“Full Upright and Locked Position” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Matt K. Turner & Jimmy Blackmon
Director: Erica Watson
Grade: 2.5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Note: This review was published little less than two years after the episode aired, but written without any knowledge of the events taking place in future episodes.

If I can comfortably refer to the previous episode, “Romeo,” as the zenith of season 4 so far, I must be fair and refer to “Full Upright and Locked Position” as the season’s nadir. It appears that almost every aspect (reserved pacing, meaningful dialogues, no common-sense-challenging contrivances, etc.) of “Romeo” that made it season 4’s best entry so far, has been chucked in the attic and forgotten in producing this one.

“Full Upright and Locked Position” feels like a 100-meter sprint to move multiple plots from point A to Z, with only an aloof concern for the plausibility of what takes place between B and Y. It doesn’t help either that the poor judgment shown by familiar characters throughout the episode cumulatively ends up requiring too much suspension of disbelief.

The outing begins with the 828 Registry forces arriving at the Stone residence and apprehending Cal before he can “run” like Jared had urgently suggested at the end of “Romeo.” Remember that Cal was the last person seen with Violet before she was murdered. Once at the Registry, Captain Fahey (Perry Strong), newly sent from DC to take command of the Registry, attempts to calm Ben down by saying that ‘Gabriel’ will be questioned and released provided that he he has done nothing wrong. Ben’s central worry is, of course, that Cal will have his fingers printed and blood taken for DNA, resulting in the discovery of his true identity by the authorities.

In his motel room, Eagan has a calling showing the inside of a warehouse, and he hears Adrian calling for help. He rushes over to Adrian’s room where he runs into Michaela and Zeke who had arrived moments before, thanks to Drea having located Adrian earlier from a credit card ping. Adrian is missing however, and the evidence points to an abduction. Eagan tells them about his calling, and pleads with Michaela to let him join them to help find Adrian. Honesty check by Zeke, and off goes Eagan the scuzzball with our duo despite Michaela’s reluctance. Sorry, but I had all kinds of problems with this particular conversation, and Eagan’s otherwise funny use of metaphors and nicknames did nothing to salvage the high degree of idiocy manifested by Michaela and Zeke. Why would, first of all, Michaela tell Eagan about Noelle? How about simply warning him that the murderer is after those who hosted Angelina and Eden? And Zeke’s constant double-checking of Eagan’s honesty with his Betazoid-ish mind reading powers (that popped out of nowhere last season for plot-convenience purposes and makes no sense to this day) comes across trite and artificial. As if that were not enough, Michaela agrees to have Eagan stay over at the house. Can I get a wut? After all the damage the lying scuzzball has inflicted on people Michaela cares about, why would she even consider having Eagan stay with her family under the same roof? Because… the plot must advance?

Back at the Registry, Drea manages to buy Ben a couple of hours by erasing Cal’s fingerprint file. His blood will soon be drawn and taken to a lab though, so Ben find a way to get Cal out of the Registry before his true identity comes out. Drea digs around for information on Noelle in the meantime and learns that her family runs a debris business using multiple construction sites. Jared and Michaela head to its headquarters where they learn that Noelle sold the business a while back. A friendly worker (Mario Polit) lets them check the project files stacked in the back room. They find a warehouse in the files that was intentionally taken off the active-job list after the business was transferred. Noelle must have done that on purpose in order to operate from a location that doesn’t show up in any records. Michaela and Jared are headed there next, with Vance on his way.

We finally catch up with Noelle who pretends taking Angelina to a “safe place,” which is in fact the warehouse where she also has Adrian tied up to a chair. She plans to execute him in front of Angelina so that her daughter can watch him “cleansed from the world like the others.” Angelina wants no part of this, but it’s too late as Noelle neutralizes her with chloroform and ties her to a chair next to Adrian. Everything in this story line seems far-fetched and silly. Writers attempt to portray Noelle in the most despicable manner, but they overcook it so badly that it only serves to turn her into a caricaturized version of a cardboard villain. To start with, why place Angelina and Adrian next to each other in the vast warehouse while she is absent? Why not place them far apart, or even in separate halls, and bring them together only when the execution takes place? And why is she so obsessed with Angelina seeing Adrian die when she showed no hesitation in killing Anna, Violet, and Sam without Angelina present? Because… the plot must advance?

Disclaimer: For the sake of sanity, I am bypassing the warehouse scenes in this review until the climactic encounter there at the end.

The only story line of “Full Upright and Locked Position” that truly works is the reunion of Saanvi and Dr. Gupta. Saanvi updates Gupta on the detainees being stuck in a constant state of calling, and wants her to help her “safely” replicate the Major’s protocols. Gupta is reluctant at first, already feeling guilty about what happened to them, but agrees to share the Major’s files that she had copied on a USB key – she had the key ready in her hand, but the scene would like us to believe that she arrived at Bird Nest with no idea of what Saanvi was planning to talk to her about. Oh-kay…

As expected, the Major used sapphire to generate the callings. What is unusual though, Saanvi notes, is that she needed a special kind of sapphire to accomplish the desired results. She calls Olive to help with the research on the type of sapphire – Olive answers the phone to cut short, thankfully, an annoying scene with her, Eagan, and Zeke having breakfast together at the house. It’s almost as if the episode is mocking itself when Saanvi asks Olive, “Wait. You’re with Eagan?” The scuzzball also gets to see Vance’s operation center. Never mind that he ruined Vance’s family.

