“Course Correction” – Aired on March 16, 2020
Writer: Laura Putney & Margaret Easley
Director: Michael Smith
Grade: 3,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Following two episodes of not starting with a flashback, Manifest makes a return to tradition with “Course Correction” (fitting name in this context) when the hour kicks off with a brief scene showing us inside Flight 828 before its take-off at the airport in Montego Bay.

A lapsed version of Adrian is in his seat, shrugging off an elderly woman’s attempts to preach him quotes from scripture. Couple that with the episode’s “previously on Manifest” intro revisiting the briefing by Captain Bowers at the precinct when she informs everyone that Adrian is still at-large, and one can easily guess at that point that Adrian has an essential role to play in this outing. He does indeed, and the intricacies of his connection to the Stone-family drama unfolding at the hospital constitute the highlights of the outing.

That storyline begins with a new calling when Grace turns on the water in the kitchen at her house and finds herself under a bridge by a river, hearing the voice of a man utter the words, “Help me.” She and Ben locate the spot, High Bridge at Harlem River, after a quick search on the web. Once there, they run into Adrian (in hiding since the nightclub incident in “Emergency Exit”) because he also followed the same calling there!

Ben is keen on believing that this particular calling’s purpose was for them to find Adrian so that he could be taken to the police, but the more cool-headed Grace – always nice to see common sense triumph over zeal – thinks otherwise. There must be a deeper meaning to the calling bringing them to this spot, so far away from the precinct. She doesn’t get much time to ponder on the issue though as her water unexpectedly breaks!

Ben hurries to take her to the hospital as Adrian showcases one of the most rage-inducing selfish-behavior moments of the series so far with his temper-tantrum toned question, “What am I supposed to do now?” I would like to thank whoever decided to extend the scene a few more seconds before the commercial break, allowing Ben just enough time to dish back at Adrian the answer his harebrained question deserves: “I don’t give a damn what you do Adrian! I am going to get my wife to the hospital!” And remember to take this as the network-restricted version of what anyone in Ben’s situation would have actually said!

As for Michaela, we find her back in jail where she was left fuming at the end of “Airplane Bottles.” Her lawyer arrives so Jared lets her out, and as he is doing so, he slips a note to her hand and reminds her with a mutter to keep her mouth shut. With Michaela’s lawyer present, Officer Dibacco, Simon’s plant who had been posing as Michaela’s union rep, can no longer implement his plan that entailed, as he tells Jared quietly, giving her a ride to the neutral interrogation side and getting lost in a rough neighborhood, one from which Michaela would never find her way out! Jared reassures Dibacco that he knows “how to deal with Michaela Stone” and that he “got this.”

Sandwiched between the Michaela-Jared and Ben-Grace-Adrian stories is what I would call a ‘footnote story’ involving Cal and Olive, one that occupies little time in this episode but serves as a prelude to a much larger narrative in the upcoming ones.

Being the charming siblings that they are, the two are deciding which one of Cal’s drawings they should use to introduce the callings to their soon-to-be-born sister. As they are shuffling through them, Cal recognizes the first one he ever drew and remembers not ever being able to figure out the meaning of the creepy pencil drawing. It shows his family members standing hand in hand, with a gray shadow looming behind them. As he stares at it longer, the shadow grows larger on the page. In a similar scene later, Cal sees the shadow grow to scary proportions and hover over the whole family right when Olive receives a call from their dad, informing them of Grace’s condition and urging them to come to the hospital.

Before we delve into that intriguing, multi-layered storyline at the hospital, let’s rewind back to Jared’s note to Michaela at the cell…

The note reads, “our place,” referring to the bench at a park where the two used to meet back when they were lovers, and where Jared eventually proposed to Michaela on his knees, in the presence of the whole Stone gang. We know these details thanks to a beautiful flashback capturing this rare moment of perfect bliss for everyone involved. We also know, however, that the spot has since represented a place of sorrow for Jared who has been frequenting the bench by himself to reminisce about Michaela not only during her absence of five and a half years, but also after their relationship fell apart following her reappearance.

Following one of those visits, Jared entered a bar to drink his agony away and met Tamara and the Xers, soon realizing that he “was in the belly of the beast,” as he tells Michaela in the present day. It makes Michaela feel for a second as if it were her fault that Jared joined the Xers, until Jared reveals that he has been infiltrating the Xers as an undercover operative (with the Captain’s knowledge), partly because he knew she would never feel safe with those nutcases running around freely.

While this may come as a dramatic revelation to Michaela, I am not sure that it has much of an impact on the audience for a number of reasons. For starters, last episode gave away that Jared and Bowers were at least in cahoots, if not working together to expose the Xers. Secondly, for a storyline that has extended through seven episodes – we first saw Jared and Tamara flirting at the bar in “Black Box” – Michaela’s quick acceptance (in less than 30 seconds) of the revelation-bomb Jared just dropped on her lap, and her subsequent embrace of his mission, diminish the magnitude (and plausibility) of the moment, especially considering that she asks a perfectly valid question at first: “Why didn’t you tell me?” Let’s explore that matter for a moment. Here is a short list of how the undercover operation’s time span impacted our detective duo:

(1) It led Jared to tip the Xers about an upcoming police raid (“Coordinated Flight”) in order to gain their trust. Could anyone have guaranteed that it would not have resulted in a knee-jerk reaction by the Xers to take revenge and accelerate their operations, thus put lives in danger?

(2) It led Michaela to not only lose any feelings that she may have left for Jared, but also to harbor feelings of disgust toward him, ones that cannot simply be washed away with a revelation.

(3) It allowed Zeke and Michaela’s relationship to grow deeper, essentially eliminating any chances of Jared and Michaela getting back together.

(4) It put Michaela’s life (and Zeke’s) in danger. Remember that sleazy Billy and his two asswipe pals paid a visit to Michaela’s apartment with the intention to eliminate her in this episode, but happened to run into Zeke first, thus taking him hostage.

(5) Oh, and by the way, are we supposed to forget that Jared actively participated in assisting Simon and the Xers dump information about Flight 828 passengers onto the web (reference: Jared getting mad at Simon for changing plans in “Airplane Bottles”)? Is that also excusable under the “gain their trust” bill introduced by Senator-Agent Vasquez?

Yet, it takes less than thirty seconds after Jared dropping the bomb on her lap for Michaela to forgive and forget the gigantic ramifications resulting from it. She just smiles and offers her full support for his cause. You would think that an explanation with the ability to generate that kind of magic reaction would carry more substance than the flimsy “I needed you to believe I was in so deep that they’d believe,” answer that Jared spits out. Is Michaela’s ability to go undercover, hide her feelings, or fake an identity, so dismal that she needed to be kept out of the loop in order to convince the Xers? Would it not have been worth bringing her in on the scheme anyway, and avoid the trauma resulting from weeks and weeks of anguish (see the above list)? I am simply having trouble buying both: Jared’s explanation and Michaela’s lightweight reaction to that explanation.

Anyhow, this ultimately leads to the denouement of the Simon-Xers-Jared saga, one that wraps up so neatly that it left me wondering if that was really all that the writing room could muster up as a pay-off to what had otherwise been a well-constructed story arc over the ten-episode-old second season.

I am talking about how the whole Simon and the Xers movement collapses in a midsize room in the back of a bar where, not only its key players suspiciously find themselves in the same room yet suspect nothing, but they also conveniently – and loudly – narrate, in the presence of a hostage and Jared, all the harm that they had caused until that point and plan to cause from that point forward, including the details of who, how, why, and when! Frankly speaking, that part of the conversation could have been entitled, “the race to the best in verbally incriminating oneself in less than two minutes,” and nobody would have raised an eyebrow. Talk about the feeling you get when you watch the denouement scene of a procedural show among dozens on network and cable TV where the perpetrators magically give full accounts of their crimes, leaving no stone unturned (!), so that the protagonists can neatly send them to prison.

This ‘collapse’ also features the ubiquitous cliché of the ultimate genius in Simon who helms a masterful operation up to a point, only to turn into a low-IQ criminal at the last second. Until then, he had been the emblematic leader-figure who builds a loyal following using his convincing rhetorical skills and helps the movement gain momentum through patience and careful organization. Then, he suddenly develops enough lunacy in one day to ruin everything by seeing nothing wrong with reuniting with the key players of his movement in one small room, based on a last-second call from the most idiotic individual in his group. Heck, sleazy Billy did not even have to provide the reason why he wanted Simon to come to the bar, because Simon did not apparently insist on knowing! Just like that, Simon, Erika, sleazy Billy, and the Xers are caught. Oh-kay!

Speaking of Erika, do not feel awkward if you are one of those wondering who she is. She had received almost no character depth prior to this episode, not that she had any time to develop some in this hour either. She had appeared under her identity as a member of Simon’s group just once (“False Horizon”) prior to this hour, and only for a brief moment, with the only purpose being to create the whaaaat effect when Simon entered his car and the camera showed her sitting in the passenger seat. Forgive me if I care very little for this character when she oddly appears out of nowhere next to Simon in this episode and acts as his right-hand person.

I ended my review of “False Horizon” back then with the following words with regard to Erika’s appearance in the car with Simon:

“The reveal here being that Erika, with whom Grace clashed earlier, and Simon, the professor in the hiring committee, know about the Stones and have a secret agenda. The details of who they are and for whom they precisely work remain vague at this point, which is usually how episode-ending reveals work. As long as the pay-off is worth it, I am willing to wait.”

That was two months and seven episodes ago. This is one of those cases where the pay-off was not worth the wait.

In the far more captivating narrative with Grace going into early delivery at the hospital, Ben faces a crucial decision when Dr. Gutierrez (Mark Torres) informs him that he has to choose between Grace and the baby. Grace has a condition called ‘placenta percreta’ making the surgery life-threatening for her. There are only a handful of surgeons who can perform this delicate surgery and the only one in the area is not responding to the calls placed by the hospital. The next closest is five hours away. Unfortunately, that is not enough time as Grace faints and the baby begins to crash, but not before Grace makes a reluctant Ben promise that if it comes down to saving the baby or herself, Ben must choose the baby.

Left without a choice, Ben tells the doctor to save the baby, but changes his mind once he observes Cal and Olive hugging their mom who is faintly hanging on for dear life in the hospital bed. The family needs Grace, Ben concludes on the spot, and directs Dr. Gutierrez to make her the priority!

This is when the Adrian side of the calling makes its entrance in a striking way. You see, earlier in the episode when Grace and Ben left Adrian by the river, he heard the “help” calling again, except that it was this time an actual man in the river pleading for help. Adrian jumped in, saved him, and brought him to the hospital. That man is Dr. Chmait** (Nasser Faris), the only local surgeon specializing in the kind of surgery that Grace desperately needs! They could not locate him earlier because he fell in the river while kayaking before Adrian saved and escorted him to the ER.

**The name ‘Dr. Chmait’ appears once in the subtitles for the character. On IMDB, he is listed as “specialist surgeon.’

Nurse Vera (Gabrielle Reid), who made her first appearance in “Grounded,” recognizes him in the hospital as he is about to get discharged, and urgently brings him to help Grace and the baby. It leads to a happy ending when he performs the surgery and tells Ben and the kids later that both mom and the baby (named Eden) are going to be fine.

Adrian’s connection dawns on Ben once he hears Dr. Chmait tell the story about the “total stranger” who happened to be standing by the river and saved his life when his kayak flipped over under the High Bridge in Harlem River. Ben finds Adrian in the hospital and they engage in a heated, but thought-provoking argument about the true purpose of the callings.

Despite his rescue of Dr. Chmait, ultimately leading to the doctor saving Grace and Eden, Adrian still clings to the idea that the callings are manipulative, tricking the passengers into trusting them, in order to use them to achieve their demoniacal purpose. In a stark contrast to the pre-Flight-828 version of Adrian seen in the flashback, his current version is quick to embrace scripture to rebut Ben’s claim that the callings are helpful: “False prophets will arise from the dead to perform signs and wonders.” He thinks that the callings consider them to be agents of the apocalypse who have returned from the dead!

Yeah, heavy load Adrian is carrying around, isn’t he? More darkness comes his way when he leaves the hospital and runs into a large, dark shadow in an alley. It splits into three tall shadows and they hover over him, similar to the way that the gray figures hover over the family members in Cal’s drawing. Adrian turns around and runs away before they envelop him. Cal sees these shadowy figures one final time on the walls of his room at night before he turns the lights on and they disappear, as the episode draws to a close.

