“Mayday: Part 1” – Aired on June 10, 2021
Writer: Simran Baidwan & Marta Gené Camps
Director: Dean White
Grade: 3 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Allow me to begin with the best part of this episode. The frustrating Angelina storyline seems to be gone and that already makes it a slight improvement from the couple of dismal entries preceding it. Having said that, “Mayday: Part 1” nonetheless suffers from “Penultimatepisode-itis” containing a number of shortcuts that are too inconspicuous to ignore.

I am willing to suspend my disbelief during an episode of a sci-fi show. However, when it frequently requires me to lower my non-sci-fi common-sense barometer to rudimentary levels, and the primeval details required to frame a plausible narrative are neglected, it gets too demanding on the viewer to constantly excuse or handwave what turns into a clunky viewing experience. The machinations of logistical details are so messy here that “Mayday: Part 1” often pushes too far the boundaries of my presupposed suspension of disbelief. It’s a shame, because many of the lapses to which I will refer below could have been avoided with a bit more attention to the granular. On a larger scale, this episode now makes it three below-average entries in a row, and that doesn’t bode well for the season, considering there is only the finale left to swing the pendulum.

The hour begins with a calling that brings Michaela back to the moment of turbulence during Flight 828. The plane violently shakes, bags fly around, yet she appears to be the only one aware of the havoc. Cal, Ben, Saanvi, and other passengers act as if she doesn’t exist, neither hearing nor acknowledging her, except Bethany (Mugga’s seventh appearance in her recurring role as a flight attendant on 828) who notices Michaela calling for her. They both see blood dripping profusely from the plane’s ceiling. This horrid calling lasts a minute and a half, before Michaela finally wakes up.

Olive makes her comeback to the house, everyone apologizes to each other, and a family hug (minus Cal) ensues. Vance calls from Eureka to inform them that Cal has shown up at the door of the facility, as seen in “Duty Free.” This is enough to send Ben into frenzy – he and Grace thought Cal was upstairs in his room – as he grabs anything within his view to unlock the ankle bracelet. Olive, with a cooler head on her shoulders, does a quick search on her phone to figure out how to unlock an ankle bracelet, removes it with a screwdriver, and puts it on herself – she does all this in less than 15 seconds, I kid you not.

Jared barges into Zeke and Michaela’s house, still fuming about Michaela quitting her job. Zeke senses that the detective still harbors feelings for Michaela, which means that his “us against the world” handhold from last episode was not for nothing. I must admit I rolled my eyes again at the writers’ attempt to pick the Jared-Michaela romance back up in some form or fashion. It seems so redundant at this point to reinject this drama into the final two episodes of the season when there are so many stories that need payoffs. Plus, did we not watch for almost a whole season how each has moved on comfortably to other relationships, effectively closing the chapter on theirs? This goes back to character inconsistencies and flip-flops in Manifest that I discussed in detail in my last review, Jared being the victim this time, and not his first either. Anyhow, Zeke has had enough of his wife getting scolded by Jared in the late hours of the evening and opens the door for him to leave.

Grace and Ben arrive at Eureka to bring Cal home, but Cal refuses, which is a repetitive sequence throughout the hour. He made a drawing of the tailfin with dark waves around it and insists that the tailfin is dangerous, and that the testing needs to cease. The burns on his body shock everyone, and Grace will only allow him to remain at Eureka if Saanvi is brought back into the fold to treat her son, much to Vance and Gupta’s dismay.

Ben, Cal, Grace, and Saanvi, who should at this point never be allowed into the most important high-security facility known to earth for various reasons, now find themselves not only back at Eureka, but they are also free to walk around without any guards supervising them! I mean… Wasn’t Saanvi fired by Vance for stealing the most important artifact in the world, a property of the US government? Wasn’t Ben expelled for going into unauthorized areas and going rogue with the information he acquired from Vance? Cal is a child suffering from burns, making an outrageous claim on the tailfin, at least from the perspective of people at Eureka. And yet, they all walk around the tailfin and the equipment with no guards nearby, in the same way my cat walks around the house. There is even a scene in which Troy explains to Ben how to decimate the tailfin while they are standing a few meters from it before Ben walks unguarded to the simulator to proceed. Eureka is easily the most loosely guarded high-security facility ever seen on TV, or in any other reality.

