I also admit to being fooled, because I was fairly certain that Vance was gone for good. In my defense, I had good reasons to believe so. First, how did he survive the massive explosion in an enclosed space? Did everyone at his funeral believe that he was dead, including the high-ranked officers who gave eulogies? Even Captain Riojas, who called Vance a “good friend,” confirmed to Michaela at the end of “Dead Reckoning” that Vance was dead when she asked if his body was found. I’d be curious to hear an explanation of how Vance pulled off the ruse, but I am not necessarily expecting one.

Last-minute thoughts:

– Is Captain Riojas fired or temporarily relieved of duty? It hardly matters, I know. I am simply curious.

– Jared bitterly mumbling “Zeke, the misunderstood hero” with a forced chuckle, as Michaela is chastising him in defense of Zeke, is a hilarious moment. Thumbs up to J.R. Ramirez who delivers the line and also shines in portraying the jealous, pestiferous, entitled ex-boyfriend.

– Showing a scene from Vance’s funeral in the “previously on” segment at the start of the hour may have given away his return for some. I still did not see it coming, personally.

– I know I harped on this before (see the “last-minute thoughts” section in my review of “Dead Reckoning“), but Ben still needs help in communication skills. The way he kept replying with half-sentences, pauses, and vague explanations, right when clear, rapid, and concise communication was needed, in order to urgently convince the Vasiks not to dive to their suicide, drove me bonkers.

– Nice little Thomas sighting in the flashback, the fugitive boyfriend of Bethany’s cousin from “Unclaimed Baggage” and “Connecting Flights.”

Until the next episode…

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