“Compass Calibration” – Aired on May 20, 2021
Writer: Laura Putney & Margaret Easley
Director: Ramaa Mosley
Grade: 2.5 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
The hour begins with Cal watching with concern the agitated volcano inside his snow globe à-la the ending of last outing “Bogey,” followed by Michaela pondering whether or not to arrest Saanvi before informing Zeke that she killed the Major. Zeke encourages her to proceed with the arrest, claiming that it will play a positive role in Saanvi’s path to redemption in the same way that it did for him when he confessed to pulling the trigger and accidentally injuring Michaela back in the season-1 finale, “Estimated Time of Departure.”
There is a lot taking place in “Compass Calibration,” without offering anything of substance. It suffers more or less from the same plague that invades several other episodes of Manifest, which is the unrestrained multiplicity of storylines running simultaneously. It is also bogged down by one particular extended storyline that has frankly become too stuffy to watch (more to come below), to the point where I find myself fast-forwarding through the related scenes in my re-watches. It doesn’t help either that the episode features a humdrum bottle story that is generated by a previously employed trope (burning photo on Ben’s wall) and brings back one of the most unpleasant and dull characters from season 1. Luckily, there is the mythologico-scifi plotline that somewhat saves the outing with its inquisitive revelations, not that it doesn’t rely on some handwaving itself.
But first, let me get this dreadful Angelina plotline out of the way…
In what I would label the most forcibly fabricated story in the first three seasons of Manifest – and I have belabored on this plenty in my last two reviews –, Angelina’s obsessive behavior reaches new heights, to the point of remaining in the room upstairs with her and baby Eden inside where a fire is spreading, instead of running out, because… she believes that Eden is her guardian angel and will hocus-pocus away the fire!
As if this were not outré enough, we have to watch Grace brush aside the fact that Olive has now been staying with Levi in order to avoid the house and Angelina, offer a flimsy “Maybe we just keep it status quo until Olive’s ready to talk” justification for her staying away while expressing concern about Angelina having “been through so much.” And of course, Ben agrees with Grace! Helloooooo Mr. and Mrs. Stone! We are talking about your daughter Olive here. Are you not concerned that she may actually be right about Angelina? – Also note that as my head is screaming all this, Grace tells Ben that she is on her way to try out recipes for her new restaurant with Zeke, and that Angelina is coming along to help with Eden… Oh dear…
Even after observing Angelina’s red-flag behavior and comments throughout the episode, Grace is still not alarmed enough to put her foot down. It is only after she rushes upstairs (at Zeke’s prompt) and finds Eden in the burning room with Angelina doing nothing but standing in front of her with her hands opened toward the air and hoping for Eden to intervene, that Grace decides it’s time to kick Angelina out of the house. And then, there is Cal’s pissed-off mood toward her mom, even after Angelina put his baby sister’s life in danger and caught an attitude toward his mother Grace, stating that Grace cannot separate her from Cal, Eden! I watch the way Grace responds to both Angelina and Cal, and then the way she softly knocks on Cal’s door for permission to enter later, and I begin wondering, when on earth did the strong-willed mother named Grace Stone of the last two and a half seasons turn into such a push-over?
The bottom line is, I reiterate, this plotline is awful. It should have never existed. It forces characters to behave oddly, outside of their existing traits, and it’s progressively getting worse by the episode. Please end it!
The story of the week centers on panic-attack-ridden Astrid (Arianna Esquerre), noticed first by Cal who spots her photo in flames on Ben’s Agent-Moulder-basement wall. Ben pays a visit to Astrid who gets terrifying visions of a skull and a checkerboard. When she draws a painting of her calling, Ben associates it with the logo on the auto-repair shop once owned by Flight-828-hating, conspiracy theorist Cody the jerkwad (Patrick Murnay) who first appeared in “Cleared for Approach” as a menace to Ben and his family. He is also the father of Robin (Derrick Delgado) whom he kidnapped from school without the consent of the mother and his ex-wife Val (Denise Pillott), who also happens to be Astrid’s friend and co-worker.
The connection is first made by Astrid when she spots a tattoo on Cody’s wrist that matches one on Val’s body. The scenes at the repair shop with Ben, Astrid, and Cody are neatly interjected with the ones from the precinct where Jared, Michaela, and Val are also looking into Cody’s connection to Robin’s kidnapping.