Last-minute thoughts:

– Jared Grimes, who is by the way an accomplished tap dancer, performs wonders here as an actor, representing the frustrated, yet confident, but fixated Adrian. It’s just my personal opinion, but I find his acting underrated and only wish there were ways to work him more into the story.

– Michaela’s newly acquired lawyer, whom we never get to see in this episode, is Teresa Yin who defended Zeke in “False Horizon.”

– Good news for Jared: Bowers left a surprise package for him on his desk, with the Preparation for Lieutenant Exam inside, the official guide to the NYPD’s promotion exam.

– Speaking of Bowers, for the first time ever, we get to see her smile, crack a joke, step outside the precinct, and participate in some action. I bet Andrene Ward-Hammond had even more fun doing that than I had watching the Captain finally break free of the ‘beastly captain behind the desk’ persona.

– As for the tear-jerker scene when Ben talks to Grace and the unborn baby with tears flowing from his eyes, I am not sure why it did not have the sentimental impact on me that such scenes usually have. Was it the choice of words? Could it have been Dallas’s over-acting maybe? Or perhaps it was because it was already revealed by then that the man Adrian saved and brought to the hospital was the specialist surgeon needed to save Grace? I dunno.

– Speaking of the surgeon, I had already felt that he was going to have a crucial connection to Grace the moment Adrian pulled ‘a man’ out of the river, considering that she had also had the same calling.

– Entertaining scenes at the precinct when Captain Bowers verbally abuses Jared and Michaela in front of others to keep up appearances. The captain sure appears to be cherishing these moments.

– The brightest junctures in the otherwise average Jared-Billy-Simon sequences at the bar occur once Jared pockets the hidden microphone left by Michaela and begins relaying information to her and Bowers using code words and sounds.

– Adrian tells Ben that Grace’s water broke because he saw her fall near the river in his vision, even telling Ben to verify that fact with Grace. “The only reason she was on those rocks,” he adds, “was because the calling told you to go there.” According to him, that is how the callings teach them to blindly follow them. I am sorry, but that makes no sense. You mean to tell me that Grace took the risk of going to the rocks while pregnant even though she saw herself fall there in a vision (and did not say a word about it to Ben)? Can I get a wut?

– Sleazy Billy found Jared in Zeke’s contacts and did not question for a second that it may be because they are acquaintances? That’s beyond stupid, even by Billy’s dimwit standards.

– I am not sure if I am supposed to feel sorry for Tamara or not. She is devastated at the end, having realized that Jared profoundly betrayed her. Yet, I cannot help but ask, how long did she expect her life to trod on forward without a major setback while she is simultaneously protecting a brother like sleazy Billy and maintaining a romantic relationship with an NYPD detective?

– Apologies to Jared fans, but I cannot feel sorry for him either. Isn’t he still officially married to Lourdes by the way, like he was when he pursued Michaela for weeks and even turned creepy when she did not reciprocate and fell in love with Zeke? Manifest has done a great job of portraying Jared as a loyal, magnanimous friend, but certainly not as a valuable romantic companion!

– Did the scene with Adrian and the shadows looming over him in the alley remind you of the movie Ghost (1990) for a moment?

Until the next episode…

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“Airplane Bottles” – Aired on March 9, 2020
Writer: Mathew Lau & MJ Cartozian Wilson
Director: Ramaa Mosley
Grade: 5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Another exceptional installment of Manifest follows the stellar “Carry On” from the week before, and while there is still the matter of sticking the landing in the last few episodes to follow, the latter half of season 2 may go down as the definitive period in persuading the powers that be at NBC of Manifest‘s potential as an established, long-standing sci-fi drama on primetime TV — a rare combination in the post-2010 era of weekly TV series.

“Airplane Bottles” is a unique entry in the show’s lore with a distinctive pattern in comparison to the 20+ episodes that aired so far. It manages to have ample plot advancements in the show’s overall arc with no action-packed sequences, while keeping its A, B, and C stories tightly compartmentalized. In fact, the storylines are so pigeonholed that the hour essentially takes place in three disparate – or even, ‘claustrophobic’ – locations with a small group of people engaged in lengthy, but meaningful, discussions.

It should also be noted that for the first time in a long while, the entire main cast of Manifest is full-tilt under the spotlight, with the Stone household and Saanvi’s lab sequences contributing to the overarching mythology of Manifest, while the precinct scenes advance the more grounded Jared-Michaela narrative.

For the second outing in a row, the episode begins with a dream sequence instead of a flashback, although Cal’s dream is indeed what the viewers saw as a flashback in season one’s “Connecting Flights” when he looked out the window of Flight 828, saw the glaring light in the sky, and uttered the words, “it’s all connected.” He wakes up in a sweat and anxiously walks around the house before we switch to a happier scene featuring Michaela and Zeke having breakfast and making rosy plans for the future, assuming that Zeke’s frostbite problem gets solved. Having passed the preliminary testing for Saanvi’s serum, Zeke is keen on moving to phase 2 of the treatment. Michaela, for her part, is not looking forward to her scheduled meeting with Internal Affairs (IA) investigators at the precinct with regard to Jared’s involvement with the Xers.

Back at the Stone household, Olive is ready delve deeper into the Al-Zuras journal with TJ. Ben and Grace find Cal in a room upstairs, frantically trying to put together parts of a crib to build… something. He makes a vague reference to a “spider web,” saying that “it’s all connected,” and wondering “why won’t it work? For now, let’s put aside the highly charged Stone household storyline and move forward with the two other locations.

Zeke enters Saanvi’s lab for phase 2 of the test but is alarmed to see her behave in a super-duper-wired manner. She brushes it off to the adjustment period from the sudden withdrawals of callings, saying they are “minor impulse-control issues,” but frankly, neither Zeke nor the viewers are buying it! After about two minutes of watching this off-the-wall version of Saanvi (slightly over-dramatized by Parveen Kaur), Zeke has seen enough. He is not proceeding with the injection and he wants Saanvi to see a doctor. The problem is that she would lose her job, thus access to her lab, if any doctor were to learn that she tested unproven meds on herself. Enter her ex-lover Alex who, upon Zeke’s insistence, agrees to help her. She gives Saanvi an injection to temporarily calm her down. They will have to wait and see for the long-term effects.

Matt Long puts on display one of his best performances to date as Zeke by meticulously walking the thin line between portraying the one who is genuinely concerned for his friend’s well-being and the one who is first and foremost looking out for himself. Both could be valid in this case and not mutually exclusive. Long makes it work beautifully because Zeke’s sympathy for Saanvi comes across as authentic as possible as he tries to help her in any way that he can, taking into account her sensibilities, even if it means delaying a possible solution to his existing conundrum.

Michaela arrives at the precinct where a less-than-thrilled Jared accosts her to make her change her mind, but to no avail. He represents, however, the least of Michaela’s worries. She is unknowingly walking into an ambush meeting during which the two AI investigators, Fong and Blandpied (played by Johnny WU and Chastity Dotson with the adequate icy tone of such agents) become increasingly antagonistic throughout the hour to the point of accusing Michaela of masterminding the disastrous fire at the club. This is conveyed through a series of interview-room scenes detailing with clarity each stage of Michaela’s growing frustration. It also helps that Melissa Roxburgh is decisively up to the task.

There is also a secondary dynamic in play between Jared and Captain Bowers in these precinct sequences. Our ex-good-now-bad Det. Vasquez is becoming fidgety because he is getting the impression that things are about to blow up in his face with the involvement of IA investigators. Capt. Bowers (whose ethical and by-the-book image has long since faded) says, “I’ve got all bases covered,” in an attempt to calm him down. Jared’s paranoia barometer skyrockets even higher a bit later when he learns that a union representative has also been added to the mix (more on the union rep. later). To make matters worse, Bowers does not sound as reassuring as before when Jared presses her a second time. Apparently, Simon made a last-second change of plans and turned Michaela’s files over to Internal Affairs. Bowers strongly advises Jared to ask Simon “how much of a hole” they are in!

Flirting with a nervous breakdown, Jared heads over to Simon’s office at the university. He chastises Simon for going beyond the initial plan, which was to merely dump information about Flight 828 passengers onto the web, and did not include feeding Michaela’s cases to IA. Simon explains it away by saying that they have new information about the passengers which called for a change of plan.

Jared is bewildered to say the least when Simon accuses the passengers of keeping the truth from everyone. He claims that they can see the future and that “they are manipulating the events around us.” He exclaims, “one of them is coming after us,” referring to Michaela. As far as Simon is concerned, she is a threat and he will “do what needs to be done” to neutralize her.

Despite the substantial amount of time spent on this particular dynamic, the intricacies of the Bowers-Jared-Simon connection still remain somewhat murky, perhaps by design. How exactly does Captain Bowers know that Simon gave Michaela’s case files to Internal Affairs? Did Simon directly tell her or did she find out through a third party? Why did Simon feel the need to do that? Or rather, did he really feel like they were in a “hole” or is Captain Bowers assuming the worst? Were the Investigators Fong and Blandpied part of the conspiracy against Michaela or were they simply doing their job?

What is perfectly clear, on the other hand, is that not only is Captain Bowers well aware of the ambush on Michaela, but also of Simon’s role with the Xers, as well as Jared’s connection with them.

At one point in the interrogation room, Investigator Blanpied explicitly mentions the possibility of a “long prison term” for Michaela, prompting her to ask for a union representative to be present. Enter Officer Dibacco (Lou Martini Jr.) who comes across as much-needed relief for Michaela at first, fiercely dishing back to the investigators everything that they throw Michaela’s way – more questions: what was Blanpied’s purpose in mentioning the prison sentence? Why did she think it was a good idea to completely put Michaela on the defensive? Dibacco even forces their hand into moving the meeting to a neutral site, accusing them and Det. Vasquez of setting Michaela up.

Except that Officer Dibacco is not the champion he appears to be!

This is an excellent twist and unless you are one of the most astute observers ever known to humankind (Jared is one of those, apparently), you missed that Dibacco was present at the Xers meeting led by Simon in “Carry On” and that he was the man who briefly appeared on screen to shake Simon’s hand before Simon and Jared had the private conversation about keeping a check on sleazy Billy. One of Manifest’s strongest assets is the effective use of nods to events and characters from previous episodes, and here, that skill is put to good use to create the wow effect. The twist takes place right when the audience is probably giving Officer Dibacco a hero’s welcome for busting the investigators’ chops.

Once he recognizes Dibacco, it dawns on Jared that with Dibacco by her side, Michaela may not even make it alive to the neutral site to continue the interview. His on-the-spot solution? Arrest Michaela to stop her from leaving the precinct. He handcuffs her and takes her to a cell while anyone and everyone, including Michaela herself, are screaming foul at him. Jared does not mince his words as he shoves Michaela into the cell: “you have to keep your mouth shut. I just saved your life.”

Now, let’s return to the Stone household!

According to his journal, Al-Zuras and his people arrive a decade later on a boat to their destination, although it appears as if no time had passed for them: “each of us was as young as when we left” (like the 828 passengers when they reappeared in 2018). He adds, “Only now, we could hear the word of God” (surely a reference to the callings). However, they believe it (them) to be a curse: “for every blessing a price must be paid”; “for every good that comes from the Voice, a trial must follow.” TJ believes that if they can learn what Al-Zuras and his people did to cope with the death date centuries ago, it could guide them in their own quest to solve the death-date puzzle in the present.

In the meantime, everyone except Olive appears to have suddenly grown a short fuse, throwing temper tantrums, as the storm outside gains epic proportions. They are either mad at themselves (Cal, TJ), or scolding one another (Ben with TJ and Cal), or feeling sick or lethargic (Grace). It dawns on Olive at that point that the others have made references to thunder and lightning outside. In another well-guided revelation scene – and well-directed, capturing the visceral impact of the revelation on each character –, we find out through Olive (the only one not privy to callings and visions) that the weather is actually beautiful outside. She even has her phone’s weather app to prove it to everyone else in the room.

The rest of them are indeed in the middle of an extended calling!