It turns out that the sapphire compound found on the tailfin also resides in the tissue sample taken from Cal’s burns. At the urging of Ben and Grace, Vance reluctantly agrees to have the testing temporarily put on hold, which does not please Dr. Gupta one bit – this is the first episode where I constantly found myself rooting for Dr. Gupta who is otherwise quite unpleasant to be around. Cal appropriately refers to her as “the lady who doesn’t smile.”

Michaela and Zeke stop by Bethany’s house, but she is in no mood to talk, at first. She has been placed in a no-fly list which left her jobless, and she complains about everyone having developed a fear of the 828 passengers. Michaela uses her savvy communication skills to convince Bethany to tell her what she saw on the calling, since she and Michaela were the only other ones aware of the turbulence. Bethany says that she saw Eagan opening the emergency exit door and thought he was going to kill them all.

Knowing now that Eagan was in the calling, Micheala heads to the NYPD where a still-huffin-n-puffin Jared apathetically allows her access to the jail area. She jumps through hoops to convince Eagan to finally spit out that he also saw blood everywhere in the plane and panicked, wanting to get out via the emergency exit door. That is when he saw a black bird flying close by the plane. He advises Michaela to talk to people who were out of their seats at that moment. Thanks to his nonpareil photographic memory – kudos to writers here for the meaningful use of a previous character development -, he is able to count all 17 empty seat numbers! Knowing that there were only 14 unreserved seats, Michaela must figure out the people out of their seats. With help from Zeke, Adrian turns out to be one of them.

Speaking of Adrian, he is Eagan’s jail neighbor at the NYPD, along with Randall (Christopher Piccione) who appeared briefly in the season 2 opener “Fasten Your Seatbelts.” While Michaela was pursuing clues that led her to Adrian, Eagan was busy persuading them of the existence of a conspiracy against the Flight 828 passengers, supposedly headed by Ben Stone who is in cahoots with the NSA. His theories, as wacky as they sound, fit right into Adrian’s belief that Ben is the agent of the Apocalypse.

After their release later in the day, Eagan, Adrian, and Randall meet other passengers in some building where Adrian delivers a sermon-like speech, pointing to Ben Stone as their nemesis. He draws a parallel between Ben’s disposition and the version of Noah in the epic of Gilgamesh (neatly described by Olive earlier in the episode) in which Noah is not the savior like most people believe, but rather the executioner. After failing to convince people to do good by others, according to Adrian, Noah got angry with all the evil surrounding him and turned vengeful, calling on God “to bring about the destruction of all the wicked.” He only planned to save himself and his family. He thus caused the flood rather than having saved people from it. Ben fancies being the modern-day Noah, according to Adrian, and when he could not get enough of the other passengers to follow him, he got vengeful himself and started collaborating with the evil NSA to punish others… or something like that.

There is a much more intriguing C story that consists of Jared learning bits and pieces of information here and there to possibly tie Saanvi to the death of the Major. First, he is startled to hear from loudmouth Eagan that Saanvi was at Eureka assisting the NSA on some experiments. Later, alarm bells start ringing in his head when Sarah opens her mother’s safety deposit box and discovers memory cards in a small envelope with “S. Bahl” written on it. He tells Sarah that Saanvi was one of the passengers that the Major was investigating. Sarah carefully observes Jared putting two and two together in his mind and asks if Saanvi had anything to do with her mother’s death. Jared certainly plans to find the answer to that question.

Back at Eureka, with the help of Saanvi and Troy, Ben gets his hands on the simulator to destroy the tailfin, but at the last moment, a potent calling puts him under water with the tailfin and a sinking Cal. He quickly grabs his son and swims to the surface but wakes up before getting there, and his hand glowing. The previously non-existent (!) security teams suddenly appear and begin to chase him, but he makes it to Cal’s room where the boy’s burn marks have also began to glow following the calling. That is apparently all Ben needed to understand that, in order to save Cal, the tailfin must be placed back in the water where it was initially found, rather than destroyed. Never mind the security teams catching up with him, because he is next seen walking behind Gupta and Vance in the facility, unguarded again (seriously?!?), as he nags them to stop the testing.

