“All-Call” – Aired on November 4, 2022
Writers: Laura Putney & Darika Fuhrmann
Director: Dean White
Grade: 3 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.
After a banner season opener in “Touch-and-Go,” this outing unfortunately contains a noticeable amount of trite storytelling and a few far-out-there dialogues and scenes that are likely to pull a few “oh-come-on-now” gasps out of viewers. It picks up couple of threads from the season opener “Touch-and-Go” but provides no game changers and no meaningful character developments.
Saanvi is the latest to pay Ben a visit, only to be left disappointed by how far he is wallowing in his misery. I admit, I found it implausible that Saanvi had been so out of contact with Ben and his family that she was unaware of the depths of despondency into which Ben has sunk. In any case, she brought the black-box recording that synced Captain Daly’s voices from two different times but, much to her dismay, Ben is not even willing to listen to it. She reiterates that the black box came into their possession because of a calling, but Ben doesn’t follow callings anymore because, as he flatly states, “the callings took everything from me.” His next move is to curl up back in his bed and look glum.
A crestfallen Saanvi tells Cal that it’s now on them to pursue the callings, because their death date is only 18 months away. Ben, for his part, will contact Aaron Glover (Marquis Rodriguez) who first appeared in season 1’s “Crosswinds.” Aaron has pursued Ben since then, in an effort to bring him on as a guest to his popular podcast. He finally gets his wish because Ben believes that listeners can help him find Angelina and Eden.
Speaking of Angelina and Eden, they left Anna’s house and Angelina finds a temporary room with a woman named Iris (Kerry Flanagan), seemingly friendly to 828ers. Once settled into their room, however, Iris locks them in for reasons unexplained. This ties much later in the hour to the C story involving Adrian who sees the same house in a calling during his scheduled interview at the registry. When he arrives at the house, he spots Angelina inside a boarded window and helps her and Eden escape. Adrian is not happy about Angelina kidnapping Eden and killing Grace, but he is stuck with her nevertheless.
Saanvi meets Vance back at their operation center and even though Henry claims to hear multiple voices overlapping in the humming of the black-box recording, Saanvi and Vance cannot hear them. To explain how he can hear them and how he survived four weeks at sea preceded by two years as a lab rat, Henry puts forth one of the most far-fetched tales ever, even by Manifest lore’s standards, I will try to describe it here only because it plays a role later in the episode, and not because I find one iota of credibility in it, even for a show that regularly demands viewers to suspend their disbelief.
You see, Henry has a scar that resembles a dragon on his forearm as the result of a lightning strike when he was young. His father told him that “this dragon lives inside” him and makes him “capable of doing anything.” Then, Henry adds, “I would channel my inner dragon, breathing through it until I could lower my heartbeat enough to feel vibrations from the box.” Thus, he hears a humming, “as if the box was meditating along” with him! “That is when it happened,” he continues. “I began to hear an ocean of voices buried beneath the hum.”
Ohhh-kaaay!
Look, I am willing to handwave, to a certain degree the staggering number of callings that merely serve as plot devices, their randomness (yet to make sense), and Zeke and others suddenly developing magical powers out of nowhere. But please, come up with a less hokey justification of Henry’s ability to hear voices in a humming. Anything but this! And how does this help in explaining the opening scene of the season where he simply walks out of the Chinese facility? What happened to the scientists at the lab who were monitoring him? Henry has been a key part of the season’s first two episodes, yet we genuinely know very little about him other than this clumsy inner-dragon saga.
Anyhow…
Michaela checks into the 828 Registry for her required regular monthly interview that gets interrupted by Drea and an NYPD lieutenant (Maceo Oliver). They ask Michaela some pointed questions about her possible knowledge of Henry Kim’s whereabouts. She denies ever being at the port and Drea skillfully convinces the lieutenant to buy her story while instructing Michaela via privately written note to go asap to the park bench where she and Jared used to meet.
In a flashback, we learn that on the day of Grace’s funeral, Michaela told Jared that they should not be in contact anymore because of what Jared said in a not-so-memorable moment back in “Mayday: Part 2” about losing Michaela for good when Zeke survived his death date. “He was supposed to be gone Mick,” Jared said, “That’s the only reason I stood there and watched him marry the love of my life.” Thus, their extended absence from each other’s life explained, as seen in “Touch-and-Go.” Side note: did Jared ever get officially divorced from Lourdes? Yeah, remember Lourdes?