Apart from the storm outside, it also feels to them as if the house is rocking back and forth! Ben recalls Captain Daly (remember the pilot of Flight 828? If not, a re-watch of first season’s “Contrails” is highly recommended) mentioning seeing electrical storms (reference to ‘dark lightning’) as he piloted Flight 828 on that fateful night. According to TJ, Al-Zuras also talks of electrical storms in his journal. Olive and TJ told Ben and Grace earlier that Al-Zuras often talks of a silver dragon and in his journal. Silver dragon, spider web, electrical storms, what does it all mean?

There is a remarkable crescendo effect through the next few minutes as the episode builds the mystery up with great success, using brief shots of everyone turning progressively edgy, visual effects to make it seem like the house is rocking back and forth, and zoom-ins on pertinent images in the Al-Zuras journal. It all culminates in the biggest revelation of the hour. Ben, Grace, TJ, and Cal find themselves on Al-Zuras’s boat in the 16^th century (presumably), with thunder and lightning in the skies, and Flight 828 flying above them!

Once the vision ends, they are back in the house, and it’s sunny and beautiful outside. Ben murmurs the same question that everyone in the audience is probably asking themselves: did Flight 828 and Al-Zuras’s boat cross each other at a certain location, at the same point in time?

Ben and TJ draw a parallel between how they were growing agitated earlier and how Al-Zuras described some his men going insane and others committing suicide in their efforts to cheat their death date. Al-Zuras says, “There is no way to get rid of the Voice. The only way to survive is to accept.” He also writes, “all other paths lead to disaster.” Ben suddenly realizes that Saanvi has been working hard to cheat the death rate and even found a way to stop the callings. However, if what Al-Zuras says in his journal has any grain of truth in it, she will either go insane or die. Among the many deranged faces of people going insane in a particular image in the Al-Zuras journal, Ben is terrified to notice the face of a woman who peculiarly resembles Saanvi!

Couple of last-minute thoughts:

– Editing nitpick: In the early conversation between TJ and Olive, when TJ jokes about the Al-Zuras journal and ‘google translate,’ he finishes his joke with “great” as Olive has her head turned toward him, looking straight into his eyes. Cut to the angle where we now face Olive, and her immediate response to TJ begins with, “Well, I do […],” except that she is looking forward, away from TJ.

– I noted above Manifest’s dexterity in nodding to events and characters from previous episodes, and “Airplane Bottles” has plenty of them. I mentioned a few of them in my review, hopefully I did not miss any other significant ones.

– TJ has apparently moved in with the Stones, at least temporarily.

Until the next episode…

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“Carry On” – Aired on March 2, 2020
Writer: Jeff Rake & Simran Baidwan
Director: Nicole Rubio
Grade: 5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Here is an hour of highly entertaining character-drama mixture that lays its foundation on an A story loyal to the larger “it’s all connected” ethos of Manifest, surrounds it with nuanced B and C stories, good balance between self-contained episodic stories and the overall arc, characters with initiatives, action with a purpose, and puts it all in motion through a script clicking as efficiently as a Swiss watch. Add to that robust combination Nicole Rubio’s dexterity with the camera (her directorial résumé is burgeoning over the last few years, Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago P.D), and you end up with Manifest’s best outing so far this season.

A minor surprise, Manifest breaks its season-long tradition of beginning an episode with a flashback. Instead, the hour kicks off with Ben having a nightmare about searching for TJ in the burning nightclub and waking up in a sweat before he can locate him (or did he? He was looking at something in horror before the nightmare ended).

At the site of the fire, Olive’s bracelet is found in the hand of one of the six dead bodies recovered, leading Michaela to conclude that it’s TJ, although the burnt corpse is unidentifiable at that moment.

Back at the precinct, our flinty Captain Bowers points to the “rogue” Xer Isaiah as the prime suspect during her briefing to the officers among which are Drea and Jared. As the two whisper back and forth, Drea is startled by how firmly Jared defends the Xers, claiming that the incident could not have been their doing. She is even further surprised by Michaela’s odd reaction when she tells her about it because Michaela, for her part, does not seem taken aback by the news. She confesses that she has lately been suspecting her ex-fiancé of leaking information to the Xers, especially since she found out about him surreptitiously copying her case files in “Emergency Exit.” Drea has heard enough, she is ready to tail Jared’s ass, and has zero interest in hearing Michaela’s ‘reluctant ex-fiancé/ex-partner’ rhetoric. She better follow her lead or else (gotta love Drea’s character growth in just a few episodes, despite the secondary nature of her role!).

Simon visits the Stone household in a gesture of goodwill – wink, smile, chuckle. On his way to the bathroom, he secretly takes pictures of a set of photos on the wall next to the bathroom. They show images of the peacock, tarot card, Zeke’s “missing” sign, the image of the man carrying a woman in the Al-Zuras journal, even some photos from Ben’s Agent-Mulder wall of investigation where he had people and names connected through strings. Correct me if I am wrong, or consider it nit-picking, but most of these photos were not on the wall next to the bathroom. Did Simon walk all around the house, including Ben’s investigative office in the basement?

Anyhoo, Michaela arrives at the house after Simon leaves and delivers the bad news about TJ to Olive in a heartbreaking scene that ends with the Stone family group hug (minus Cal).

Next, a large group of Xers (this many hotheads remaining anonymous is a hefty but tolerable stretch), including Jared and Billy, are listening to Simon’s speech that contains all the tropes of an underground-conspiracy group’s rhetoric with quotes such as “185 walking time bombs” to portray the Flight 828 survivors, and scare-tactic questions like “which one of them will be next to detonate?” Once the meeting adjourned, Simon privately asks Jared to keep sleazy Billy in check (no shit Sherlock, someone needs to!).

In what constitutes the C story of the hour, I presume, Zeke visits Saanvi at the hospital. His condition is worsening, fingers suffering from frostbite. Saanvi informs him of her experience with the retroviral serum, how it eliminated the DNA anomaly in her body, and how she no longer experiences callings. Zeke is ready to try it himself despite Saanvi’s warning about her lack of data with regard to its possible side effects (stay tuned on this detail).

At the Stone household, Ben is staring at the image of the man carrying the woman away from the fire in the Al-Zuras journal, reminiscent of him carrying Olive to safety at the club. When he touches the image, an ancient-sounding chant begins to ring in his ears. Apparently, he is the only one experiencing this particular calling and he takes it as an indication that he and Olive are supposed to do something together, except that his guilt-ridden daughter is not interested. She blames herself for TJ’s death because she asked him to accompany her to the night club. She even refuses to go with Ben to the memorial site set up outside the club to pay their last respects to the deceased.

At the memorial site, Ben hears the chant again and follows it to a Zen meditation center located not so far away. Once inside, the chant rings louder in his ears. When Ben returns home and describes his experience, Olive’s curiosity is piqued because TJ’s mother was a Buddhist, and her bracelet that TJ offered to Olive as a gift at the club carries a Buddhist symbol. Furthermore, he apparently performed some type of Buddhist ceremony to bring spiritual closure to the loss of his mother. It’s music to Ben’s ears when Olive agrees this time to accompany her father back to the Zen center (one of the episode’s substrates centers on Ben’s anguish about his failure to connect with his daughter).

In the precinct-related B story, Drea and Michaela follow Jared to the bar where he met his new girlfriend Tamara and began rubbing shoulders with Billy and the Xers. Once he leaves (not without kissing Tamara first, under Michaela’s watchful eye), Drea decides to visit the bar to get the scoop, so to speak. She meets Tamara and challenges sleazy Billy to a pool game. She obviously trounces him because we next see Michaela taking pictures of her pool-table-queen partner collecting money from Billy outside the bar. Mission accomplished, and we like Drea all the more for it.

They run sleazy Billy’s picture through the NYPD data base and discover a long list of arrest reports for him and one of his Xer bruvs. Michaela calls Judge Trilling who presided over Zeke’s case back in “Grounded” and “False Horizon” and obtains a wiretap warrant. The goal is to record conversations at the bar for evidence and Michaela’s plan is to simply enter the bar and have a tête-à-tête with Tamara while placing the micro under the bar. It’s hostile confrontation, as expected, that ends with Michaela warning Tamara that the NYPD is onto Jared and her brother, and that she can either get busted with them or help Jared get out of this mess. Micro under the bar, Tamara rendered anxious, mission accomplished.

Side note: nice touch by the writers to keep the viewers in the dark about the subject of Michaela’s call to Judge Trilling at first and reveal it only at the end of the scene between her and Tamara by focusing the camera on the microphone under the bar. Had we known Michaela’s plan to wiretap before she even entered the bar, her warning to Tamara may have come across to some viewers as practiced police work and cast doubt on her show of genuine concern for Jared.

In the meantime, Saanvi catches up with Alex by the river downtown and kisses her passionately. What appears to be an out-of-nowhere scene at that moment gains a deeper meaning at the end of the episode when Alex visits Saanvi’s lab to tell her, “we can never do that again.” A confused Saanvi asks her ex-lover what she is talking about. The big revelation here – and it is a significant one – is that Saanvi has no recollection of not only that kiss, but of anything else that took place in the morning.

Back to the A story, where Ben and Olive arrive at the Zen center. This time, Ben hears no chanting and the two of them take the opportunity to pay respects to TJ through a ritual of some sort. The wonderful sequence begins with Olive first paying tribute to her boyfriend. As tears flow down her cheeks (Luna Blaise does more five-star acting here than many stars do in a full episode), she talks about her memories of TJ, including the first time they met at the airport in Jamaica, as shown in “Black Box.” Ben, for his part, mentions the support TJ provided to him when he was in dire need of some during his talk to the students while going through the hiring process at the university – seen in “False Horizon.” Brief flashbacks with TJ, pertaining to those memories and others, appear on screen as Ben and Olive let their emotions out in this beautiful scene. The score adequately serves to amplify the mood and the apt camera work of Rubio’s apt camera work foregrounds the visceral aspects of the father-duo’s emotional make-up.

As they are getting ready to leave the Zen center, Ben hears the chant again. It directs them to a stairway down to the underground level. After forcing a large door open, they discover an underground passage that was used, Ben speculates, as an old coal transport tunnel. The more they advance, the louder the chant gets in Ben’s head. They notice ashes in the tunnel, leading them to believe that they must be situated under the club.

Eventually, they have to crawl through a small tunnel where the chanting sound abruptly stops and they hear TJ’s feeble call for help. Olive and Ben are ecstatic to find TJ alive, albeit heavily injured. After he is brought to the hospital, Dr. Soltani (Sejal Shah) confirms that the young man would not have survived another few hours due to his broken ribs, punctured lung, internal bleeding, and extreme dehydration (that is a boatload of serious injuries, I am wondering how long his recovery will take). The burnt corpse found earlier, holding Olive’s bracelet, was apparently Isaiah because according to TJ, the nutcase ripped it away from him during their scuffle. The more intriguing part of TJ’s story is the fact after he got away from Isaiah, a chant led him to that underground spot where they found him. The calling essentially saved his life. Twice! “Carry On” gets my vote for the episode most deserving of the hashtag #ItsAllConnected.

The B story with Michaela and Drea also concludes with the two of them bringing their gathered evidence to Captain Bowers – recordings, pictures, Billy and others’ connections to Xers, evidence of Jared leaking information to them. Bowers cannot write any of this off as inadmissible because it was obtained via the warrant issued by Judge Trilling. She will simply “take it from here.” Later, she makes Jared listen to the recordings and says, “We’ve got a problem,” as both of them look deeply stressed.

This hints at the possibility that Jared may be working as an infiltrator with the Captain’s knowledge, but unknown to all others in the NYPD. If this is the route in which the writers are engaged, they have a very high bar to clear in order for it to feel justified. For starters, why would Jared defend the Xers to Drea and raise suspicion if he wanted to keep it a secret? I am speculating of course, but the writing room may have painted itself into a corner to make that revelation narratively satisfying, considering that it would ask viewers to excuse (read: ignore) Jared’s loutish behavior for several episodes now, a period of time that includes Xers avoiding capture by the NYPD operation led by Michaela on their hangout place back in “Coordinated Flight,” thanks to Jared alerting Billy. Imagine how much reckoning Bowers and Jared would have to do if, for example, the Xers went on to cause harm to – or kill – someone since then.

The final scene of the hour shows Zeke opening up to Michaela about his worsening condition, and reassuring her that he will fight his death date tooth and nail. The two lovers lean their heads against one another in a true display of love and unity as the curtain closes down on the outing. It’s a touching scene, and astonishingly (insert sarcasm), not a cliffhanger. Yes, an episode can indeed end perfectly without feeling the need to jar viewers with the cliché of an 11th-hour shocker (yes, I’m looking at you, dear modern-day TV show writers and viewers with nerve endings addicted to the whaaat effect instead of substance).