Gupta has no patience left and wants this “certifiable” nutcase to be kicked out. Vance is not on board, simply telling her that he “can handle this.” Vance is obviously incapable of saying “no” to Ben because when Ben grabs his arm and beseeches him to help return the tailfin to “where it belongs” and save Cal, Vance privately agrees to help him. Would anyone blame Gupta at this point for going over Vance’s head and getting approval from Director Zimmer to resume the testing? I sure would not, and that is exactly what she does. She proceeds to inform Vance of this in front of Ben, Saanvi, Cal, and Grace as they are all standing next to the tailfin container – don’t even ask if there are guards around. She flatly states that Vance has lost his ability to think objectively and accuses him of “abandoning his duty” to his country, while Ben and Grace are berating her for endangering their son’s life.

Seeing that the shouting match is going nowhere, Cal decides to enter the chamber where the tailfin is kept. Hey, why not? It’s not like what is possibly the most treasured artifact in the history of humanity is guarded or anything. A boy whose parents are in an intense verbal scuffle with the people running the place can casually walk into the chamber. It’s almost like the show is aware of what mockery this particular flaw has turned into because it designates Grace, out of all people, as the only one to make an attempt at stopping Cal! He runs, enters the chamber, touches the tailfin, and disappears!

Michaela has one last calling at her place in the evening that takes her back to the moment of turbulence in the plane. She notices Adrian walking to the back of the plane and when she catches up with him, and he turns around, she sees blood running down his eyes à-la-Saanvi in “Bogey.” Zeke felt Adrian’s presence during her calling and affirms that that Adrian is filled with guilt and shame. Michaela concludes that the calling is about a passenger committing a murder, and not about one dying.  

Last-minute thoughts:

— The episode is directed by Dean White who helmed two outstanding episodes from Manifest’s first season, “Reentry” and “Estimated Time of Departure.” Although this episode pales in comparison to the thrilling ride of those two entries, White’s dexterity with the camera enhances several scenes here, including the calling sequences in the plane, Ben and Cal’s underwater calling, and the flashbacks of Jared about the Major and Saanvi.

— Why is Troy risking everything to help Ben? Because, he’ll “do anything for Saanvi.” Oh, dear Troy…

— Unlocking Ben’s bracelet, even for two seconds, should have triggered the alarm with the authorities, correct? Or, should I have handwaved that too?

— Questions to chew on: Should Grace have read Cal’s intention to run into the glass chamber containing the tailfin once he hugged her and said, “I love you”? And if she had, would she have been able to stop him?

Until the next episode…

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“Duty Free” – Aired on June 3, 2021
Writer: Bobak Esfarjani & Darika Fuhrmann
DIrector: Ruba Nadda
Grade: 2.5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

If you demote the mythologico-scifi arc (read: the most fascinating and cogent arc) to B-story status and establish your A story around the inconsistent behavior of the main characters, you get “Duty Free,” an entry that will hopefully will be no more than a blip on the radar once the season ends, assuming of course that the show sticks the landing in the remaining two episodes. There is hardly anything meaningful that takes place in the episode, other than potentially signaling the near-end of the unsavory collaboration – I blame the writing room for this – between Angelina and Cal.

The lackluster hour begins with Grace visiting Ben in his cell at the NYPD. The first words out of his mouth are, “I’m so sorry,” followed by a heartfelt moment between the two with Grace wanting reassurance that Ben will start putting her and the family ahead of the “lifeboat.” Ben admits to having gone “too far” and claims to regret his action. But does he, really? If his behavior in the past is any indication of what is to expect in the future, it’s basically academic that when push comes to shove with regard to the callings, he will act on his instincts and prioritize “saving the lifeboat” at any cost. Out of all people, Grace should be the first to know by now that Ben’s apologies or reassurances do not translate into action when it comes to the callings, but you see, the always sensible and mature Grace is not the version of her we have in this episode. This version is a counterfeit, a clone, so to speak. She is credulous enough to believe anything she wants to hear in the name of love.