Marko was the first subject that produced results and Saanvi realizes that the Major intentionally increased the charges. “The more pain, the clearer the calling,” confirms Gupta. Saanvi believes – wants to believe – that she can replicate the process without causing pain to the passengers. Knowing that Eagan had a recent calling about Adrian, Saanvi chooses to test her theory with the scuzzball as subject.

Back at the Registry, Ben hears a calling — via the microwave in the precinct, I kid you not — in the form of musical notes that are similar to the ones that united him and Radd back in the season 1’s “Reentry.” Believing that the calling meant to help Cal, he rushes to Radd’s place. Through some music-composition talk involving numbers, and Radd playing the piano, they eventually come up with a phone number. Ben dials the number and Alex picks up the phone. The musical-note calling meant for Ben to learn about Cal’s cancer coming back. This also means that Alex can present herself as Cal’s doctor at the Registry and demand that he be turned over to her care. It works! The Registry is forced to release Cal just in the nick of time, before he gets his blood drawn.

Back at the Bird’s Nest, Saanvi connects Eagan to the fMRI machine, thinking that his photographic memory will allow them to get clearer results with less charging power. As he is getting prepped for the machine, Eagan notices drawings on the table that resemble the columns he saw at the entrance a food center for the homeless back when he was following his first calling, “help him,” (seen as a flashback). Things don’t go as Saanvi hoped during the experiment. Eagan begins to wildly shake, and she is forced to abort the charges with no results.

Olive uses her usual mythological-research dexterity to come across a “supercharged” type of sapphire named “Omega Sapphire,” supposedly mined from the same ancient quarry by various historical figures. There are seven of them in the world, but only one remain, located in Mount Ararat (now called “Agri dagi”). Saanvi is devastated to hear this, because it means that the fragment from Noah’s Ark that they had at Eureka — the one that she tossed into the fissure back in “Compass Calibration” — was imbued with Omega sapphire! Side note: Saanvi joins the parade of idiocy by sharing with Eagan the information related to Omega Sapphire. It’s almost as if, for one episode, Eagan cast a spell on every smart character in the show.

Michaela, Vance, and Jared enter the warehouse and prevent Noelle from killing Adrian in a ham-fisted sequence that is meant to keep the viewer on the edge, but had zero impact on me. It was so obvious that Noelle’s absurd religious routine before killing Adrian would give our heroes enough time to reach her. The relevant part here is that Angelina is missing, because she had escaped earlier without untying Adrian because, as far as she is concerned, he deserved whatever her mother had in store for him.

Speaking of turn of events, Drea informs Michaela that she found footage of Noelle driving during the time of Violet’s murder, meaning that there is still a killer out there. Guess what? The killer is outside the Stones residence because, lo and behold, Zeke feels his presence! Olive lets an officer inside the house for help without knowing that it’s Noelle’s husband Kenneth posing as a cop! He intends to kill Eden to prove to Angelina that she is no angel. A couple of brief scuffles result in Zeke getting shot in the leg and Olive pushing Kenneth out the window to his death!

The best scene of the episode comes toward the end when Olive, missing TJ deeply, leaves a voice message on his phone, desperate to hear his voice. Right then, she gets a text from him, telling her to come outside. Yep, he is back from overseas and stepping out of a cab with his luggage! Garrett Wareing and Luna Blaise knock it out of the park in this great scene of reunited lovers. TJ also hints at having some information on the possibility of finding some Omega Sapphire in New York.

The closing scene involves Eagan arriving back at the center where his first ever calling (“help him”) led him. This time he goes in the building and offers to volunteer in the soup kitchen, not because he wants to help someone, but because he believes it may have a connection to Omega Sapphire. You see, not only do the two columns at the entrance look exactly like the drawings he noticed on Saanvi’s charts, but it also says in big letters on the top of the building, “Masonic Temple of The Omega Order.”

Last-minute thoughts:

— Last TJ appearance was in season 2’s “Call Sign.” He has grown a beard since.

— In the closing sequence, we briefly see Zeke confess his relapse to Michaela who responds by hugging him. Sweet!

— I believe this is the first time we had a flashback within a flashback when Eagan recalls his conversation in jail with Logan whom we had seen in season 2’s “Black Box.” We also learn that Eagan had his own wall of 828 Flight clues in the cell, similar to the one Ben had his in his Mulder-like home-office.

— Curtiss Cook reprises his role as Radd. He’s had the quite the upgrade as an actor since his first-season appearance. He is starring on Paramount+ as a regular cast member of The Chi.