Last-minute thoughts:

– When Zeke first visits to Saanvi at the hospital in the beginning of the episode, he finds her in a daze, with an empty stare. He calls her name a few times before she is startled and ready to respond. This makes sense later in the episode when we find out about Saanvi missing-memory problem. Side effects of the serum are about to take center stage, it seems.

– The episode is sprinkled with a number of meaningful dialogues related to the characters’ future and their feelings toward one another. Zeke and Saanvi at the hospital about losing their loved ones, Grace and Ben about his approach to Olive, Tamara and Michaela at the bar, Olive recapturing her love for her father at the Zen center, are all conversations consisting of gimmick-free substance and driven by genuine incentives.

– Sleazy Billy is so far written as one-dimensional as sleazy characters get. The actor Carl Lundstedt is doing his best with what the script gives him, but even a speck of character layer would come in handy here.

– So, did Saanvi just kiss Alex by the river and leave without saying anything? The later conversation between the two seems to imply that they did not talk after the kiss.

– Ben probably breaks some type of record for the number of otiose (albeit, well-intentioned) quotes said by a father to a daughter in a single episode. Seconds after Olive learns of TJ’s death and breaks down crying, he says “it’s ok” twice (yeah, I cannot stand hearing someone say “it’s ok” when absolutely nothing is okay at that moment, battle me if you will). When he and Olive find the staircase to the underground at the Zen center, he tells her to “stay here” (good luck with that). When they are crawling in the tunnel and the chant gets louder, he asks her, “do you want to go back?” Olive’s response is very fitting: “Hell no!” 

Until the next episode…

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“Emergency Exit” – Aired on February 17, 2020
Writer: Jeannine Renshaw & Ezra W. Nachman
Director: Jean de Segonzac
Grade: 4.5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

On the one hand, there is nothing particularly compelling about the untangling of the self-contained mystery in “Emergency Exit.” It follows the classic A and B story pattern and one might even argue that some of the early developments are either predictable (did anyone doubt that Isaiah had a role in the mayhem?), or near-rehashes of previously seen structure or material (another episode starting with a flashback, Olive and her parents reprising their shouting match à-la “Coordinated Flight” over the same overarching nodus).

The execution, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Once the set-up framework is established in the first twenty minutes, the emphasis shifts to a single location and a series of high-stake action scenes holds viewers captive until the end of the hour via apt camera work, editing, and score. The ride is engrossing and the events taking place leave the viewers with an immutable impression long after the hour is over. If you wanted to build a case on behalf the slogan “execution is everything,” this episode is part of your exhibit one.

The brief flashback at the beginning shows TJ saying goodbye to his mother before leaving for Jamaica. Back in the present, Michaela is questioning Zeke about the pills in his razor that she found at the end of last week’s “Return Trip.” Zeke is upset with Michaela for believing Courtney and doubting him. The fact that Michaela set a trap for him by replacing the razors only adds salt to the wound (although I do not quite understand how Michaela asking Zeke for a razor fits into this so-called trap. What was that supposed to accomplish?).

The Stone household, for its part, is in dire need of love and harmony. Cal is mad because his parents will not allow him to go to Coney Island for a friend’s birthday party. Olive is grounded because she skipped school without telling her parents. Her explanation is that she was helping out with the soup kitchen at Adrian’s church, probably the last place Ben and Grace wanted her to be at this point. As they are trying to wrap their heads around that, Olive delivers a bigger 1-2 shock-punch when she bluntly states that she quit school and that she intends to help Adrian with the Church’s outreach program. And just so they know, she is old enough to get emancipated. Take that, mom and dad!

The end result? You guessed it. The second edition of Olive vs. parents takes place, and it is as antagonistic as the one in “Coordinated Flight,” containing an equally riveting performance by Luna Blaise. I mean, does she have the wayward-teen rhetoric down or what? Ben storms out, pissed off at Adrian, but not before Olive storms out, pissed off at anyone and everyone.

Ben catches up with Adrian and warns him about the calling he had with the crashed plane and the dead bodies inside. Adrian plays along, acting as if he were not there in that vision (how did they not see him, don’t ask), and almost comes across as if he is trying to provoke Ben. Has Ben been checked for post-traumatic distress? Why is Ben choosing to live in fear instead of choosing to live in the miracle like Adrian and his followers? Hmmm? Anyway, the conversation marks Ben’s second failed attempt at talking sense into someone within a five-minute period.

At the center of the B story is Saanvi’s continuing efforts to solve the retrovirus problem. Her dad is visiting and he advises Saanvi to contact her immunologist friend for help with her serum trials. The said immunologist friend is Saanvi’s ex-married-lover Alex (Sydney Morton) who stood her up on the way to Jamaica (shown in a flashback in “False Horizon“).

Saanvi follows her dad’s advice and the two ex-lovers meet in an uncomfortable face-to-face. Alex tries, and fails badly, to explain away her no-show, which amounts to her getting cold feet at the last second because she feared destroying her family for “a fling in Jamaica.” As if labeling their relationship a fling were not clumsy enough, she next attempts to place some of the blame on Saanvi for being “all about work,” implying that she would have never considered Alex a priority (which, let’s be honest, fits Saanvi’s profile). Having heard enough, Saanvi switches to her professional posture and turns to the topic at hand, which is to solve the retrovirus issue. Alex is willing to help.

TJ’s research Al-Zuras bears fruit. He located the 16^th-century scholar’s journal at Yale University’s library, except that it must be requested by a current faculty member from an approved institution, like Ben.

Later, TJ flat out tells Olive that he agrees with her dad about Adrian being “full of it.” Olive dejectedly asks if he does not believe in the miracle, to which he replies, “I’m not an angel or some God. I came back the same person I left, except I did not have a mom anymore. Or friends or a home, for that matter.” It’s now his turn to ask Olive, “Tell me, how is that a miracle?” We cut away from the scene before Olive can provide an answer and she sure looked like she could use the time to look for one.

At the precinct, Michaela gets a call from Isaiah claiming to have some more information about the Xer attack on church, except that he needs her to come to him. As Michaela is leaving to meet him, Jared promises something to sleazy Billy on the phone and tries to login to Michaela’s computer, but to no avail.

In what can probably be referred to as the final scene of the set-up portion, Zeke finds his razor in his bag, with pills still in it. At that moment, he has a vision, along with Grace and Cal at their home, in which all three end up at some dark place with music playing. Someone is throwing gasoline on the floor to start a fire. Cal repeats, “save the passengers.”

Once again, nothing groundbreaking has taken place so far, but the course has been impeccably laid out for an entertaining race to the finish line. The main characters are, or will soon be, on their way to the night club. Set-up complete! Mission accomplished!

Olive and TJ are the first to arrive at the club and join Maxine at some back hall. Michaela shows up next to meet Isaiah who is working as the bartender in the main area. He asks her to wait, offering a glass of champagne, which she refuses only because she is on duty. Little does Michaela know at the time how crucial that “no” was to her survival.

Ben arrives next, expecting to meet Adrian. They texted each other earlier in the day, or so Ben believes, and decided to reconcile their differences over a drink. Except that Adrian, who also just arrived, insists that he never texted Ben. He was not even planning to be there until an hour ago when Isaiah asked for his help to fill the place due to some promotion taking place at the club. They begin to notice other Flight 828 passengers at the establishment such as Finn who was dead in the vision of the crashed plane. He tells Ben that some investor reached out to him for a meeting at the club.

It’s obvious to our heroes by this time that Flight 828 passengers have been tricked into gathering at the club for some sordid reason. Soon enough, it also becomes clear that Isaiah must play a role in this scheme, especially when Adrian, who thought he had misplaced his phone, begins to realize that Isaiah may have taken his phone.

This progression of events at the nightclub is presented through the use of brief shots, moving cameras, and up-close angles, each conveying with meticulous exactitude the sense of confusion invading one character after another. It also helps that sensible dosages of side stories are interjected here and there, allowing the chaotic narrative at the night club time to breathe, thus eliminating the chances of viewers experiencing sensory overload.

One of those side stories involves Jared and Conor (Jonathan Marballi), the tech guy at the precinct. Jared interrupts Conor’s online betting session to ask for some of Michaela’s files. Conor first cites department rules to refuse the detective’s request but quickly changes his mind when Jared threatens to expose his online-betting habits. Jared then texts sleazy Billy, “got what you need,” right before a very agitated Grace phones him, asking where Michaela is. She informs him of her ghastly vision with Zeke and Cal. Jared has heard enough. He is on his way to pick her and Cal up and find Michaela.

Saanvi, for her part, experiments on herself (again) with the tweaked formula of the serum. Her arm turns red and she collapses on the floor. She has a bizarre vision in which she revisits previous callings and events in reverse order, dating all the way back to the plane’s explosion that ended “Pilot.”

Deep breath. Back to the club!

Champagne glasses making the rounds trigger another vision for Michaela. She finds herself back at the crashed plane with Ben and Adrian where she spots a broken bottle of champagne with the same label. At the same time, it dawns on Ben that Adrian knew about the previous crashed-plane vision and did not tell anyone (how he went unnoticed in that vision is still beyond me). He chastises Adrian for having lied about it but its too late. Some passengers, already poisoned from the champagne, begin to faint and collapse around them. To make matters worse, Isaiah is already busy starting a fire in some back corridor as exit doors to the establishment get shut and locked – someone please explain how that happened, I am all ears. What did I miss? Who shut them? How did they get shut exactly as people began to head to the doors? Were secret forces collaborating with Isaiah?

Isaiah locks the door to the back hall where Olive, TJ, and Maxine are dancing the night away. Luckily, TJ had just left for the bathroom and noticed the mayhem in the main area. He rushes back to alert others but finds the door locked. Ben joins him and they force the door open. As everyone is attempting to run to the nearest exit, Isaiah grabs Olive, holding a knife to her throat. The numbskull believes that they will “transcend death” and miraculously survive the fire. “We’ll step into the light together,” he adds. TJ tackles him and frees Olive. He shouts at Ben to take Olive and leave as he tussles with Isaiah, with fire surrounding them. While Ben is carrying Olive and looking for a way out, a bright light shines his way prompting him to follow its path.

Zeke arrives at the location with Cal, Grace, and Jared, and immediately runs in to help. He finds Michaela helplessly staring at Bethany (remember her?) whose leg is stuck under a burning beam. No sweat for our hero Zeke who lifts the burning beam à-la Dr. Banner in The Incredible Hulk‘s pilot movie (1977). Jared appears and guides them outside to safety.

Having carried Olive outside, Ben is ready to go back in to save TJ but it’s too late. The building explodes, killing everyone still remaining inside (logical conclusion, which may not mean much in a sci-fi show filled with twists and shockers). Adrian looks unequivocally devastated and Jared Grimes offers one of the best (silent-)acting moments of the series. Adrian’s expression of despondency is worth a thousand words as he comes to the realization that his grandiose plans for his Church have just come to screeching halt.

Thus ends one of Manifest’s most ambitious – and audacious – action sequences to date. It acts as a denouement to the episode’s self-contained story of the mass-murder attempt by Isaiah, while creating ripple effects likely to travel well into future.

Saanvi wakes up back at the lab and immediately checks her DNA. No anomalies found, Alex’s modifications worked! This explains not only the reverse order of events in her vision as she collapsed on the floor earlier, but also why she did not get a calling about the nightclub fire (Michaela, unaware of her latest experiment, is surprised to learn that Saanvi did not get a calling when the two briefly talk at the hospital).

Once Michaela is back at the precinct, she runs into Conor the tech guy who was about to leave her files on her desk. She is surprised to find out that Jared asked Conor to print her case files. Her curiosity is further piqued when Conor tells her that Jared gave her promotion as the reason for which he needed access to her files. Conor may have just ruined, albeit unintentionally, Det. Vasquez’s chances to build on the few brownie points he had just earned for helping Michaela at the nightclub.

Saanvi checks Zeke’s hands and discovers frostbite on his fingers, similar to when he was in the cave during the time he was missing. That explains why his hands did not burn when he lifted the beam, but it also means that his death date could be approaching. He appears to be slowly freezing to death, in the same way that Griffin drowned on land when his borrowed time came to an end back in the season 1 finale.