Unfortunately for Grace, Ben is solely — excessively — preoccupied with “saving the lifeboat.” He is throwing a fit to Michaela a bit later over how he must urgently get out of jail to “solve” this’n’that, to which Michaela fittingly replies: “Settle down, Ben! Have you not learned anything?” Um, nope. He has not.

Cal, Michaela, and Ben get the same calling in which they see and feel their bodies burning. So does Angelina while she is hiding in Cal’s room upstairs. This hideous storyline (I’ve harped on this plenty in my recent previous reviews) even forces Cal to turn into a liar toward his whole family, keeping them in the dark about Angelina – remember that Grace kicked her out of the house in the previous episode. Cal seems to have somehow bought Angelina’s zany biblical story. She manipulates him with sentences such as, “God hasn’t blessed me like he’s blessed you” or “You’ve been the only one who’s been good to me this whole time.” She also believes that Cal has been “touched by the Almighty.” She draws parallels with passages from the Bible and considers him to be marked, meaning that God wants Cal to fulfill his calling. She has been chosen to guide him, and in order for the two of them to proceed, Cal must not tell his parents about her, naturally! And Grace, who knocks on Cal’s locked door to ask for permission to come in, ‘gracefully’ accepts his explanation on why he cannot let her in. Oh Grace…

Saanvi is on her way back with Troy after having extinguished the lava and closed the fissure by dropping the driftwood in it (as seen at the end of “Compass Calibration”). She informs Michaela that she will turn herself in when she arrives.   

The arraignment for Ben goes terribly wrong, courtesy of the most ridiculously biased judge of the century played by Melissa Maxwell who has plenty of experience in the robe from previously playing judges in Madam Secretary and Law & Order. She explicitly accuses Ben and Flight 828 passengers of using “the 828 caveat” to “justify all sorts of things.” She wants “heightened judicial scrutiny” for them. She refuses to recuse herself when Ben’s lawyer Sandra Rayhall (Shannon DeVido) requests her to do so, nor will she allow her to approach the bench. She wants Ben to get on with it and plead, period. Under these circumstances, Ben pleads not guilty, the only choice left to delay the ruling of this blatantly partial judge. She sets bail at half a million dollars.

Thus ends the atrocious day at court for Mr. Stone, but the misery just began for Mrs. Stone. The bail amount forces Grace to take a second mortgage on the house and pull her deposit back on the restaurant. Does Ben care?

Not really…

Seconds later, he is arguing with Michaela from behind bars that he needs to get out and “do something” (and Michaela informing him about Saanvi killing the Major only aggravates his conniption). Later in the episode, after returning home thanks to Grace bailing him out, he gets busy brainstorming with Cal on how to solve the calling, in front of Grace who exclaims, “really?!?” Yes, Grace. Really! What did you expect?

She despondently says, “I don’t wanna do this anymore,” as she walks away. She must have been the only one who hadn’t seen this coming. Add the knocking on the door scene with Cal and you could almost convince me that this episode’s title is “Grace the gullible.”

Michaela later attempts to lift Grace’s spirits by telling her to hang on, and that the man – Ben – who is putting her “through hell” right now will be on the other side waiting for her when the death date passes in the same way that Zeke is now on the other side waiting for Michaela. In short, Grace must accept that her husband could possibly behave like this three more years, but it’s okay, because she’ll get rewarded at the end. Um, yay!!!

At Eureka, Dr. Gupta is disappointed about the driftwood having turned to ash (or, so she believes) just when they were so close to reaching their objective. She follows Vance’s advice to “shift the focus” to the tailfin to continue the testing.

Captain Bowers has further bad news for Michaela. A series of bad news! The mayor’s office issued a directive ordering the NYPD to report all 828-related cases directly to the FBI, including what the department has already collected on those cases. It’s part of a global crackdown on 828’ers that includes a passenger who is currently on trial in a military tribunal in Singapore. To add salt to the wound, Michaela may be pulled off her cases. Bowers wants all 828 reports to be filtered through Jared who later tries to calm Michaela down, to no avail.