— Captain Fahey is sending a request to NYPD for Jared to be transferred to the Registry. “The Registry could use another good detective,” he says. Surely, Jared will not refuse working alongside with his girlfriend, will he?

Until the next episode…

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“Romeo” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Ezra W. Nachman & Darika Fuhrmann
Director: Josh Dallas
Grade: 5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Note: This review was published little less than two years after the episode aired, but written without any knowledge of the events taking place in future episodes.

Ah, finally the kind of episode that I wished we had seen more of throughout Manifest! Don’t get me wrong, there have been some top-notch episodes in the show’s 3+-year run and all my previous reviews are there for everyone to see. “Romeo,” however, stands out with its meaningful dialogues, focus on character traits, and reserved pacing.

Let me repeat the last one, reserved pacing!

What a relief to have some slow-burn scenes that, while remaining central to the narrative, allow actors to showcase their characters’ human side! And couple that with camera-work prowess prioritizing precisely that over plot advancement, and we have a winner in “Romeo.” Kudos to writers Nachman and Fuhrmann, as well to the main-cast member Josh Dallas for his maiden directing job.

The episode begins from where “Relative Bearing” ended. Zeke obviously carried Cal home and grabbed the latter’s note to his dad that he left behind, thus making sure it never made it to Ben’s hands. When Cal wakes up, the two ill dudes tell each other how bad they look, but of course, they will not alarm anyone else about their conditions. Cal doesn’t want to add to the burdens of his family, and Zeke prefers to hide his condition from Michaela. Dumb ideas, but consistent with their approach to the matter in the last couple of episodes.

Zeke at least, being the adult in the room, proposes a solution to Cal, and he is also willing to do something for his own condition. He will accompany Cal to see someone who is not family (we learn later that it’s Alex, Saanvi’s ex). For his part, he goes back to the familiar AA group that he had visited back in season 2 (“Coordinated Flight” and “Unaccompanied Minor”) – Allan Walker reprises his role as the AA moderator. Why his character is not given a name after appearances in 3 episodes, I don’t know.

Saanvi is non-stop working at Vance’s operation center to find sapphire. Vance is worried about her working herself to exhaustion, but does Saanvi care? Of course, not. She informs him of her sapphire-related discovery, “Sapphire may be the antenna that tunes us in to divine consciousness,” and suggests that getting hold of sapphire may be the passengers’ “way to make it past 2024.”

At the NYPD precinct, the news of Anna Ross’s murder has hit hard. Due to her previous calling with the blood-dripping “X,” Michaela doesn’t believe that the killer is done.

Alex makes sure that Cal gets registered under his fake name Gabriel at her clinic. Her initial news are not uplifting to say the least. Cal’s condition appears to be consistent with falling out of remission, meaning, his cancer may be back. Alex cannot confirm it until she sees the CBC test reports, but in the meantime, she suggests that he takes a time-out from his problems and ‘lives his life,’ so to speak.

Ben is at home, still trying to reconnect with Eden with the help of his father. He hears the news from Michaela that Anna is murdered, and that is when he remembers about Cal, which made me think, Cal was not wrong about considering himself as a distraction to Ben and leaving the house. He tells Cal to go up to his room and not leave, because someone is busy murdering the 828ers. Cal, who was just advised by Alex to live his life, is naturally unhappy about being cooped up in his room.

Ben observes Eden write letters “ALNI” on her dollhouse. She just had a calling, he and his father conclude, since Eden is too young to be spelling. Google tells Ben that ALNI stands for Assisted Living Neuroscience Institute located somewhere in Queens. He is headed for the facility.

The above are the main story lines of “Romeo,” and the rest of the episode waves back and forth between them with purpose, carrying each with earnest effort, without any far-fetched coincidences, to worthwhile pay-offs. It does so, I repeat, with a reserved pace, allowing viewers to digest the consequences of the revelations to follow. Just like in “Relative Bearing,” flashbacks are efficiently used to reinforce the characters’ backstories or explain their present decisions. Season 4 is solid up to this point, with this outing being its best entry so far.

Michaela and Jared revisit Sam’s house to see of they missed anything, but on the way in, they learn from a chatty neighbor girl (Carolina Manning) that “some lady and her daughter” stayed with Sam for a while last year. That is the connection between Sam and Anna that Michaela was looking for. They both housed Angelina and Eden at some point and that is enough for Michaela to consider Angelina as the main suspect for the murders. Michaela and Jared decide to pay a visit Noelle in West Chester for further “poking around.”

Noelle still blames Michaela for taking her daughter away from her in Costa Rica (see season-3 opener “Tailfin”) so she is ultra angry to see her again in her house. She goes on a diatribe about how Michaela abducted Angelina and stopped her from saving her daughter. Jared and Michaela leave empty-handed, though neither believes anything Noelle said. Their next stop will be the corpses of the two victims.