Ben learns from Olive that TJ located Al-Zuras’s journal and had it sent to his office. The journal contains an image of a man carrying a woman with flames surrounding them, reminiscent of him carrying Olive to safety at the night club. The last shot of the episode consists of a bright light, similar to the one that guided Ben at the night club, emanating from the book and brightening up his office.

Last-minute thoughts:

– TJ and Olive share a happy moment in the photo booth at the night club when TJ tells her that meeting her and Ben feels like a miracle for him. He offers her his mom’s bracelet with a dharma wheel on it, signifying a circular life with no beginning or end. I wonder if that symbol will play any kind of a role in solving some ‘xyz’ puzzle along the way, in the same way that the peacock and the tarot card already have. In any case, it is a heartwarming scene between the two youngsters, one that was surely intended to amplify the emotional impact of TJ’s soon-to-come demise.

– The champagne bottles are labeled “Maison du revenir” which literally translates as “House of coming back (or comeback)” and does not make much sense in French. I am not even sure it’s worth mentioning. If you are reading this, it must have somehow made it to my review’s final draft.

– Good move by Jared to give up on the login attempt to Michaela’s computer after two tries. A third one would have probably led to some type of alarm signal or computer lockdown.

– There is a shot of Finn passed out on the floor as Ben leaves the burning club with Olive. Talk about a guy who can’t catch a break for his life (literally).

– Saanvi and Alex conclusively separate after a final hug following their successful collaboration in modifying the retroviral serum. If I were to guess, I’d say that this was Alex’s first and last appearance in this season, if not for the remainder of Manifest.

– I am not 100% certain but I believe this is the second appearance of Saanvi’s dad. If memory serves, he showed up briefly when Saanvi returned after missing for five and a half years (from his perspective) in “Pilot.”

Until the next episode…

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“Return Trip” – Aired on February 10, 2020
Writer: Laura Putney & Margaret Easley
Director: Mo Perkins
Grade: 2,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

There is no easy way to put this, so I will flatly state it from the beginning: “Return Trip” is a clunker. Clunkers seem inevitable, especially in the current arena of serialized storytelling on TV. They may come around frequently (in which case, the show is likely to have a short life span) or only make rare appearances (in the case of a high-quality series), but they are inevitable either way. Perfection is rarely sustainable, even among series considered to be the golden standard of primetime TV drama. Don’t kid yourself dear fans of Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, or The Americans. They have the occasional clunker too.

The introductory paragraph above may sound like an alert notice to Manifest‘s ‘fanboys/fangirls,’ and it is. You may not like reading this review, if you expect a celebration of the show and/or of its characters, although if you regularly read my reviews, you probably know that cheerleading without a valid reason is not in my pedigree anyway. That is not to say I don’t engage in any applauding – see many of my Manifest reviews for starters – because I do. When I review a high-quality episode, that is. Simply put, “Return Trip” is not one of those. I don’t enjoy saying this as a fan of the show but wearing my neutral reviewer hat, I must.

The problem does not lie in the pacing or the acting in “Return Trip,” but rather in the planning and execution of its A stories. As a result, most of the show’s beloved characters are portrayed in a bad light or downright devalued. In fact, unless you are a fan of Olive or TJ, or them as a unit, you are not likely to enjoy reading my thoughts below, but I can promise you that they are honest observations.

The hour kicks off with a flashback as usual and this one comes from when Zeke and Courtney were in love and using drugs. Their romantic morning consists of Zeke arriving home, waking Courtney up and feeding her two pills that he just collected from a drug dealer named Lucas (Anthony Ordonez). Apparently, that is all Courtney needed to bring up the topic of marriage. Cut to the present day, to an AA meeting where Courtney is confessing her sins to the group, with Zeke present, saying that the flashback we just saw was how they made the rash decision to get married, further confirming the bizarre news-shocker ending of “Coordinated Flight.”

Thankfully, this Zeke-Courtney-marriage madness, that was seemingly inserted just to create viewer anxiety over a week-long period of wait between episodes (because, nothing about it made sense, see my review of last week), quickly ends when Ben questions Michaela about letting Courtney stay at her place. As it turns out, Zeke and Courtney were never legally married because they never filed the paperwork due to being “as high as kites,” Michaela says. She tries to be understanding, claiming that Zeke was there for her so she should help him with Courtney’s situation, murmuring something about Courtney appearing to be nice. Ben ain’t swallowing the tale and Michaela knows it. So, she switches to honesty mode at once and admits to the whole situation being “awful.” “I just want her gone,” she adds. Melissa Roxburgh performs the mood-switching so well (with a touch of humor) that it almost makes you forget how frivolous the marriage sub-tale was.

Next is a gratuitous scene of Tamara giving Jared a haircut, bringing him a step closer in appearance to that which his character is transforming into, a skeevy prig – is the haircut meant to echo racist skinheads? J.R. Ramirez’s range is well showcased in Manifest, as he aptly represents both the amiable Jared from earlier in Season 1 and the thorny Jared of now. Yet, this is not even the most unpleasant scene for Jared in this episode. That award goes to the bar scene toward the end when he spits out a stream of invectives against Michaela in order to – get this – convince Tamara’s sleazy brother Billy that he can be trusted. Our poor, oh-so-downtrodden detective finishes his harangue with, “Michaela destroyed my life. My entire life.”

Olive and TJ are turned away by Adrian at the Church of the Believers, much to Isaiah’s chagrin, because Ben gave Adrian a clear warning (nod to last week’s closing scene) and Olive being a minor, Adrian must comply with her father’s demand.

Luckily for us, the viewers, this unexpected turn of event for the two youngsters gives way to the most alluring storyline of the episode by far, Olive and TJ’s investigation into tarot cards and mythology, enhanced by genuine moments of connection and romance between the two. It definitely helps that Luna Blaise and Garrett Wareing are up to the task and do a stellar job of conveying the budding romance between the two outcast-youngsters via authentic dialogue that never once forays into syrupy territory. So, please indulge my desire to stick with their story a bit longer.

Olive takes TJ to the park where she encountered the tarot reader who gave Olive the peacock card three years ago (portrayed in the flashback scene that began “Coordinated Flight”). Instead, they find another reader (Sarah Folkins) who gladly supplies them with the necessary information, in return for cash in her tip jar, on how to get hold of the deck of cards to which Olive’s card belongs. It apparently comes from an out-of-print one named the Al-Zuras deck.

Once Olive and TJ return home with the deck of cards purchased in its neat original box, they make some fascinating discoveries. The Al-Zuras deck of cards was invented by a 16^th-century Egyptian scholar and artist named Yusuv Al-Zuras. Thanks to a few clicks on “Infopendium,” Wikipedia’s fictional equivalent, TJ learns that Al-Zuras, according to legend, was lost at sea. Upon his mysterious return a decade later, he claimed he could “hear the voice of God in his head,” echoing the passengers’ ability to hear callings. Olive notes the possibility of a groundbreaking discovery here, that what is happening to Flight 828 passengers could date back centuries. She speculates that the calling led them to Al-Zuras who had possibly survived his own death date four centuries ago.

After being fascinated by the Al-Zuras story, TJ and Olive next focus on fascinating each other. A cute conversation ensues when Olive tries to distract TJ who is feeling overwhelmed by the possible consequences of his callings. She reads tarot cards to him, makes up stories, and most importantly, makes him smile again. TJ is fairly smooth himself as his disposition makes clear how much he appreciates her effort. I must reiterate that Blaise and Wareing knock these scenes off the ballpark like if they were all-star veterans of Hollywood.

Their story, the outing’s best by a long shot, ends with the two of them locking lips by the river, after TJ surprises Olive with a romantically lit path leading to a picnic spread by the water under the stars.   

Back at the Stone household, things are not going as smoothly as they are for Olive and TJ. Some reporter from New York Life magazine left a message on Grace’s phone, leaving her perturbed to say the least, requesting an interview with her about the first 828 baby about to be brought into the world. Grace does not want anyone to know about the baby and Ben’s attempts to calm her down get interrupted when he finds himself on Flight 828 in a vision, with Saanvi yelling for his help from further back in the plane before vanishing into thin air.

Interpreting the vision as Saanvi being in trouble, Ben and Michaela hurry to the hospital and find her passed out in her lab. She was experimenting on herself, trying to catch up with the Major who stole all her material from her secret-not-so-secret lab at home, back in “Black Box.”

While recovering at the hospital, Saanvi reveals to Ben that her plea for help in the vision was not for her but for a five-year-old boy sitting in 14C. He looked scared and had yellow circles in his eyes. The strange thing is, as Ben quickly points out, there were no children younger than Cal on the plane. Naturally, Ben knows anything and everything about the plane, including who sits in what seat (and probably when they got up for the bathroom, if they did number one or two, etc.), and informs Saanvi that an adult by the name of Finn Nowak (Rafi Silver) occupied that seat.

Finn does not have a family and when Ben pays him a visit, he says that he got on Flight 828 by chance, after missing his regularly scheduled flight earlier that day. He was in Jamaica for a bachelor party and met a woman named Orlena (Marcy Harriell) with whom he spent one night. She was gone the next morning but she must have taken him to paradise overnight because he was looking for her so hard the next day that he missed his flight. As Finn finishes his interesting account, Ben spots a picture of a child who looks like the one he and Saanvi saw in the vision. Finn says it’s a picture of him when he was five years old, which begs the question, why did Saanvi and Ben see the five-year-old Finn in their vision?

Unfortunately, this intriguing set-up for an A story loses steam from this point forward due to a few questionable liberties taken by the writing room, resulting in some uneven (“highly improbable” is also fitting) behavior by the main characters.

In one of the more ramrodded dialogues of the episode, one that begins with Saanvi not even knowing about Finn’s one-night stand, she and Ben deduce and learn in 28 seconds (1) that Finn must have left Orlena pregnant, (2) that Orlena must have therefore given birth 40 weeks after the one-night session in Jamaica, (3) that her baby must specifically be the one who appeared in their vision in his current age, (4) that the baby must therefore be in trouble, (5) the exact date and location of Orlena’s delivery, (6) that her last name is Prager, and (7) that the child’s name is Theo. Also included in those 28 seconds, for good measure, are Orlena’s full address and Saanvi quickly picking up her purse because, allez hop! They are already zooming over to Orlena’s house.

Now, we move into the territory of Ben and Saanvi sticking their noses into the affairs of people that they never met before, not to mention that they show up at Orlena’s doorstep as total strangers, giving creepy vibes by immediately letting her know that they have questions about her son Theo! Puzzled (which is a lot less severe of a reaction than mine would have been under those circumstances), Orlena asks why they want information on her son, to which Ben replies, “we’re not exactly sure,” and follows it up with, “do you remember Finn Novak?”

To turn such an outrageous move on the part of two main characters into a viable scene, some outrageous coincidence would have to be written in to stop Orlena from having the most common-sense reaction, most likely consisting of freaking out, telling Ben and Saanvi to get the hell away from her doorstep, shutting the door, and calling 911 about two creeps by her front door who are harassing her with questions about her son. Sure enough, the badly needed outrageous coincidence arrives when Orlena’s husband returns home with the three kids, including Theo (James Lynch), precisely at the same time as Ben and Saanvi are asking her about Finn. That interrupts Ban and Saanvi’s interrogation bordering on harassment and Orlena tells them to leave, adding some commentary about what a “good husband” he has, enough to indicate that he has no idea about Theo not being his biological son. Orlena didn’t just have a one-night stand; she had a one-night extra-marital escapade.

Ben and Saanvi are on a roll with their oddball moves though, and there is no stopping them. Next is their meeting with Finn during which they make one intellectually dishonest statement after another – I am trying hard to avoid using the term “hypocrites” here, only because it’s Ben and Saanvi.

Sitting inside Finn’s house, they basically give him the newsflash that the woman with whom he had a one-night stand was married and got pregnant that night, and is now running around with a son that Finn had no idea he had for the last five years. Absorb that first, dear Finn! I am going to leave aside the question of whether Ben and Saanvi even have the ethical blessing to reveal all this life-changing information to Finn or not (one that will undoubtedly have significant consequences for at least six people that Ben and Saanvi did not even know until a few hours ago), and move straight to the conversation.

