“Graveyard Spiral” – Aired on April 29, 2021
Writer: Laura Putney & Margaret Easley
Director: Sherwin Shilati
Grade: 4 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
“Graveyard Spiral” picks up exactly where last episode “Water Landing” ended, with Michaela looking for Zeke in the woods at night time. In a period of two minutes where we go from dark to almost broad daylight, Michaela and Jace engage in a fairly entertaining fight sequence that ends with Michaela falling from a cliff and Jace walking away with a gun in his hand. He is quite inept at killing people though, at least until then. Both Zeke and Michaela walk away with minor injuries at the end of the ordeal. Notice that I used “until then,” because Jace makes up for his ineptitude later.
This entry goes into the records as one of the most action-packed and visually stimulating hours of Manifest. Director Sherwin Shilati is the star of the episode, using clever camera angles and sequences of one-take shots to convey the intensity of fight scenes, chases, and shootouts. The opening scene with Jace and Michaela, as it turns out, was just an appetizer. I would like to also add that if you can successfully pull off the idea of making Grace appear like the second coming of Sarah Connor when she raises from behind some parapet-like wall with her father’s rifle in her bloody hands, you have reached the pinnacle of directorship!
Jace gets in Michaela’s patrol car in search of Cal because he, along with Kory and Pete, had a vision of Cal in the woods with a basketball. According to Jace, this is a sign that Cal must die with the three of them on this day — their death date — so that they can come back alive again. When Cal is with a group of people who die, everyone in the group comes back alive later, Jace concludes, because it was the case with the Flight 828 passengers and also with the three of them when they fell into the lake with Cal. It’s a flimsy theory at best, but Jace will hang onto it because he is that much of a self-preserving scumbag.
How can he locate Cal? Well, of course, via the dumbest dispatcher ever who mentions “some 828 kid living there” over the police com system and promptly gives the address when Jace asks for it, prior to requesting the unit asking the question to identify himself! Oh-kay…
Several developments, some of which can be classified as contrivances (example: a pulled-by-the-hair basketball bouncing vision started by the thumping sound of Michaela’s and Zeke’s backs, when they fell on a big piece of flat rock, causing a ripple-effect through the air that makes Cal’s basketball at Tarik’s place move from miles away and bounce in front of the car driven by Ben and Angelina who, in turn, are the only ones capable of seeing the ball because they were passengers on Flight 828… or something like that…), or clichés (example: Kory escaping police supervision in the hospital via the window in his patient room). These scenes occupy the next 10 minutes or so, and they collectively pave the way for all the relevant characters to show up at Tarik’s place to set the stage up for the potent second half of the episode.
Grace, Tarik, Cal, and Eden are bunkered up in a hut named “headquarters” by Tarik and Grace when they were children. It’s hidden away from the house, outside of anyone else’s knowledge. They believe it to be the best place for them to hide because the local newspaper story published by the snooping reporter from “Water Landing” has made it unsafe for them to remain in the house.
The pace switches to fifth gear with a minute-plus-long, one-take shot that begins after Ben, Angelina, and Pete arrive to Tarik’s place to unite with Grace and the rest of the Stone gang (minus Olive, see “last-minute thoughts” section below). Agent Winger (Sam Edgerly), who was escorting Pete, gets shot in the head by Jace who is perched on top of the roof. The camera angles and the slow-motion patches are well coordinated here, and the viewer is put in the middle of the action as if they were the ones dodging the 20+ bullets raining upon them.
Jace takes off on foot in search of Cal, Pete takes off in pursuit of Jace, and Ben grabs Agent Winger’s gun and takes off running in the direction of where Grace and Tarik fled a bit earlier. Kory shows up in the safe “headquarters” – Cal repeating “x marks the spot” verse apparently led him there – with the intention to protect Cal and Eden from Jace. I guess this is when I should stop my habit of calling the meth heads “the skeevy trio” since Jace is the only member of the group left who is still a scumbag. Jared finds Michaela and Zeke who are still in the woods, and the three of them zoom ahead in Jared’s car to join the Rambo party taking place in the woods.
The first victim is Tarik who gets stabbed by Jace in the back. As he dies in his sister’s arms, in a poignant scene, the two long-lost siblings spend their last moments expressing their love for each other. One of the success stories of Manifest’s season 3, from a writing point of view, is how well Tarik’s background story and emotional make-up are depicted in a matter of four episodes to where his death really feels like a gut-wrenching moment it was meant to be. Warner Miller also deserves credit for portraying in such a visceral way the naïve-yet-enthusiastic brother in search of familial unity and contentment.
After a bunch of action scenes which really should be watched rather than read, we get to the point where Grace pulls the Sarah Connor act noted above and holds Jace at gunpoint before all others converge on the same spot. Ben stops Grace from killing Jace, convincing her that the scumbag’s time of death has arrived anyway. Sure enough, under the watchful eyes of Kory, Pete, Angelina, Jared, and the Stone gang, Jace starts vomiting inordinate amounts of water and suffocates to death. Pete and Kory are safe, or so it seems, because they had seemingly succeeded in redeeming themselves.
While this is taking place, the janitor on campus (Annie Pisapia) delivers Ben’s lost briefcase from back in “Wingman” when Eagan tossed it away to a trash bin with the piece of papyrus inside. Olive is ecstatic to discover the last missing piece to complete the papyrus but not so thrilled once she sees the full picture. “The Last Trial” is not about each person being judged individually, but rather the group being judged together. In other words, Jace’s failure to redeem himself should have also doomed Kory and Pete. The scene switches over to the woods where a dark shadow emerges from Jace’s corpse, splits into two and pulls Kory and Pete next to it before suffocating them to death! This is once again well-filmed, and I reiterate, director Shilati is the star of the hour.
My question for the so-called twist at the end is the following: Am I the only one who assumed that the group was being judged together anyway? That is how I understood it when Levi explained the allegory in the previous episode. So, for me, the twist worked in reverse. I was surprised when Pete and Kory survived Jace’s death at first, but then felt justified when they died later.
“Graveyard Spiral” carried several recurring characters to their grave indeed. See my thoughts above for Tarik, but as for the Jace-Kory-Pete storyline, I am glad to see it reach its conclusion before outliving its usefulness. Jace had become too much of a cartoon villain as of late, and I had never been able to fully jump on the Pete-Angelina romance train. I thought the one character out of the three, Kory, that had the most potential for growth considering his family background, was bluntly underused.
Last-minute thoughts:
— I have no idea what purpose the minor C-story with Olive stopping the transfer of the papyrus served. I am hoping it becomes relevant in some way in a future episode, but this hour, in and out of itself, would have been just fine if this commotion never happened and we only saw Olive when Ben’s missing briefcase was delivered to the office. Plus, we would have been spared from having to watch the humdrum sequence of the two gullible movers swallow Olive’s fantastical story about some chemicals being in the box.
— “Unless your kid’s really E.T.” mocks the state patrol (Amanda Bruton) right to Grace and Tarik’s faces. The irony is, while the officer’s sense of humor is horrendous, Amanda Bruton who plays her is hilarious as Connie in the comedic web series Confessions by Connie. Highly recommended!
Until the next episode…
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