The medical examiner Reynaldo, (Marc Webster) whose only previous appearance was in season-2’s “Grounded,” tells them that both victims had the “X” marking on their hand and the force of the stabbing indicates that the killer must be at least 130-35 pounds. That takes Angelina out of the equation.

Back at Vance’s office, much to his dismay, Saanvi is taking apart his $10K-worth laser to extract the sapphire used in its lens. Once holding it in her hand, she calls it her “all-access pass to unlimited Callings” with a smile on her face. Sorry Vance, deal with it!

Ben arrives at ALNI and tells the receptionist (played by Ronelle L.Thomas who was part of the main cast in the Canadian comedy series Pillow Talk) that he would like to look around the facility because he is considering putting his father there. He opens every door he sees on each floor, until he discovers one with patients sitting inside on wheelchairs in a catatonic state. He immediately recognizes them as the 828 passengers who were experimented on back in season 2 by the Major, including Marko who had a special connection to Cal. Saanvi soon arrives at ALNI to assist Ben.

Speaking of Cal, we knew he was not going to stay inactive at home, right? Well, he got in touch with Violet (Sarah Marie Rodriguez), one of the 828ers at the compound earlier in the season, who thanked Cal profoundly with a touch of personal affection for saving them in “Squawk.” The ensuing scenes with Cal and Violet are one of the better romantic sequences squeezed into a single hour of a show, and Rodriguez and Doran bring their A-game to convey the exuberance of two youngsters who get on well at all levels on their first date. They even open up to each other about their deepest secrets: Cal confesses to being Eden’s brother who is supposed to be dead, and Violet confesses to having helped Angelina a year ago not knowing her true nature, including letting her spend time in her place.

As great as it was to watch Cal and Violet’s giddiness on their first date, those scenes also raised red flags for the experienced viewer (it did for me at least). Especially when Violet told Cal about letting Angelina and Eden crash at her place last year, the alarm bells began ringing loud in my head. And finally, when Cal, upon returning home, texted Violet for another date the next day and we saw on his phone screen that she started typing before it stopped, I knew what was coming. When something seems too good to be true in a TV series, things somehow have a tendency to come down it like a ton of bricks. And boy, did it ever in this one!

Saanvi and Ben get caught by Eddie (Jay Klaitz) the resident nurse in charge of those patients. At first, he wants them to leave immediately, but Saanvi and Ben convince him that they came to help. A powerful moment occurs when Ben holds Marko’s hands and asks for his forgiveness. Tears begin flowing from Marko’s eyes, which indicates that the patients’ brain functions are not dead. Eddie takes Saanvi to the records’ room so that she can see their charts. The brain-scan images of the patients start beaming lights upward toward the ceiling.

Saanvi believes those to be like antennas, the patients’ direct channel to the divine consciousness. And remembering the last words of the Major (shown in a flashback) before she died, Saanvi concludes that the Major, in an effort to weaponize the patients, somehow found a way to “tune the detainees into the God frequency.” If Saanvi could only figure out how the Major accomplished this, she could find a solution to helping the 828 passengers make it past their death date!

Remember that it was Eden’s calling that ultimately led to Saanvi’s discovery via Ben’s follow-up at ALNI. Well, when Ben returns home, Eden holds him by the hand and calls him “daddy” with the cutest smile ever, which brings tears of joy to Ben’s eyes. By pursuing Eden’s calling successfully, Ben also managed to finally connect with his daughter.

When Saanvi and Vance go through the Major’s records, they find no evidence of sapphire being used. Vance discovers that Dr. Gupta conducted the patients’ intake exams. Needless to say, Saanvi would like a word with Gupta.

The episode goes into high-gear mode in its last two minutes with Michaela realizing during a conversation with Ben at the house that the blood-dripping “X” she has seen in her calling was actually a cross. She matches how Ben is rotating the paper on which he drew an X to help Michaela contemplate, with how Noelle rotated the cross on her wall during her and Jared’s visit. She now believes the calling did indeed lead her to the killer (Noelle). She was just looking for the wrong person (Angelina).

Right at that moment, Jared rushes into the house with shocking news. The Registry thinks they found the killer because the third 828er murdered was Violet, and they have camera photos of Cal being the last person to see her alive. Jared urges Cal to leave, because if he is apprehended, he will be charged with murder as Gabriel, and most likely, his true identity will be uncovered as well. Talk about the rug being pulled out from under someone in multiple ways. Poor Cal!

Jared says to Ben, “Call needs to run, now!” as the episode ends.

Last-minute thoughts:

— Olive does not appear in this episode. Luna Blaise is an asset to Manifest, nonetheless her absence in this outing does not diminish the its merit.

— There is a subplot squeezed into the outing, making Michaela and Jared investigate an Xer named Greg Turner (Brian Kali) on a lead before they realize that the killer cannot be him since another 828er was murdered while they were stalking him. Not sure if this was a necessary subplot and I almost gave the episode a 4.5 grade instead of 5 because of it, but at the end, I had to admit that there had been enough of a build-up toward an Xer being the killer to make it legitimate.