After first hitting Finn with the news of his son that he knew nothing about, and knowing full well that the news would lead Finn to have the desire to see his son, Ben and Saanvi use the ubiquitous “oh-but” statement about how Theo’s current father is “very loving” and the family is very happy. I’m sorry Ben and Saanvi, you just slapped the guy with a colossal chunk of information, and now you are going to pretend “easing him” into the moral and ethical complications that his desire to see his son may bring as a consequence?

Second, when Finn asks if he could insist on visitation rights, Ben responds in the affirmative before, once again, bringing in the “oh-but” moral-warning clause about how Finn would be “risking blowing up a happy family.” Can I get a wut?

Wait, Ben is not even finished! When poor Finn finally asks Ben and Saanvi to help him at least see Theo one time, Ben’s response is, “Are you sure? Because as a father, I have to say, I think it would be harder to walk away than you think.”

Excuse me?!?! Heed the words of the mighty model-father-divine-citizen!

Let me recap how awful the whole scene makes Ben and Saanvi look. They waltzed into Finn’s house and took it upon themselves to ‘enlighten’ Finn with one big reveal after another, involving a son he did not know he had, and now that the poor guy reacts in the same way that most people would, they give him these oh-so-adult warnings amounting up to nothing more than “we’ll cite some ethical and moral family doctrine to you and rid ourselves of the responsibility, in case your reaction causes harm to anyone.” Lastly, let’s be honest, Ben and Saanvi are not even pursuing this matter because they care so deeply about Finn, Theo, or Orlena at the end of the day. They are doing so, primarily because they want to know Theo’s role in the vision, and hope to use that knowledge to advance their own cause, which is to save their own patooties from the upcoming death date.

I mentioned how an outrageous coincidence was needed to render the scene with them visiting Orlena viable. Well, to make this messy scene with Finn also viable, something outrageous is also needed, such as, oh I dunno, maybe portray Finn as one of the most magnanimous and mellow-natured guest characters ever seen in TV shows?

Lo and behold, Finn turns out to be just that!

He meets his son, wants to be involved in his life, treats Orlena with respect despite finding out that she had hidden a son from him for five years and planned to do so for life. Finn also saves Theo’s life by donating a liver to the boy. Earlier, Saanvi asked Orlena to take Theo to the hospital when she observed the boy having motor issues at the park and remembered the yellow circles in his eyes during the vision. Once there, he was diagnosed with liver disease. Hey, at least, some good comes out of Ben and Saanvi’s machinations. I am a fan of both otherwise, but do ends justify the means here? I think I made my position clear on that, others may well disagree.

Upon arriving home, Michaela finds her apartment in disarray and Courtney beaten up because Lucas and his men stopped by to collect the $20K drug money that she owes him. Either she begins working for Lucas or her days are numbered. Zeke had enough and wants to “take care” of this problem by confronting Lucas. Michaela gets another vision right then, seeing ashes snowing down, which then prompts her to help Zeke. She is going undercover with him, posing as his junkie friend Ella, in probably one of the most impulsive decisions of her career as a sworn law enforcement officer.

Their visit to Lucas’s house made me wonder at first why the drug dealer would even allow an unknown woman to accompany Zeke into his house, but then I realized, who am I kidding? Michaela must be present for that run-of-the-mill narrative to work. There is nevertheless one entertaining sequence when Lucas requires that Michaela injects herself with drugs. In order to get out of this unexpected quandary, Michaela and Zeke engage in an amusing, made-up-on-the-spot argument giving Michaela the occasion to land a potent slap on Zeke’s face. I chuckled at his expression, I must admit.

Let’s not dwell on why a “really scary” drug dealer, as Zeke refers to him earlier, would have only two bodyguards protecting him at his house during the meeting. Zeke and Michaela conveniently out-muscle Lucas and one bodyguard when Mick’s cover is blown, because Duncan (Sterling Jonatán Williams), the other bodyguard, ‘amazingly’ recognized her (you know, her being a cop and Flight-828 survivor and all). Duncan is then neutralized when Drea appears behind him with a gun. Don’t ask how she entered this “really scary” drug dealer’s house so easily.

In any case, Lucas is caught and will no longer bother Courtney. Speaking of Courtney, while Zeke and Michaela were busy saving her, she left Mick’s apartment for good, leaving a note behind saying that she decided to “move into the sober house.” Zeke tells Michaela, shortly before they lock lips, that he is perfectly happy to leave behind the Courtney chapter of his life.

Is he though? Is he really leaving it all behind?

I ask because Zeke exists in a TV show that draws breath in 2020, meaning that it must behave like its serialized contemporaries and not dare to bring down the curtain on the heels of a happy moment without an 11^th-hour whaaat moment. That requirement is fulfilled when Michaela finds two pills inside the barrel of Zeke’s razor, a method that he had used before to hide drugs, according to Courtney earlier in the episode.

If it only ended with that whaaat moment…

Michaela next notices ashes snowing down in the bathroom, just as Saanvi does at her lab when she is preparing to inject herself with the experimental serum, and Ben does at home sitting in his Agent-Mulder-like office at the basement. That paves the way for the ultimate whaaat moment where all three find themselves in the same vision, inside a crashed airplane, presumably Flight 828. Everyone is dead, except that only some of the passengers were on the actual flight (like Finn) while others appear to be unknowns. Michaela, Saanvi, and Ben are not the only three staring at the macabre scene either. Adrian is standing just outside, looking equally stupefied.

Whaaat?!?!  

Last-minute thoughts:

– Putting aside all else, I am glad the mythology/sci-fi portion of the show made a comeback this week. It is an integral part of Manifest‘s overall arc and good for the soul as far as this nerd is concerned.

– Ben is impressed by Olive and TJ’s discovery of the Al-Zuras connection. The ensuing dialogue between father and daughter appears to be the first step in mending their strained relationship since that powerful family-quarrel scene in “Coordinated Flight.”

– Ben is not impressed, however, with Grace changing her mind about the interview with the reporter from New York Life magazine. He is effectively dumbfounded to hear her advance the absurd theory involving them publicly claiming that it’s Danny baby, in the hopes that everyone will then leave them alone. I don’t even know where to start with that lunacy, and thankfully I may not have to, because Ben vehemently rejects the suggestion. I can only hope that Grace, along with the writing room, shelved the idea away for good.  

– Michaela asks Captain Bowers if she received any news of a leak from the internal affairs division, to which the Captain reacts negatively, as if one would expect anything else. She has scolded Michaela on every occasion for three episodes now, including on this exact issue, so I am not sure what that particular scene accomplished. Considering their earlier talks on the topic, why would Michaela expect the Captain to request anything at all from internal affairs? I thought she’d made it clear that she had zero intention of doing so.

– I loved watching Michaela take a strong stance with regard to Courtney’s intrusion into her private life, remaining cool-headed and not succumbing to petty jealousy. Nice decision also by the writers to put Michaela’s resolve on a pedestal. Surely, it took a lot for her to put aside the knowledge that Courtney appeared at her doorstep donned with two gigantic deceptions, first hiding the fact that she initially came there to hide from Lucas, second being that she presented herself as Zeke’s wife. Add to that Michaela’s place being trashed and the constant presence of an unstable woman likely to try her luck at seducing her old lover back while Michaela’s at work, it becomes clear that the good detective Stone took quite a leap of faith with the whole situation. It is precisely why her getting rewarded at the end is a rare victory in the name of positive portrayal of maturity in today’s drama-TV landscape where, for the sake of ratings and melodrama, storylines of this type bank on negativity via the use of vindictive jealousy and sappy tantrums. Having a scene specifically showing Courtney’s recognition of Michaela’s benevolence was the icing on the cake.

– Nitpick time: when Olive reads the top of the box of Al-Zuras cards, she says aloud “16^th-century Egyptian scholar and artist,” but the camera shows that the writing on the box actually reads “16^th-century Egyptian merchant and artist.”

– Orlena and Finn have a congenial moment at the hospital when she thanks him for his sacrifice and tells him that he deserves to be a part of Theo’s life. Will she think the same when the moment comes for her to come clean to her husband? Not sure, and I assume that we will never find out.

– Ben grabs the understatement of the year award when he tells Saanvi at the end that Finn is a “good guy.”

– I am surprised that Cal, one of the central figures of the opening season, has taken this much of a backseat so far in the second season. Ironically, the last time he was seen on screen was in the backseat of a car, in a token appearance two episodes ago.

– I must once again note how large the aisle is inside Flight 828. The largest I’ve ever seen, real or fictional, and I fly a lot!

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
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“Coordinated Flight” – aired on February 3, 2020
Writer: Matthew Lau & Martha Gené Camps
Director: Marisol Adler
Grade: 4,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Manifest continues to build on an entertaining second season with another well-balanced outing. The show’s success in fabricating a plethora of small and large-scale storylines that somehow remain connected for the most part is perhaps its most underrated asset. It allows, by extension, room for (1) throwbacks to scenes from earlier episodes without having them appear out of place, (2) nods to characters mentioned or seen in the past without deviating from the narrative at hand in the current episode, (3) and character growth, spread over several episodes, while keeping the viewer preoccupied with other worthy storylines.

Are there some clunky sequences along the way? Sure. Does one episode or another inevitably suffer from narrative overload at times due to frantic pacing? Every now and then, yes! Yet, keeping the stakes high in a serialized sci-fi/paranormal genre involves taking risks as long as they contribute to world-building and result in compelling stories. Manifest passes the test much more frequently than it fails because, in my opinion, planning and preparation appear to be notable priorities for showrunner Jeff Rake and others in the writing room.

“Coordinated Flight,” taken from this angle, is an episode that perfectly fits the Manifest lore, assuming it is acceptable to talk of a “lore” for a show that has yet to reach the middle portion of its second season.

It starts with yet another flashback – speaking of Manifest lore – with Grace and Olive at an amusement park, two years after Flight 828’s disappearance. Grace attempts to convince Olive that they need to move on with their lives, but Olive insists that Ben and Cal are not dead. They stop by a tarot reader (Johnnie Mae) at Olive’s insistence. The reader intuits that Olive lost someone who completed her and advises her to look to the future with hope as tears form in Olive’s eyes – Jenna Kurmemaj reprises her role as young Olive.

Flashback over, back to the present day where the Church of the Believers is being ransacked by Xers. Olive witnesses them beating churchgoers including Isaiah who first appeared in “Turbulence” as a suspect in the murder of Kelly.

We then cut to Agent-Investigator-Professor Stone’s office at the university where he informs TJ on the results of his research into the compass with the peacock engraving in the back – given to Michaela by Logan in last week’s “Black Box.” It turns out that the engraving was not part of its original design, meaning that someone added it later. The news of the attack on the Believers appears on TV as Ben hears the calling “Save her.”

Meanwhile, at the official Jared-Tamara (the bartender from “Black Box”) flirting headquarters (read: the bar), Tam’s brother Billy (Carl Lundstedt) and Jared are having an unfriendly exchange of words. Jared tells Tamara, “kids who fall into the wrong crowd tend to become bad kids,” in what is perhaps the most ironic sentence delivered by Jared this season so far, considering where he ends up by the end of the hour. Thankfully, these one-dimensional bar scenes in both last week’s and this week’s episodes remain extremely brief.

Grace is seen next, driving with Cal in the backseat and talking to Ben on the phone. A blue vehicle runs her off the road, causing an accident. The casual approach of the police officer taking Grace’s statement irks Ben who astonishingly arrived at the scene almost as fast as the first responder. Grace feels pain in her stomach, which stops Ben from unleashing any further on the officer, and they head to the hospital to have Grace and the baby checked.

The doctor first says “she” is doing fine, giving away the gender of the baby, unknown to Ben and Grace until then. No time to rejoice though, because upon a closer look at the ultrasound’s monitor, the doctor suddenly wants more tests done on the baby, leaving Ben and Grace worried. Now knowing that the baby is a girl, they deduce that the calling “Save her” must have referred to her. The doctor later informs them that the tests turned out nothing and that they can go home. Correct me if I am wrong here but it appears that the doctor’s ‘doubt’ period was merely a plot device to keep Ben and Grace preoccupied a bit longer, and thus, oblivious to Olive’s growing attachment to Adrian’s church.

At the precinct, much to the dismay of Michaela and Drea, Isaiah remains tight-lipped about the attack, claiming that he did not get a good look at the perpetrators’ faces. Michaela does not gain any ground when she confronts Adrian either. He is on board with the members’ desire to remain quiet in order to avoid further retribution.

