“Bogey” – Aired on May 13, 2021
Writer: Simran Baidwan & MW Cartozian Wilson
Director: Laura Belsey
Grade: 4 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
I am starting to think that Manifest showrunners are deliberately – or inadvertently – blurring the lines between “chaos” and “quality.” Spitting out shocking revelations and mind-numbing twists at will does not negate the need for some plausible explanation as to why they came to exist in the first place. After almost 3 seasons, callings are increasingly beginning to feel like they exist as plot devices to carry the narrative from A to B, rather than as intricate, persuasive story elements, and some character developments — such as Zeke’s out-of-nowhere mind-reading dexterity – seem to serve nothing more than as “wow” effects with no rhyme or reason behind it. Add to these, choppy behavioral shifts like the sweet, magnanimous Angelina suddenly metamorphosing into Hedy from Single White Female in a matter of 2 episodes, and I don’t believe I am too unreasonable in getting the impression that the writing room acts at times as if “insane storytelling” and “quality storytelling” are interchangeable.
At the same time, Manifest is undoubtedly a successful show, renewed for a fourth season, which is a rarity in today’s cut-throat TV-show milieu. Perhaps, the show is delivering precisely what today’s audience demands and there is no need to be nit-picky or expect full dedication to cogent storytelling. Manifest puts forth a highly entertaining serialized TV adventure – I can confirm, from my first-hand experience – and that entertainment value, in and out of itself, may simply be enough.
As for a single episode, “Bogey” works well. There are still too many storylines being carried over from the previous two episodes, but the one covering the overall arc, with the Flight 828 mystery at its center, is tackled with audacity and the payoff is quite handsome.
At the Eureka facility, Dr. Gupta, Saanvi, and the scientists are experimenting on the effects of dark lightning on the piece of driftwood from the Vatican, with no substantial results in terms of altering the fragment. Saanvi is discouraged but wants to give it one last shot with her being the one delivering the dark-lightning bursts, before they ship the piece back to the Vatican.
Meanwhile, the B-story takes us to Zeke and Michaela’s house. They are preparing to host Jared and Sarah for dinner. Michaela asks Zeke to use his recently acquired mind-reading powers (still no explanation how) in order to get a feel on Sarah because she refuses to believe that the Major’s daughter hooking up with Jared is a mere coincidence. Zeke replies, “I’ll do my best,” which makes me erase in a hurry the positive check mark that I chalked up for him in my review of “Destination Unknown” when he told Cal that their powers were not to be used for personal gain shortly after Cal asked him for a similar favor. As a matter of fact, Zeke contradicts his advice to Cal more than once in this episode. I am not sure if this should be chalked up to inconsistent character writing or to Zeke having been disingenuous in his brotherly talk to Cal in the last episode. I don’t like either choice, frankly.
During the above conversation, Michaela has a vision of the ominous dark cloud hovering inside the house. She thinks it’s related to Eureka because the last time she saw it, in “Precious Cargo,” it led her there with Ben walking out of the building. Ben gets the same vision moments later in his X-Files basement office in the garage, except that his includes water falling on him. Finally, Eagan joins the calling party by arriving to the house, soaked in water, frantically claiming that same dark clouds hovered over him and dumped rain, and that there was a lion roaring at him.
Grace wants a private talk with Ben because she is not amused by the presence of a man in their house who recently had her husband kidnapped. Ben believes Eagan can be useful because “he is excellent at deciphering the callings.” Plus, he has influence over the passengers and Ben believes he must “keep his enemies close.” Eagan is close, all right! So close that the next time Ben catches up with him, the con man has the gullible Angelina giving him a tour of the house, including Ben’s Agent-Moulder office where he keeps all the information gathered on Flight 828 and its passengers. So close that he pockets the USB key on Ben’s computer. Grace is right, this dude should not have stayed in the house one second longer.
Ben asks Olive to go to campus and look into mythology about lions and floods. Michaela gets another calling with dark clouds, except that this time it includes a reflection of her face with blood streaming down her eyes. She, Ben, and Eagan try to make sense out of their common visions. Things are equally escalating at Eureka where Saanvi is spotted by Troy with blood streaming down her eyes while administering the dark-cloud energy bursts to the driftwood. It’s all connected, naturally!
I will avoid going step by step through every turn of event here (and I’d recommend a rewatch of the scenes solely involving this storyline for a better experience), but the crux of the matter boils down to Michaela eventually gaining access to the facility to demand answers from Vance and Saanvi, while Olive discovers, with the help of her new inamorato Levy, a Buddhist myth about a lion statue crying tears of blood at a village, with a neat story attached to it about punishing liars (hint: it’s related to what is happening to Saanvi).