— In a flashback, we see Saanvi at a bar as she spots Alex enter with a man as her date. Saanvi is crestfallen, and the bartender who has been flirting with her suddenly appears more attractive to her than ever. No idea where this is going, or if it is even followed up in future episodes, but Saanvi did ask her what time she gets off work after the bartender offered Saanvi to share her bed for the night!

— There is a well-nuanced theme of “missed chances” present for Saanvi and Alex in Romeo. There is the scene at the bar, and the flashback in which Saanvi is about to send a text to Alex and gets interrupted by Vance’s message, and Alex’s intent to add Saanvi as a friend on facebook when she gets distracted by an incoming email on Cal’s test results, and finally, Alex’s confession to Zeke that she actually came to the airport on the day Flight 828 was supposed to arrive, except it did not, until five and a half years later.

— Another episode with great nods to past events and characters, a Manifest staple.

Until the next episode…

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“Relative Bearing” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Laura Putney & Ryan Martinez
Director: Harvey Waldman
Grade: 4.5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Note: This review was published little less than two years after the episode aired, but written without any knowledge of the events taking place in future episodes.

We are in the aftermath of the bombing and fire that marked the climax of “Squawk.” Remember the ‘X’ers from season 2, the group of people who hated the 828ers and believed them to be freaks of nature? They were featured in a season-long story arc that had Jared infiltrate them as a spy to help law enforcement ultimately take them down. Well, it turns out that Vance arranged to make it look like Xers were behind the chaos at the compound. Captain Colvin wants the shell cases found at the scene taken to ballistics to match it to a gun. Later, Jared meets with Vance and Emmett in a car. He thinks this situation is “not fixable,” and he will turn the shell casings to ballistics. His gun has never been test-fired so it should not appear in the records. Vance advises strongly against it and tells him to “lose the casings” in order to not leave things to luck. Jared questions Vance’s moral compass before getting out of the vehicle.

Well, Vance was right. Jared should not have left things up to luck! Later in the hour, at the precinct, Captain Colvin orders Jared to turn his weapon in for analysis, because the evidence found on Erika’s bullet wounds point toward a standard NYPD issue gun, and Jared was present at the compound when she was shot. Colvin advises Jared to contact his union representative!

Angelina takes shelter in her mother Noelle’s house (Heidi Armbruster, first seen in season 3 opener “Tailfin,” reprises her role as Angelina’s nervy, religious mother).

Cal, whose chronic coughing should worry anyone and everyone by now, is convinced that they are not doing enough to save the lifeboat. Olive tries to encourage him not to give up. Ben, for his part, is agonizing over not only Eden’s refusal to see him as her dad, but also over her belief that he is the “bad man.” To make matters worse, he finds out later in the episode that Angelina is still alive because she directly calls him for instructions on how to feed Eden, as if to add salt to his wound on purpose!

Zeke is feeling guilty about taking a life and worried about his inability to control his rage. He runs into the coughing Cal. Weirdest conversation takes place during which each expresses his concern for the other – “you know you can talk to me right?” they tell each other. Yet, they both respond that they are doing just fine and dandy, although they are clearly and getting worse by the minute.

Most of the above events take place within the first 9 minutes and build the background of the plot lines, pointing toward some reckoning moments to come for the main characters. Once again, these are too many plotlines to run simultaneously, a recurring issue with Manifest, but in this case, a few extra minutes of running time (48 minutes) help a bit and dialogues don’t feel as rushed as they did in many other such episodes with running times between 40 and 45 minutes. Another success of “Relative Bearing” is its insistence on adding nuances to previous storylines and fleshing them out further, instead of adding new ones or creating new mega question marks, which comes a pleasant surprise considering that the multiple-episode, space and time-consuming search-for-Eden story line had concluded in the previous episode. Nothing feels rushed in this outing and there are hardly any contrivances.

Michaela gets a calling where she sees water beneath her feet under a glass with colorful fishes, plants, and blood flowing in from either side – for some unknown reason, when Michaela describes the calling later to Ben, she leaves out the incoming blood and simply says the water was “filled with colorful fish, plant, bubbles.” Strange!

The description reminds Ben of a passenger named Sam Wile (Josh Sauerman) who owns an aquarium supply company with his wife. Michaela pays him a visit, only to find him murdered in blood and the house trashed. She calls Jared who drops the funniest line of the hour when he arrives, “828 crime scenes seem to be my thing.” Hahaha, yes indeed, Jared. It has been four seasons of just that, brother!

When Jared sees Sam’s body, he recognizes him from a protest in the street from a while back pitting 828ers against the Xers. We see Sam in a flashback being unnecessarily roughed up by a police officer (Charlie Kevin) who also saw 828ers as “freaks,” before Jared comes to Sam’s help and ends up knocking the officer down with a punch – only then did I realize that it was the same officer who had an attitude toward Jared earlier in the episode (I had wondered why) during the compound-area-investigation scene in the aftermath of the explosions.