Drea finds footage of a man appearing to be in a hurry to get in his car as three guys with baseball bats run by him near the Church. At first, she and Michaela believe him to be a passerby who may prove useful in identifying the attackers. His name is Walter (JD Williams) and he is brought in for questioning, except that his fidgety answers give away his active participation in the attack as an Xer himself, which he denies at first.

Seeing how emotionally distraught her mother is at the hospital following the accident, and hearing her father and TJ conclude that there is a coordinated set of assaults on 828 passengers orchestrated by the Xers, Olive decides to come clean to Michaela about witnessing the attack and being a member of the Believers. She identifies Walter from a line-up of suspects to confirm his participation, which gives Michaela and Drea leverage to pressure Walter into giving up the others in return for a deal.

Walter tells them about some “club” where they hang out and an NYPD team is rapidly assembled by Michaela to lead an operation on the establishment. Jared and Captain Bowers are present during Michaela’s briefing to the team at the precinct. Bowers is not on board with the plan at all, but lets it move forward nevertheless because she fears that it would look like retribution against Michaela “the whistleblower,” if she did not.

The Captain still gets her chance to scold Micheala when the operation bears no fruits because the Xers had abandoned the club before her team got there. Michaela is certain that somebody must have leaked the news of the operation to the Xers, but Bowers is not interested in entertaining yet another hunch from Michaela. Even the presence of a blue car, likely to be the one that ran Grace off the road, does not convince Bowers.

Episode writers seem to deliberately paint the Captain’s portrait as the mulish authority figure and it works frustratingly well here, because her injudicious opposition to Michaela blinds her to the possibility of a mole, portending sinister consequences for the precinct. Jared being that mole serves to further amplify the malaise originating from her lack of judgment on people surrounding her.

Jared’s reveal achieves its intended shock value because not only is he the mole, but the same scene also reveals that Tamara and Billy are Xers. Wait, there is more! Billy accompanies Jared to a plush limousine waiting outside the bar and opens the door. Sitting inside with a smile on his face, ready to chat with our (no longer) good detective is Simon, Ben’s so-called colleague at the university who played a major role in him getting hired back in “False Horizon.”

Is Jared’s spiral to oblivion complete now? It depends on your interpretation! Frankly speaking, his good-guy image had already begun to fade away back in Season 1. This episode brings it to a decisive end, and does so even before the Simon revelation as far as I am concerned. I am referring to the moment when he utters to Billy, “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” and toasts glasses with the dimwit!  

“Coordinated Flight” is confined for the most part to moving the pieces forward within the Stone family’s (including Michaela) immediate surroundings. It has almost no sci-fi content and it is devoid of Vance and Saanvi. Even the B storylines such as Jared’s downfall and Zeke’s efforts to make amends carry significant connections to Olive and Michaela.

Speaking of Zeke, following a beneficial session of soul-searching with the addiction-recovery group, he decides to set things right with people from his past . Except that it does not work out as well as he hoped. Far from it!

He meets with a blonde named Courtney (Danielle Burgess) at a café to apologize for having disappeared over a year ago. We learn quickly that they were lovers whose main past time comprised of getting high on drugs. Courtney is still using (she pops a pill in her mouth) and harbors ill-will toward Zeke. There is no indication at all that they are married during this meeting that ends with Courtney leaving even angrier than when she arrived, which adds to the bizarre nature of the twist coming later when she shows up at Michaela’s apartment.

She appears at the door as Michaela and Zeke were preparing to have dinner and introduces herself as “his wife” to Michaela. Zeke’s whaaat expression creates further ambiguity, as if he did not know himself that they were married. It comes across very strange at this point, I must say, that Zeke would make no mention of their married status during their talk at the café, let alone hide that fact from Michaela, especially considering that Courtney is alive and living in the same city. I am going to exercise my right to reserve judgment on this development until future episodes.

The most emotionally charged scene of “Coordinated Flight” takes place at the Stone household, led by a five-star performance by Luna Blaise as Olive. She decides to follow Michaela’s advice and bring her parents up to date on her ties to Adrian’s church. Needless to say, Ben and Grace do not react well, which in turn ignites fireworks because not only does Olive firmly stand her ground against the barrage of parental rebuke coming her way, but also dishes out some potent scolding of her own!

She rigorously defends Adrian and his teachings despite Ben and Grace explaining that Adrian is exploiting people finding themselves in difficult situations. She pushes back by saying that it is not Adrian’s fault if people are too narrow-minded to accept Flight 828 as a miracle. Ben and Grace insist that Adrian’s actions are reinforcing the public’s fear about the passengers being different than human beings, to which Olive exclaims “You ARE different!”

It is a powerful scene to watch and one on which it is extremely difficult to pass judgment. While it is clear that Ben and Grace make valid points, it is also their fault that this shouting match is taking place in the first place because they ignored Olive for so long, failing to notice how far under Adrian’s influence she had slipped. Although I did not agree with Olive as a viewer, I cannot deny that, once I put myself in her shoes, I found it hard to dismiss her arguments off-hand.

The resulting impasse of this family quarrel also functions as a prelude to Ben’s desperate attempt to stop Adrian in the closing seconds of the outing. “Coordinated Flight” depicts, with great efficiency I might add, Ben’s growing perception of Adrian as a bona fide threat. Once the said threat forms a direct connection to a member of his family, Ben’s doctrine of personal ethics goes haywire and short-circuits into the parameters of vigilantism, which is consistent with how he handled the Cody-the-jerkwad problem back in “Cleared for Approach.” Hence, while the curtain-closing scene of Ben accosting Adrian at the Church is supposed to come across as a ‘wow’ moment (and it does), it is a well-earned one to the astute viewer, thanks to the terrific build-up.

There are three Ben-Grace scenes in the hour and the most significant one takes place when Grace notices the peacock engraving on the compass in Ben’s Mulder-like investigation room in the basement. It triggers her memory back to that day with Olive at the amusement park, a nod to the flashback scene at the beginning. The tarot reader apparently gave Olive a card with the exact same image, stating that the star on it represented hope for her future. “We should look to the future with the possibility that everything will turn out well,” she added, the last part of which Olive repeats to her mother at the hospital, reminiscent of the “Tout est pour le mieux” quote that Pangloss incessantly repeats in Candide. I can only hope that Olive turns out right, unlike Pangloss did at every turn in Voltaire’s masterpiece.   

Last-minute thoughts:

– The rhetoric of Channel 12 anchor on Ben’s TV is cringe-inducing. He sounds more like a conspiracy theorist than a news anchor, spewing one-liner after another such as “two of these so-called passengers hi-jacked a plane” or “another one robbed a bank.” He is played by the real-life TV newscaster Kent Shocknek who is obviously skilled at doing drama. His acting résumé is impressive considering it’s strictly confined to playing the role of a TV personality.

– Oddly little screen time for Cal. We do not even know what kind of injury he sustained from the accident, if any at all. Where was he anyway during the family quarrel?

– A genuine conversation takes place between Zeke and the moderator of the addiction-recovery group. He is the one who advises Zeke to make amends with people that he hurt in the past. He adds that it is not about making them feel better, but rather about “taking stock of how far you’ve come and seeing yourself someone worthy of being loved.” 

– Jared is still employed at the precinct, which I found surprising. It is true that he is no longer getting high-profile cases, but is that all? I thought after the deeply damaging testimony of Michaela during Zeke’s trial, he should at least get suspended.

– “You did us a solid today” line by Billy is a good example of how a twist can effectively (and suddenly) be introduced by a brief statement from one of the on-screen characters.

– How on earth is the hang-out location of the Xers called a “club” is beyond me. A dump? Basement pigsty? Contaminated warehouse?

– I am curious to see where the increasingly miasmic tension between the Captain and Michaela is headed. I promise to be here for the drama!

– We see TJ holding Olive’s hand at the church. What is his endgame? Is he also buying into Adrian’s fairy tales or is he suffering through it just to please Olive? Or is he simply looking out for her? The jury is still out on whether the writing room can create a gripping storyline out of this particular duo’s synergy or not.

– Am I supposed to read something into the camera briefly zooming in on Isaiah’s face at the church toward the end, when he looks at Adrian leading the chant, “Blessed are the Believers”?

– Am I the only one who finds the score of the ending credits hauntingly beautiful? I watch the ending credits every week just to get my weekly fix of that music!

– Drea is to report on fingerprints to be collected from the blue car. I hope there will be a follow-up on this. I know, I worry about too many minor details, don’t remind me.

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook

“Black Box” – Aired on January 27, 2020
Writer: Simran Baidwan & Bobak Esfarjani
Director: Sherwin Shilati
Grade: 3,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

In what seems to gradually become a Manifest tradition, the opening scene brings us back to the pre-Flight-828 era. At the airport in Jamaica, the ten-and-a-half-year-old Olive briefly meets TJ at a bookstore and develops a quick ten-and-a-half-year-old crush on him (TJ even refers to her by her age). He recommends her to buy A Wrinkle in Time (1962, by Madeleine l’Engle) after which an announcement looking for volunteers to take another flight gets his attention. He thus signs up for Flight 828. What makes this opening scene interesting is our learning of the fact that, in the name of spending more time with TJ, Olive also got in line to fly on 828. Except that there is only one place left and TJ takes it, but not before he asks Olive and she refuses. You can also blame Adrian who happened to be in front of TJ in the line. Olive could have easily ended up on Flight 828 if it weren’t for her bad luck – or, shall I say “good luck.” Although not consequential, these are the types of details that add to the storytelling and raise interest in the characters.

Back to the present, where we find Olive at the Church of the Believers listening to Adrian’s purple-prose speech about believing “in the miracle of Flight 828.” Among his basket of casuistries is the claim that Flight 828 survivors will be walking among them “for decades to come.” Olive confronts him to warn him about making unsound professions and tells him about the death date, even providing the exact date, June 2, 2024. Adrian is unfazed and produces more one-liners, “fear begets fear, miracles beget miracles.” They “just have to believe,” according to the enlightened one. Jeff Rake an co. have done a commendable job of developing and marinating Adrian’s storyline and I can only hope that the pay-off, whenever it may arrive, will be worth the wait. In any case, Adrian’s case is Exhibit A in how you effectively engage in character growth over the long haul in serialized drama.

TJ enters Ben’s office at the university to inform him that he had another calling and asks if the wise professor knows anything about “a bird, a bug, a fish, and a tiger.” He shows him an image with the four animals from his vision, with the year 2012 written below. Olive walks in by coincidence – just one out an inordinate amount of so-called coincidences in this hour – and recognizes the image as being the logo of the Gramercy Club, a members-only, fancy-schmancy athletic club. TJ and Ben are heading there, though they have zero idea on what to look for.

Dispersed in-between these opening scenes revolving around TJ and Olive are, brief updates on Saanvi and Jared, and the launch of the A story with Michaela and Zeke. Unlike the last few episodes, there is a clear A story here, with others spawning out of it (or, neatly tying into it at the end). Let’s begin with Saanvi.

She apparently set up a private lab at her home, unbeknownst to anyone else, and conducts tests on mice, aiming to solve the mystery surrounding the death date. Later, we see her at Vance’s secret underground operation center where he props her up for the next therapy session with the Major, a.k.a. ‘therapist Ellen.’ The plan to use Saanvi as a double agent seems to work so far because surveillance cameras show the Major’s puppet Dr. Matthews pilfering placebo samples from her lab, unaware that they are fake.

Vance is nevertheless in pursuit of bigger fish to fry than Matthews and the Major, so he wants Saanvi to temporarily cease her 828 research to be on the safe side, at least until they gather enough evidence to shut down the Major. Little does he know that Saanvi is moving forward full-tilt with her research at home.

Following Vance’s advice, Saanvi feeds the Major some story in their next session (while munching on a red apple) about a geneticist in Sweden who made a breakthrough discovery and expresses her desire to contact them. The strategy appears to be successful at first because, later in the episode, Vance picks up some communication in which the Major mentions something about coming across a new piece of information.

Jared’s update is far less elaborate. He is sitting at a bar drinking away his sorrows, while the bartender (Leah Gibson) is openly flirting him and wanting him to ask her out. The scene’s sole purpose is to set up a slightly more meaningful one, but just as brief, that comes much later.