Vance visits Ben at the precinct to inform him of the crackdown and the rumor of an “official registry coming into play,” basically chucking civil rights out the window, and underlines that things are now beyond his control. On his way out of jail, Ben runs into Eagan who suddenly throws a violent fit after noticing Vance with Ben. He takes that as confirmation that Ben is working with the NSA as a pawn to strengthen the conspiracy against the passengers. “I should have never trusted you Ben, none of us should have,” he screams as he is being hustled away by officers, menacingly adding, “and believe me, we never will again.” He later throws a similar threat Michaela’s way. According to him, he is the leader that the passengers need, and the Stone siblings are among their enemies.

Vance caught on to Saanvi’s scheme with the driftwood, at least the stealing part, and is absolutely furious. Saanvi is enraged herself because he just told her about Dr. Gupta resuming the testing with the tailfin. She argues that the driftwood caused the earthquakes, imagine what the larger-sized tailfin would do. The problem is not her argument, but her timing. Vance is already fuming at her, and when she reveals that she dropped the driftwood into the fissure, he draws the line. He fires her on the spot and adds, “you’re lucky that’s all I’m doing.” Although the scene consists of nothing more than a dialogue, it is the most intense of the hour, largely thanks to Darryl Edwards’s terrific acting – not surprising, considering that he has also played the recurring roles of an agent and a detective, with the same dexterity, in The Americans and Daredevil, respectively.

Saanvi next heads to the precinct to be arrested at about the same time Michaela receives news from Captain Bowers that the passenger in Singapore, noted above, just got executed. The powers above want Michaela “on desk duty for the near future.” She has heard enough. She drops her badge and gun on the Captain’s desk, grabs Saanvi, and leaves the precinct.

Next, we see Ben seemingly offering a sincere apology to Grace and promising her to never risk anything again to which… this off-kilter version of Grace replies, “No, risk everything.”

And therein lies one of Manifest’s series-long central problems, the uneven writing of the characters.

The version of Grace in this episode, as noted earlier, is not just unrealistically gullible. She is virtually non compos mentis! It took one vague speech by Michaela of around 25 seconds to not only make Grace forget all the misery that Ben’s actions have just put her through, but also to take a 180-degree turn and encourage him in fact to stick to his train-wrecking path, with little concern for the feelings of his closed ones. This episode’s Grace does not fit the profile of the one that Manifest’s writing room has painted for almost 3 seasons. The same goes for the vast shift in Angelina’s profile over this season, for Ben’s irresponsible behavior as of late compared to the caring one in the first season, for Michaela suddenly asking Grace to accept Ben’s actions for three more years when she just had multiple arguments herself with him on how reckless he was toward everyone surrounding him, and for Jared’s flimsy to-and-fro disposition on the balance between his professional and personal life in the first two seasons compared his otherwise magnanimous character. These turbulent character swings function a bit like the callings. They simply appear without any rhyme or reason (or an explanation) as plot devices for the mere purpose of spiking the drama barometer and/or advance the plot.

Speaking of plot devices, Cal decides just like that to draw “the answer to the burns” in his notebook. Soon, they are in a cab going somewhere when Angelina informs him out of the blues that once they get to their destination (the cliffhanger of the episode shows that it’s Eureka), he must continue alone. Isn’t that grand of her? Never mind that she had promised to protect him. She justifies this last-second addendum with some passages from the Bible, of course, and sends Cal out the cab onto the dark streets of New York as she says, “Hey Moses, you got this!” Pffffff…!!

Ben, Saanvi, and Michaela meet at the Stone household to brainstorm. They must infiltrate Eureka and destroy the tailfin, but lacking resources and allies, they are at a loss as to how. Cal is a step ahead of them, already at Eureka, stating his purpose to a bewildered Dr. Gupta at the security gate, “My name is Cal Stone. I’m here to see the tailfin.”

Last-minute thoughts:

— Adrian is back! He is Eagan’s neighbor behind bars at the NYPD.

— What is this non-sense with the camera focusing on Jared’s hand holding Michaela’s as he utters, “It’s us against the world”? I hope the writers do not plan on re-flaming the long-gone Jared-Michaela drama. Thankfully, Michaela does her best to swiftly cut off that possibility.

— I missed Zeke in this episode. It appears that Michaela cannot hold alone the flag for those representing the voice of reason, with so many loonies surrounding her.

Until the next episode…

PS1: Click on All Reviews at the top to find a comprehensive list of my episodic reviews.
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