Back to the present, Jared meets Michaela at the bench to warn her that China is aware of Henry being on US soil because, as we later find out, Henry has a locator chip installed in his body somewhere. The NYPD is assisting the Chinese in locating him so Michaela needs to get him out fast. She hurries back to grab Henry and drive him to a safe location designated by Vance. Following a decent car-chase scene, NYPD cars corner Michaela and Henry before they can get to the location. Henry gets out of the car and turns himself in while Michaela escapes. As he is getting apprehended, Henry has a calling, as does Cal simultaneously, in which Henry finds Cal alone in the plane in his seat and extends his hand out to him.
Cal joins Saanvi, Vance, and Michaela and insists on seeing Henry to decipher the calling. Unfortunately, Henry is in custody, but of course the team will somehow get Cal to see Henry where he is held. One would assume that a dude like Henry would be guarded by a dozen national guards, or something, and unreachable to anyone except the President, so to speak. Nope! Cal walks by himself into the NYC registry facility, and Drea tells a simple lie to the lone guard at the door of Henry’s room to make him go away, and pouf! Cal is talking to Henry.
Except that Cal doesn’t get an answer as to why Henry’s hand was extended to him in the plane. Henry provides nothing more than a motivational speech, assuring Cal that he already possesses everything he needs, including the dragon inside him. “You just need to believe it,” he affirms. Thanks Henry, great instructions and guidance! At the end of the episode, Cal notices that he has the same scar as Henry on his forearm. Henry somehow activated Cal’s inner dragon. The old man now holds the title for the most magically powerful man in Manifest, this will be hard to top.
After the podcast, Aaron leaves a message for Ben, informing him that a woman may have spotted Angelina and Eden. She gave a location too, so Ben heads there accompanied by Zeke (who acts as Ben’s mind-reading sidekick throughout the episode). The location is a laundromat across the street from Anna’s house! Ben recognizes Anna’s house and notices the cameras at her entrance. He believes they may have caught a glimpse of Angelina and Eden.
They visit Anna who claims that her cameras are not real, a lie to which Zeke catches on effortlessly because… he has powers. Anna nervously confesses that she was manipulated by Angelina who described Ben and his wife as horrible parents. But after their adventure by the cemetery with the windmill in “Touch-and-Go,” Anna realized that Ben was a good person and that she made a terrible mistake, so she told Angelina to leave immediately. Redemption time for Ben (Josh Dallas is in peak-performance mode in this sequence) who finally has the proof that he has been seeking for two years and no longer has to face the stigma of being perceived as the desperate father in denial. Angelina and Eden are indeed alive.
Back at the operations center, Saanvi and Vance enlist Dr. Cooper’s help since the recording enhancer is his machine. He spits out some technobabble-talk to Saanvi that leads her, later in the episode, to adjust the settings on the sound enhancer. Somehow, multiple voices emerge with phrases like “slower” and “save her,” easily recognizable by an astonished Saanvi and anyone who has religiously watched Manifest. It’s a mix of all the callings 828ers have had so far!
In the meantime, for the sake of elevating the soap-opera barometer in future episodes, we see Jared and Drea in bed together. “No strings,” they repeat to each other in sultry tones. Oh dear…
Last-minute thoughts:
— The episode opens with a flashback to Grace’s funeral. It did not do anything for me because of my pet peeve about characters donning dramatically crying expressions, or even sobbing, and yet doing so with completely dry eyes. Surely, there are techniques and resources available to produce tears on demand, no?
— Will we learn more about Iris? Why did she lock Angelina and Eden in? Does she even know who Angelina really is, because the latter used the name Violet when communicating with her.
— Zeke and Michaela are dealing head-on with the Jared complication. Michaela admits that she still has feelings for Jared, but that she loves Zeke (however that works), and that she will always choose him. Zeke is ready to accept Michaela as she is. Sweet!
— In the final montage, it seems that the Stone household is united once again, thanks to the news of Eden still being alive.
Until the next episode…
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