Jared also remembered that Sam had a strange looking wedding ring, which is missing from his dead corpse. They decide to “waylay” (Micheala says, I learned a new verb) Sam’s wife for some answers.

Back at the Stone household, Olive, once again proving that she is the smartest of the bunch, tells Cal that there must be another way to get information from the divine consciousness because Eden was never in the glow (the supposed location of the divine consciousness), and yet she still possesses the ability to get callings, thus also putting into question Saanvi’s theory that callings are memories from the passengers’ time in the glow.

Oh, how I fantasize about Olive showing everyone with irrefutable evidence that this divine consciousness theory is codswallop, so that it can be dropped in the trash bin, never to be picked up again! But alas, it appears that it is here to stay.

Ben, after another failed attempt at bonding with Eden (she runs out of the room yelling for ‘Mommy’), realizes that it’s time for him to lose the beard since Eden associates his bearded face with the “bad man.” This leads to an emotional father-daughter bonding scene (tears allowed for fans of these two) during which Olive shaves her dad’s beard the way Grace used to when she was alive.

Meanwhile, Eagan the scuzzball is out of prison and running his own agenda once again. Adrian catches up with him and roughs him up in a bathroom (“I was midstream!!” Eagan yells), blaming him for ratting out the location of the compound. Eagan blames Angelina for torching Adrian’s “private Idaho.” This is when we learn that Adrian dropped her off in West Chester after picking her up on the road in the closing scene of “Squawk.” He also informs Eagan that she is on the FBI’s wanted list and there is a $20K reward for information on her whereabouts. Wheels are already turning in Eagan’s head. His next stop is the house of Angelina’s mom and his plan is to blackmail her into buying his silence about Angelina staying with her. He settles for her valuable golden watch, for now.

Jared and Micheala ‘waylay’ Sam’s wife Lana (Lauren Hooper) as planned. She tells them that they divorced six months ago because he became obsessed with helping everyone, taking people in off the streets and cashing out funds out of their family business account. He never got over their divorce, according to her, and kept wearing his wedding ring (which was missing from his dead corpse, as noted above). Jared contacts Drea to pull up the Wiles’ bank records to see where the family-business money was being channeled.

It turns out that, for the last six months, he was withdrawing $2K every month before going to his required check-in at the Registry. Furthermore, Drea learns that after each visit to the Registry, he was personally pulled in for questioning by Captain Colvin himself! She pokes around in his office and finds Sam’s wedding band in the Captain’s coat pocket. She takes the ring, calls Michaela and Jared, and informs them that she is heading straight to Internal Affairs.

Except that Colvin spots Drea coming out of his office from a distance. After realizing that the ring is missing from his coat pocket in the office, he chases Drea to the rooftop. Jared and Michaela soon arrive to assist Drea. Colvin admits to “skimming the collection plate” by taking Sam’s money but not to killing him: “Why would I do that? You don’t kill the golden goose,” he says. He then suggests that they act as if nothing happened, so that he can retire in peace and Jared can get his gun back, and he and Drea can avoid jail time. Jared, who has been reevaluating his moral compass throughout the episode wants none of it, and they apprehend Colvin.

Later, Jared gets another piece of good news. Vance has once again pulled some strings and had the ballistics report altered on the casings and the bullet. They now match some gun that hasn’t even been manufactured, meaning that Erika’s case will file under cold cases, probably never to be solved. Another chapter of ‘Vance to the rescue’ reaches its end.

Ben has invited Anna Ross to the house in hopes of surrounding Eden with a familiar face so that she can feel safer in the house. Anna was the woman with whom Angelina and Eden stayed for a while as we saw back in the season opener “Touch-and-Go.” She had also initially hidden from Ben the fact that they were staying with her, explaining later to him in “All-Call” that she had only meant to protect Eden because she had been misled by Angelina who described him as a terrible person. In any case, Ben hopes that Anna can help Eden understand who is part of her family and who is not.

Angelina, for her part, gets in touch with Cal and manages to persuade him to let her talk to Eden. In return, Cal wants her to tell Eden that Ben is her father and that she is not her mother. Really, Cal? You really believed she would do that? After all that she dragged you through back in season 3, even though your parents welcomed her into their house back in season 3, and topped it all by killing your mother? Oh dear Cal…

Needless to say, Cal’s plan goes awry. Ben happens to walk in on Angelina singing a song to Eden over the phone’s speaker. He turns it off and goes berserk on Cal who had already spent two years trying to win the affection of his dad back after the events that led to his mother’s death at the hands of Angelina. Cal does not have the emotional wherewithal to handle another such period. He leaves the house later with his backpack, leaving a note behind that says, “Dad, you were right. It’s best if I am not here right now.”