The granular details of how this particular puzzle gets resolved are neatly woven into the dialogues featuring Ben, Eagan, Michaela, Olive, Saanvi, and Vance – plus some bonus nerd talk with Troy and Patrick –, all culminating in a fascinating reversal of fortune for Saanvi who goes from almost dying to not only getting cured, but also learning moments later that her experiment did work after all. The Eureka crew overcame a big hurdle on the way to figuring out how to “create a miracle,” as Dr. Gupta would say. The driftwood did indeed disappear for 37 milliseconds at precisely 7:44 PM, at the exact same time as the nerdy Dr. Cooper’s computers recorded a barely detectable earthquake with Eureka sitting at the epicenter of it, despite the lack of fault lines anywhere near the vicinity of the building!
Wait…. Whaaaat !?!
The C-story is one with which I simply cannot get on board, and yes, I already harped on this in my previous review. Angelina has now transformed out of nowhere into a creepy girl obsessed with replacing or impersonating Olive. She wears Olive’s clothes, changes her hair style and color to match Olive’s, and refers to Olive taking care of Eden as “babysitting” (Olive swiftly replies that Eden is her baby sister). Are you kidding me? I am not saying that teenagers are not capable of such devious behavior, but I do find the character portrait that has been painted for Angelina for the first part of the season completely out-of-touch with what we are seeing here in the last 2 episodes.
Luckily, Olive is not as blind as her mother (I mean, come on Grace). She is aware of what Angelina is trying to pull off here. Angelina’s outré behavior reaches its pinnacle when she goes to campus and tries to sensually work her way into a kiss with Levi. Thank heavens Levi backs off and Olive catches her in the act. I was afraid of the writing room falling into the trap of using the cliché of terrible timing coincidence where the girlfriend spots her boyfriend kissing another girl when he really had no intention of doing so but was caught by surprise for a second (which of course happens to be the second that the girlfriend walks in). I am pleasantly surprised that they did not take that route. Nonetheless, please make this storyline go away! I insist that the season would be better off if this plotline focusing on the maniacal obsessive behavior of one of the otherwise most affable characters in the show never existed.
Back to the “most awkward dinner ever” (Jared’s words) at the house. Michaela must leave after a little while because she must join the A-story since she is getting the same calling as Eagan and Ben. Her vision also features blood coming out of her eyes, à-la-Saanvi who is literally bleeding out of her eyes at Eureka. Zeke remains with Beverly, Sarah, and Jared.
Couple of interesting developments occur in this B-story. Firstly, Zeke gets nothing but good vibes from Sarah who helps Beverly with a spill, even though Beverly initially startles as her by believing that she is Michaela. Zeke also gets good vibes from Jared and Sarah as a couple in a three-way conversation a bit later. There is no need, it seems, for people to freak out about Sarah being the Major’s daughter. It seems that Jared’s instincts were right. She is nothing like her mother.
Secondly, Beverly has a rare moment of clarity during which she tells Zeke, holding his hand, that his one day with Michaela where she thought he only had that day left to live, “doesn’t hold a candle to twelve years together,” obviously referring to Jared and Michaela’s past romance. This is obviously a sensitive topic for Zeke who asks Beverly if she can feel what he’s feeling, except that Beverly’s fleeting moment of clarity is already over. She is back to asking for ice cream. Hey Zeke, I feel for you man!
Last-minute thoughts:
–The 11th-hour cliffhanger from the last episode, with Cal seeing the volcano erupt in his snow globe, mixed with visions of Ben, Michaela, Cal and others holding their heads in their hands and screaming their lungs off, is totally ignored here.
— Good on Saanvi to unload the burden of keeping her accidental killing of the Major a secret. And what better person to confess it to then Michaela! Now, what will happen when Sarah eventually learns of it? That may be an earthquake worthy of registering on on Dr. Cooper’s device.
— I laughed at Michaela’s mock-snark “thank you, goodbyeeee” to Ben when he got sarcastic about her cooking.
— I am not one to believe in the chances long-distance relationships surviving among young people, so it does not surprise me to see Olive and Levi connecting, at least for now, with no mention of TJ.
— According to Eagan, Ben is “Dorothy,” Angelina is “Little House on the Prairie,” and Saanvi is the “inside man.” He also refers to his lies as “-ish.” This guy’s a scuzzball, but he can be hilarious. I am willing to bet my house that Ali Lopez-Sohaili is having a ball playing this character.
— Jared: “Good on you, man, hosting the most awkward dinner party ever” – followed by – Zeke: “Ha!” Watch their faces in slow motion during this brief exchange and tell me if you can make it through without laughing.
— The Al-Zuras book is back, still emanating a bright light for effect, with references to the ship and people who jumped off. Ben wonders how he had missed the face of Saanvi drawn in one of the pages along with others who have gone insane on the boat, but unless my memory has gone grossly haywire, he did notice it back in “Airplane Bottles,” the ninth episode of season 2.
— I am going to recommend Grace not to give Olive advice on how to be nice to Angelina anymore. Dear mommy, Olive is mature enough to accurately read the room!
Until the next episode…
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