“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…
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