Olive, the high-IQ representative of the show, realizes that sapphire has been at the center of every unexplainable phenomena they faced so far (Ben’s glowing hand, the ark piece, the tailfin). It has also been referenced multiple times in history through mythical, religious, and legendary stories. She concludes that sapphire played a role throughout history whenever humans have been in communication with the divine. Her theory is that passengers can use sapphire to get unlimited callings.

Four short scenes in succession show Noelle asking Angelina about Eagan, Michaela getting an evaluation under the supervision of the officer in charge of the compound incident, Eagan walking into a precinct with Angelina’s “wanted by the FBI” post (so much for his promise to Noelle to keep his lips sealed after collecting her watch), and Eden watching the volcano erupt in the snow globe in her bedroom (like Cal did back in “Destination Unknown”).

Remember Colvin denying killing Sam on the rooftop? That meant that the killer is still on the loose. This is confirmed when we see Anna opening the front door of her house after hearing footsteps and getting assaulted with a knife, filmed from the point-of-view of the killer. Why would someone kill Sam Wile and Anna Ross? Is it an Xer or someone we know? To be pursued in later episodes…

Back to Zeke, who is on the cusp of a mental and emotional breakdown, or something like that. He stops by a liquor store and starts drinking a bottle. After he dumps the half empty bottle in the garbage bin on the way home, he trips over Cal’s body lying down on the sidewalk. He is holding Cal and desperately trying to get him to wake up as the episode ends, and credits begin rolling.

Last-minute thoughts:

– Earlier in the episode, when another patient session goes terribly wrong for Zeke, he is dismissed by the social worker in charge.

– The scene with Olive shaving Ben’s beard was sentimental, as noted above, but the shaving itself did not have any impact on Ben gaining Eden’s sympathy.

– Olive tells her sapphire theory over a phone message to TJ. Remember her boyfriend TJ who left for Egypt on a scholarship (“Call Sign”) back in season 2?

– To reinforce the “Jared’s moral compass” narrative, writers included a back story with flashbacks of his conversations with his dad (Carlos Gomez), and a birthday-party dialogue scene between the two in the present, showing how proud his father has been of Jared being an honorable police officer.

Until the next episode…

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“Squawk” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Simran Baidwan & Sumerah Srivastav
Director: Mike Smith
Grade: 4 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Note: This review was published little less than two years after the episode aired, but written without any knowledge of the events taking place in future episodes.

“Squawk” serves its primordial purpose, bringing the long arc of search for Eden to a close. It makes use of the series’ usual tools, convenient callings and timely flashbacks, to pack in a series of events taking place in a matter of around 48 hours in a presentable and entertaining way. Solid performances by Holly Taylor, Ty Doran, Jared Grimes, and Matt Long, help matters since they play the four characters (Angelina, Cal, Adrian, and Zeke) in this episode who struggle to manage the heavy burden of their emotional baggage. It’s also nice to see, albeit a luxury for Manifest, an episode focused on neatly divided A and B stories instead of several plots advancing simultaneously in a rush.

Let’s dive in.

We pick up right where the previous episode “Go-Around” ended, with a flabbergasted Vance arriving to the Stone household, ranting about Ben going after Eden two hours earlier without letting him know the location. He is not surprised to learn that his family is not even aware of this. “There’s no way this ends well,” he states.

Next, we see Ben tied up and gagged at the basement floor of a building at the compound where Adrian hosts 828’ers. Jared stops by to follow up on the fertilizer-purchase lead from “Go-Around.” Erika and Adrian explain that large quantities of fertilizer were needed to grow the ingredients necessary to produce honey with a better flavor. Jared wishes them good luck and leaves, but Erika is uneasy about Ben’s presence in the compound, and Jared is uneasy about what Erika “is up to” with all that fertilizer.

In the B story of the hour, Saanvi goes under a functional MRI machine under Troy’s supervision to see if her brain somehow is receptive to ultra-low frequency (ULF) discovered in the black box, exploring the possibility of “someone or something” communicating with the passengers through ULF. The machine, however, shows no sign of such evidence in her brain scans.

Back at the compound, Eden follows a bee down to the basement and notices Ben tied up. It’s a potent moment, because Ben finally sees his daughter standing right there in front of him, but is helpless to do or say anything as Angelina arrives just in time to pick Eden back up in her arms. She refers to Ben as a “very bad man” and says to Eden, “Mommy is here to protect you,” as she gives an evil look toward Ben to induce him into further rage. We see him screaming from behind the gag as Angelina walks away with Eden, and the generic begins.

A short scene at the compound confirms that Erika is definitely cooking up a bomb with all the fertilizer, some liquids, and whatnot. This is followed by Zeke’s counseling session at work that ends disastrously. He fails to use his powers – apparently for the first time – to heal his patient and notices his hands are shaking. This whole “absorb other people’s pain” healing routine is starting to have a negative impact on his health, as expected by anyone and everyone at this point.