Jared and Michaela arrive at the shop after Ben had badly injured Cody while interrogating him on Robin’s whereabouts. Since Cody has had a restraining order in place against Ben since the debacle in “Cleared for Approach,” Ben is legally in trouble. At least Robin is saved, after a contrived sequence that helps Michaela and Jared to bully Cody into revealing his kid’s location (inside a bunker built by the jerkwad in case all hell breaks loose on earth because, according to him, there is a “war coming”). Ben is handcuffed and scolded yet again by Michaela – a.k.a. Manifest’s voice of reason – on how he cannot be everyone’s savior. Naturally, Ben does not (and will not) listen. This dialogue between the Stone siblings comes across pat, as if we have been here before many times (yes, we have).
Speaking of arrests, poor Michaela’s task list for the day also includes bringing Saanvi in for killing the Major, something to which Saanvi willfully consented as part of her penance. At the last second, she asks Michaela for an extension until the end of the day, so that she can finish her research on the significant discovery that they just made at Eureka (the driftwood disappearing for 37 milliseconds). Michaela, distracted by a page sent by the precinct, reluctantly agrees.
Saanvi and Troy, as revealed later, have been scheming for a way to sneak the driftwood out of the facility. This is easily the best plot to follow in “Compass Calibration.” It includes a well-written dialogue between Vance and Saanvi that ends in a surprising way, though it makes sense later when Saanvi’s real intention is revealed.
Dr. Cooper uses the metaphoric ‘Mt. Ararat seeking revenge on Eureka because we took something from Ararat’ explanation to Saanvi to justify the earthquake that shakes New York with supposedly no existing volcano at its epicenter. This triggers Saanvi to conclude that the two successive earthquakes in two days, because of their locations, somehow portend some apocalyptic event to come – or something like that – unless they stop the testing on the driftwood. Saanvi’s explanation to Vance doesn’t entirely clarify how she came to that conclusion (I nodded my head in approval when Vance said, “this is grasping at straws”), but hey, let’s not nit-pick, right?
In any case, Vance refuses to stop testing. That puts into motion Saanvi and Troy’s scheme to sneak the driftwood out of the facility and drop it into the fissure caused by the second earthquake. A middling amount of suspension of disbelief is required while watching Saanvi and Troy accomplish all this because, it involves the most stunning discovery in centuries being sneaked out of a top-secret facility by two science nerds and Saanvi reaching the border of the fissure without anyone interrupting her. When she finally drops it, the hot lava inside solidifies and the fissure closes on itself. The outing ends with a shot of the volcano slowly ceasing to erupt inside Cal’s snow globe.
With three episodes left in the season, I can only hope that the show brings any and all of trivial storylines to a conclusion prior to the finale and offers considerable payoffs to the various plots surrounding its central mystery.
Last-minute thoughts:
— If this were Twitter and not a blog page for episodic reviews, here is what I would write: “‘Compass Calibration’ is the 10th entry into Manifest’s third-season. That’s it. That’s the tweet.” There would not be much else to say, maybe one follow-up tweet about the advancement of the mythologico-scifi plot.
— Ben’s rush to save Robin is paired at an emotional level with his desire to save Cal eight years ago on that same day. I guess the flashback scenes of Cal on the verge of dying are supposed to somehow make the viewers sympathize with how unhinged Ben became in his disposition in order to save Robin. I am wondering how people felt about that. They had no impact on me because I thought his behavior was justified in this episode, and this is coming from someone who had no trouble criticizing Ben’s hasty actions in the past.
— I have no idea how arresting Saanvi has become a part of Michaela’s “path to redemption.” As loyal to logical reasoning as Michaela is, she would have to possess clear evidence of her future being bleak in the case of not arresting Saanvi. I don’t remember any such past moments, do you?
— Nit-pick time:
So, Zeke can sense the love of person for another, just not to which degree, even if it’s at dangerously obsessive levels. That slightly negates his stamp of approval on the relationship between Jared and Sarah in “Bogey.” All we know in this case, technically, is that Sarah’s feelings for Jared are genuine in the same way that Angelina’s feelings for Eden are, and it does not necessarily mean that the relationship is 100% healthy.
— Otiose side note: According to Michaela’s pager, Tate & Turner Department Store is the location of the bomb scare. No such store exists. But I am wondering if this gets noted anywhere. What if five years from now, someone totally unaware of this show decides to name its store Tate & Turner?
Until the next episode…
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