“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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