Erika introduces herself to Angelina at the compound, because she has the brilliant idea (!!) of informing Angelina that she has placed a bomb in every room of the building, so that if the law enforcement were to come, they can sneak out the back with the remote detonator and blast it with everyone inside. She says all this as if it’s supposed to make Angelia feel safer. Seriously, is there any logical thought process behind Erika to do this? What is there to gain for her by letting an unstable young girl with a baby know about the planted bombs? I would like to beam back in time to the writers’ room and be a fly on the wall as they discuss this scene.

Ben tries to gain the sympathy of one of the 828 residents named Donovan (Germar Terrell Gardner), trying to convince him that Adrian is hiding Angelina and his daughter at the compound (nobody but Adrian is supposed to know that they are hiding there), and that Donovan should free him.

In the meantime, Cal and Olive are at Vance’s operating center, so to speak, and joining them are Saanvi and Troy. Saanvi decides to sample Cal’s scar on his arm as he and Olive update Saanvi on the mythological objects glowing the night before. It points to divine consciousness and they concluded that this is where the 828 flight was all the missing years – I’ve maxed out on this far-out-there turn of story in my last review, won’t repeat again here. Needless to say, Saanvi wants Cal under the FMRI machine.

From this point forward, several things happen so that the essential characters ultimately converge on the compound in order to get to the real purpose of this outing, which is the resolution of the search for Eden:
– A calling with a bee leads Michaela to search for Erika, which then brings her, Zeke, Jared, and Drea to stake out the compound.
– Cal has a calling inside the FMRI machine which points to Ben and Eden’s location.
– Ben manages to untie himself.
– Donovan and the other 828’ers begin to turn against Adrian.
– Angelina and Erika also turn against Adrian and, using the threat of the detonator, take control of everyone in the compound.

The last 20 minutes are an intense race against time (read: the prospect of Angelina or Erika activating the detonator at any time) as Michaela, Jared, and Zeke enter the compound through a back door to find Ben. Cal, for his part, enters through the front to have a “private talk” with Angelina, reminding her of their connection from back when he was younger in the third season.

With Cal and Angelina away in another room, Erika gets distracted looking for them, leaving the other passengers temporarily unsupervised. Michaela arrives and instructs them to leave the building. Ben finds Eden in bed, grabs her and heads for the exit, but Angelina stands in their way downstairs with the detonator in her hand, setting up a stand-off in the corridor between her and Ben, Cal, and Eden. Angelina pushes the button thinking her “little angel” will protect the two of them from the explosion somehow, in the same way she imagines Eden finding a way to stop her from jumping off the bridge a while back (shown in a flashback). The bombs don’t go off immediately, and Cal grabs Angelina’s arms, allowing enough time for Ben to run out with Eden.

The bombs begin to go off before Ben can get back inside to save Cal, but somehow, Cal walks out moments after the explosions, hardly injured. Later, Zeke senses danger thanks to his powers and notices Erika coming out of the building (has no one died in the explosions?) pointing her rifle toward Michaela. He quickly grabs Jared’s gun and shoots Erika several times, unleashing all the rage inside him most likely accumulated from constantly absorbing other people’s negative emotions during his counseling sessions. Kudos to Matt Long for conveying Zeke’s pent-up anger through his stride and facial expression as he shoots Erika time after time, creating a quite a terrifying 15-second sequence.

The episode goes to great lengths to increase the health concerns for Cal and Zeke. Cal gets coughing fits throughout the outing, finally coughing up blood at the house in the hour’s closing moments. Zeke, for his part, is more and more unsettled with the use of his powers and his ability to control his emotions. They both tell everyone around them that they are fine, but why? Why not tell your close ones that something deeply concerning is brewing up and impacting your health in a negative way? It seems that their loved ones would be best equipped to help them get through those issues. They have relied on each other for over 3 seasons, why stop now?

The episode ends with Adrian driving and finding Angelina lying down injured on the highway, He helps her into his car and drives away.

Last-minute thoughts:

– Will someone please ask Cal what happened to Angelina? After all, he was in a physical struggle with her when Ben left the building carrying Eden, before the explosions went off. It only makes sense that someone would be curious enough to ask him about her. She obviously survived that ordeal, so did she escape from the struggle? Did Cal just leave her alive when he walked out?

– For that matter, Adrian also somehow escaped the explosions. I wish the episode put a bit more effort into fleshing out how these characters survived the explosions.

– Ashes keep coming down in various callings throughout the episode. I thought it related to the explosions in the climactic moments of the episode, but then why did Adrian see them again at the end while helping Angelina into his car?

– During Saanvi’s FMRI scan scene, Troy ponders the possibility of a higher power – he calls it “God frequency” – communicating with the passengers, in line with the divine consciousness narrative introduced in “Go-Around.”

– During Cal and Angelina’s struggle in the climactic stand-off scene inside the house, Cal tells Ben to run out with Eden and that he’ll be fine because he “remembered it.” He says later that he knew that the detonator was not going to go off in time. Did he remember seeing that happening while he was inside the glow, as in, inside the divine consciousness during the missing years? Meaning that he can predict things in the future? Apparently so.

Until the next episode…

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