“Touch-and-Go” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Jeff Rake & Simran Baidwan
Director: Romeo Tirone
Grade: 5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Note: This review was published more than a year after the episode aired, but written without any knowledge of the events taking place in future episodes.
The cold opening lasts less than a minute and shows a lab in Shanghai Province of China filled with scientists experimenting on an Asian-looking gentleman with wires hooked to his head like a lab rat. He seems to suffering when a light emanates from his body leading to the scientists screaming in pain and covering their eyes. Next scene, we see him walking out of the facility without any supervision. It’s confusing start at first glance, but one that seems apt because it all makes sense when we learn more about him later in the episode.
“Touch-and-Go” is a sound representation of what Manifest brings to the table in the best manner possible, meaning by avoiding its every-now-and-then penchant for chaotic plot advancement and characters engaging in overly dramatic claptrap. Sure, there is a certain amount of emotional baggage being carried by them, but none behave histrionically and details in various scenes cumulatively tie into meaningful narratives.
The episode’s writers, namely the showrunner Jeff Rake and Simran Baidwan, succeed in keeping the viewers’ interest by providing early some clues to what occurred since the previous season’s finale and solidify those throughout the outing by adding granular details here and there to dialogues or scenes, instead of resorting to in-your-face form of revelation. I would rank “Touch-and-Go” as the best season opener in the series so far.
Back to the episode…
We quickly learn that Eden has been missing for two years as a bedraggled Ben with an unkempt beard is putting up missing signs everywhere he can. Eden would be 3.5 years old by now, the sign indicates. Flashback ensues to the day of Eden’s kidnapping. Grace is in a body bag and the older version of Cal (Ty Doran) that we encountered at the very end of the 3rd-season finale is watching Olive and Ben’s desperation from afar. He also seems surprised by his appearance when he notices his reflection in a car’s side mirror.
Back to present day. Cal hasn’t had a calling in two years and lives in the family house. He uses the false name Gabriel in his communications to stay under the radar, and out the registry set up for Flight 828 passengers requiring weekly check-ins, and whatnot.
Ben has built himself a new Moulder’s X-Files-like office, this time in the attic. He feels the wind blowing and notices papers flying although Cal who is there with him doesn’t see any of it. The photo of one of the passengers on the wall is fluttering. Her name is Anna Ross (Jacqueline Antaramian), previously seen in Season 1’s “Off Radar.” The wind stops when Ben grabs the photo. He is tired of following up on his callings because they have yet to lead him to Eden over the last two years, so Cal offers to go pay Anna a visit, to which Ben reluctantly agrees as long as Cal uses his Gabriel identity.
Zeke, for his part, works as a counselor, healing people with problems because his magical power of sensing other people’s feelings carries over from the last season. He has essentially become the Counselor Troi of Manifest. Why not put it to good use, right? His colleagues are impressed to say the least.
Michaela follows a calling that takes her to the port where she finds the man from the cold opening inside a container. How did he manage to get from China to New York in it and why does he have “Stone 828” tattooed on his forearm? Michaela sneaks him away in her car to some secret base out of which Vance and his team, along with Saanvi, are now operating. They are still investigating everything surrounding the Flight-828 phenomenon while looking out for the passengers in the present time. Saanvi’s latest obsession for the past 23 months has been the plane’s disappearance from Eureka.
Henry Kim (Clem Cheung) is the man in the container. He was supposedly executed by the Singaporean government as mentioned in season 3’s “Duty Free” when Michaela quit her job at the NYPD – pertinent nod backs to mentions in previous episodes remain a strong staple of Manifest. Vance speculates that Kim was probably announced dead so that he could, in reality, be traded to China where most extensive studies (outside of the US) on Flight 828 have been conducted. Henry faintly asks, “Where is the boy?”
Cal reaches Anna, introducing himself as a cousin of the Stones. She tells him, outside of her house because she believes the 828 Registry has bugged her house, that she had a calling that made her draw things – à-la-Cal, ironically. She drew a windmill and gravestones. Cal-Gabriel quickly searches the internet to find a picture of windmill upstate in Ramapo located inside a cemetery. Anna recognizes it as the one she drew. When Cal gets back to Ben to inform him of this development, Ben doesn’t care to accompany Anna because, well, the trauma of not being able to find Eden over the last two years has broken his spirit and turned him into a despondent dude. Michaela scolds him, saying that just because he has not found Eden, it does not mean he should give up on his family.
Jared finally shows up halfway into the episode, paying a visit to the Stone household. He is aware of Cal and his use of a fake identity. He and Michaela engage in a bit of awkwardly chat – they have not seen each other in six months, we learn later – before he walks up the stairs to Ben’s Moulder-like office-attic. He must inform Ben that the state has legally declared Eden dead and the NYPD closed the missing-person file on her. No wonder why nobody in NYPD is returning Ben’s calls.
Ben refuses to accept that, of course, despite Jared reminding him that Angelina and Eden’s prints were on “that bridge” and that Eden’s backpack was floating in the Narrows days after Grace died. The currents would have pulled them into the Atlantic, thus no bodies being found.
We get a second flashback taking us back to the moment when Cal rings on the door bell to reveal his older self to everyone in the family. Everyone is happy to see him, except Olive who blames him for letting Angelina back in the house on that fateful night. Much to everyone’s shock, Cal confesses with tears running down his face that he had indeed told Angelina about the key to the house.
Back to the present, where Zeke joins Vance and Saanvi standing over Henry Kim who is suffering deeply and hooked up to tubes. Zeke holds his hand, senses something, and Kim’s heart rate returns to normal. Zeke says bye and quickly leaves, before momentarily collapsing in the elevator, holding his heart. Can I get a ‘wut’? Did Zeke now add the ability to transfer other people’s pain into his own body to give them relief? Not that he didn’t already own an impressive list of magical powers. Is that how he runs his practice as a counselor? Transferring pain through contact?
Henry tells Vance and Saanvi that “the box is for the boy.”
Back at the Stone household, Ben notices a drawing of a windmill as the background on Eden’s death certificate. The wind blows again and the windmill on the page begins to spin. He should have listened to Cal. He immediately heads to the cemetery in Ramapo to join Anna. The weather vane is pointing in the opposite direction of the windmill’s spin. Ben concludes that the wind is not real and the weather vane’s direction will lead him to Eden. He and Anna follow the wind until Ben hears a child screaming “Daddy” by a creek. He believes it’s Eden until he runs and picks up… a boy! It turns out that the boy’s father is injured inside the creek a bit further and the kid is screaming for him. Ben and Anna save the boy and his father, but as far as Ben is concerned, “the callings just keep toying with [him].”
Michaela and Cal arrive at the port but Homeland Security is already there, so Michaela cannot go to the container, but Cal can, because nobody can recognize him. Michaela guides him to the container by phone, with Vance joining the conversation with access to all cameras from his operations center. Jared unexpectedly approaches Michaela at the port and the two have their second awkwardly talk in one day. Meanwhile, Cal discovers the box inside the container, which happens to be the black box of Flight 828! He also has a brief calling during his search for the box, his first in two years!
Cal gets back to Vance’s high-tech operation center, where Saanvi and Vance confirm that it is indeed the flight’s box that disappeared along with the plane from Eureka. So, where is the rest of the plane? Speaking of the plane, Saanvi is listening to the black box of the original Flight 828 in which she also hears Daly’s cry for help from two years ago when the plane disappeared from Eureka! Probably the frekiest moment of the episode! The two Daly’s voices from different times have synced!
The bigger twist takes place when Anna is back at her home. She is not alone because downstairs are Eden and Angelina! It was Eden who drew the windmill and Anna had to pretend that she drew it, in order to solve the calling and still protect Eden and Angelina from being discovered. Ben’s calling with the wind fluttering Anna’s photo would have led him to Eden indeed if it were not for Anna’s ruse, but will poor Ben ever know that? And did I mention that Eden calls Angelina “mommy”?
Last-second thoughts:
— Cal holds the ailing Henry’s hand and the old man confirms that he is “the boy” without looking. Cal doesn’t understand how and has never seen him before. Does Henry have powers of some sort like Zeke? Because the cold opening shows his head hooked to some wires and the scientists surrounding him suffering from some bright flash in the lab.
— Nice touch in the beginning of the outing with Ben not caring about a missing sign of Cal being overrun on a board by other signs. He even puts Eden’s sign halfway over Cal’s. It makes one wonder why he doesn’t care that Cal’s sign is almost not visible, but the reason becomes clear soon after.
— Grace is… gone! Wow…
Until the next episode…
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