Michaela, for her part, is walking along the street when she hears the calling, “bring him back.” It leads her inside a bank where she spots Zeke who is there for the same reason. As they are trying to figure out why the calling took them to this particular bank, some dude pulls out a gun and yells at everyone to get down. Michaela can immediately tell that the guy is an amateur and warns Zeke that amateurs can be more “unpredictable” and “dangerous” than professionals.

Yet, it is Michaela who gets up and approaches him while his back is turned, and startles the already agitated dude named Logan (Alex Morf) with a “hey” from behind. The fidgety Logan swings around and points the gun to Michaela, and I am wondering what Mick is thinking. Did she not just tell Zeke to be careful with amateurs? It’s a wonder that Logan, in his ultra-agitated state of mind, did not pull the trigger and blow her head to pieces.

Logan makes it clear that he doesn’t want money. He simply needs the vault opened. Zeke jumps on him and manages to take his mask off in the scuffle but the amateur fends off the attack and regains control of the situation. Michaela recognizes the man from the passenger photos on Ben’s X-Files-ish wall at the house.

Michaela proceeds to a second inexplicable move on her part (hello, Michaela?) by telling him that she works for the NYPD! The guy is in panic-attack mode because he just heard the sirens approaching and screamed at the bank manager (Harlin Kearsley) for having pushed the alarm button. You would think that the last thing he needed to hear is that he is in the presence of an NYPD officer at the very second where he is waving a gun in his hand and having a conniption fit about the police arriving outside. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with an amateur, right?

As expected, Logan freaks out and yells, “you’re a cop?!?” before jerking the gun at her direction. He doesn’t pull the trigger though (even though it would have made sense given his frenzied mental state) because his actions are dictated by an episode script for a show called named Manifest in which Michaela is one of the main characters and cannot die in episode 4 of season two.

Logan tells Michaela and Zeke that he is repeatedly seeing visions of his own tombstone. He believes he can save himself if he follows his calling prompting him to get a specific safety deposit box opened, one belonging to his brother Frank (Ben Loving). The episode writers cleverly leave the viewers in the dark at this point about the details of the deposit box until it’s the right time to tie Ben and TJ’s story into Logan’s. Michaela first convinces Logan to release the hostages in return for getting the bank manager to open the vault. She also holds off the SWAT team outside, with support from Jared who has arrived at the scene. Once Jared learns the perpetrator’s identity, he phones Ben to ask him about Logan Strickland, because ‘Agent-Investigator’ Ben Stone is who you call when you want info about any Flight 828 passenger.

This is where the execution of this otherwise clever plot structure begins to get hampered by a couple of plot machinations.

Remember how Ben and TJ left for the Gramercy Club just based on TJ’s vision of four animals and the year 2012 written below them with zero idea of what or whom to look for? Well, no more than 30 seconds following their arrival to the club, they have it all figured out. They find a plaque with a photo of Logan and Frank Strickland, brothers who won the club championships in 2012. Ben must find Frank immediately because, you see, just a few seconds earlier he received a phone call from Jared about Logan Strickland holding Michaela hostage at the bank, and by coincidence TJ found the plaque and read the brothers’ names aloud with impeccable timing, just a few seconds after Jared’s phone call, but also right before Ben leaves the club in a hurry. Lo and behold, Frank also happens to be on site playing squash (surely the calling knew that he would be there, according to Ben).

This is when we get to the bottom of the mystery of the Strickland brothers and the reason behind Logan’s actions. Frank had rejected Logan once he returned five and a half years later because he did not believe that he could really be Logan. In other words, he could not wrap his head around the anomaly, so he resorted to mental gymnastics to justify that what he could not understand. The man posing as Logan is merely an impostor as far as Frank is concerned. So, as the family’s only heir, he locked Logan out of the family’s assets.

Logan’s hopes are further dashed when the bank manager cannot open the safety deposit box because, he needs both the bank’s key and the owner’s key to do so. Ah but, wait! Ben and TJ are talking to Frank at the Gramercy Club at the same time and guess what? Ben succeeds in convincing Frank to help his brother. The mention of the death date and its connection with the deposit box’s number, 6224, is enough to sway Frank’s mind, justifiably. Frank will also accompany him to the bank because, conveniently, he also happens to carry the key on his necklace!

They arrive at the bank just in time because the SWAT team leader was getting impatient with the standoff (a gratuitous subplot). It did not help either that Logan accidentally injured the bank manager via a ricochet bullet when he shot at the box in frustration (a gratuitous occurrence). Accompanied by two SWAT team members, Frank and Ben enter the vault.

Frank apologizes to Logan for not having believed in him and the two brothers reconcile. Logan gives up the gun and Michaela holds off the two SWAT guys so that the two brothers can open the box and see its contents.

I must admit that while I found Logan’s delivery of “It’s me Frank. It’s me. And I don’t want to die,” and the sentimentality manifested by the two brothers once they opened the box, to be effective tear jerkers (largely thanks to the guest stars’ performances), I could not get past the fact that, apart from Ben, Michaela, and Zeke who stare at the Stricklands like moviegoers, there are also two SWAT team members who had been on standby for an hour or more outside the bank, but are now in position to easily apprehend the suspect, and yet, just because Michaela asks them to “let them finish,” they hold back and join others in the VIP seats to watch the brothers’ reunion. Never mind also the question of allowing the brothers to open a box with no idea about its contents. It felt as if the demand for suspension of common sense was a little too high for my barometer; if it worked for others, I am happy for them. I did find it hilarious though, when Zeke whispered to Michaela at one point, “is this part of the magic cure-all?” as if to confirm the scene’s overall wackiness.

Nonetheless, the real star of the brothers’ tragic storyline is actor Alex Morf who poignantly portrays Logan, the passenger-victim-perpetrator-brother unable to come to terms with Frank’s betrayal while trying (and failing) to cope with the reality that his life may end unless he gets into the vault. Luckily, he finds a friendly ear in Michaela who understands his dilemma and senses that there is something more than just a bank heist taking place after recognizing him and learning that he is not after money. She becomes his trusted ally, so to speak, as the episode moves forward, and Melissa Roxburgh uses what the script gives her with great dexterity to convey that subtle dynamic, especially during the bank-lobby scenes.

Before Logan is taken to custody, he hands over to Michaela a compass that he retrieved from the deposit box. It was his grandfather’s and it saved his life by catching a bullet when American troops stormed Normandy during World War II. A peacock is engraved on its back, which triggers Ben’s memory of seeing the peacock moments after the explosion in “Dead Reckoning.” As far as Ben is concerned, the peacock on the compass, the safety deposit box’s number matching the death date, the calling bringing Frank to his brother, all represent signs of encouragement in solving the death-date conundrum. His eyes glow as he tells Michaela, “We’re gonna do this, Mick. I don’t know how, but we’re gonna crack it. Together.” Michaela appears to be far from matching her brother’s optimism as the two hug each other.

Michaela also thanks Jared for having her back during the ordeal but walks away with Zeke as the crestfallen detective watches them from behind in a scene that carries all the narrative and visual characteristics of a decisive separation. As if to further drive home that conclusion, Jared is later seen surprising the bartender from earlier outside the bar as she is locking up for the night. He asks, “How about we go not have that dinner?” and they begin walking with smiles on their faces.

Zeke and Michaela are at her apartment telling each other beautiful verses of cryptic love while Michaela cleans the wound on Zeke’s forehead. He is curious as to why she is always saving him; she poetically responds that a good heart is worth saving. Thankfully, the dialogue is over before it ventures into cheesy territory, and their lips lock. They are soon under the covers, taking a well-deserved and pleasure-filled break from the chaos invading their lives.

TJ accompanies Olive (speaking of romantic potential) to one of Adrian’s sessions at the Church of the Believers in an unconvincing and trite turn of events. TJ is looking at his computer in Ben’s office, alone, when Olive stops by. The two begin to talk and Olive rehashes Adrian’s talking points about approaching the miracle of 828 with hope instead of fear. TJ takes what she says at face value (despite her dismissive position of the views of her father whom TJ holds in high regard) and asks how one does that. Next thing you know, he is attending one of Adrian’s sessions at the Church of the Believers with Olive. Olive’s indoctrination was an example of a well-earned and developed narrative over a couple of episodes. I certainly hope we don’t already see TJ in the same boat as Olive the next time he appears on screen, which would be an example of the opposite case.

Finally, let’s catch up with Saanvi, shall we? As Dr. Matthews is stealing more vials from her lab, Troy happens to walk in, which can only lead to bad news for the poor guy. Matthews injects him with a needle from behind and Troy collapses down. His life’s last two significant memories consist of being relieved of his lab-assistant duties by the woman he most admired (will Saanvi regret that? What about Vance who had enough evidence to have Dr. Matthews arrested but deliberately held back?) and seeing the face of an impostor doctor as his life expired with a needle stuck to his neck. Side note: I am assuming that he is indeed dead (I did with Vance too, just for the record).

But we need something more catastrophic than Troy dying to end the episode, do we not? That is what the Major is for. Saanvi arrives home to find her private lab completely cleaned out. Her data, records, and even lab animals are gone!

The last scene shows Vance and his men raid the apartment from which they believed the Major operated. It’s also been cleaned out and everyone is gone. A single red apple is left in the living room, surely by the Major to taunt them. Vance accurately says, “We were David. She was Goliath,” but Saanvi has further bad news for him. She informs him of her secret lab and crushes his spirits with the news that everything has been stolen, “Vance, I think I figured out how to control the 828 anomaly, how to isolate it, eliminate it, and replicate it, and now the Major knows it all.”

Last-minute thoughts:

– In the beginning of the episode, Vance reminds Saanvi (who is apparently giving Ben the silent treatment after his betrayal of her trust in last week’s “False Horizon”) that “this isn’t junior high,” that she should get over it, and start talking to Ben “already.” Oui, #JeSuisVance!

– While I enjoy visual tricks as much as the next viewer, the ultra-slow-motion shots of people in the street coupled with close-ups of Michaela’s eye in the opening scene when she first hears the calling did not do much for me, not that they truly had a purpose to begin with in terms of plot advancement.

– TJ learns of the death date as Ben is desperately trying to convince Frank at the health club. I understand why he would run away after learning that he has a death date stamped on him. I also took it as he was upset with Ben, but maybe I was wrong, because why would he then end up at Ben’s office working on his computer? That is where Olive finds him alone and begins the conversation that leads her to taking him to Adrian’s church.

– Nice nod to A Wrinkle in Time quote from earlier to alert TJ to recognize Olive. I know hardly anyone cares about details like this, but I find them neat and worth mentioning (just like the part where Adrian appears in line during the opening flashback scene).

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
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“False Horizon” – Aired on January 20, 2020
Writer: Jeannine Renshaw & MW Cartozian Wilson
Director: Nathan Hope
Grade: 4,5 out of 5

Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers

Manifest delights the viewers with its second solid entry in a row, one that builds on the threads formed in the ‘crescendo’ episode “Grounded” and explores the substrates of various antagonists’ agendas. It disrupts some of the balances in the dynamics between Flight 828 survivors and those looking to understand, exploit, or control their nonpareil abilities. It’s a successful hour of TV because each storyline is given enough time to breath and absorb the additional layers added on the threads, allowing it to adequately advance from point A to B and even leave time for a glimpse of what is to come at point C (read: the next challenge for our protagonists).

The most glaring example of the process above is put on display in the storyline revolving around Saanvi and her therapist Ellen, a.k.a. the Major, a.k.a. General Major Kathryn Fitz, the latest addition to the list of names utilized by the fascinating villain aptly portrayed by Elizabeth Marvel. The malaise from watching Saanvi unknowingly interact with the enemy for three episodes culminates in a game-changing moment that results in that malaise being effaced. Nevertheless, it is also hinted that Saanvi and the Major are likely to continue interacting, although the dynamics between the two have now shifted to a new set of parameters.

We start with the two of them having a session during which Saanvi opens up about the day she was supposed to board the plane to Jamaica with her lover Alex. “Something died in me that day,” says Saanvi to describe the sinking feeling she had when Alex did not show up to board the plane. On an unrelated note, the scene ends on a surveillance-camera angle of the two, which comes a bit out of nowhere, because no further reference is made to the two being watched during their sessions. Is the Major recording her own sessions? Is someone else watching them? It’s a brief shot, but odd enough that it deserves an explanation. I don’t mind waiting for one, but one should eventually come.

Michaela continues her diligent pursuit of justice for Zeke and her task-du-jour is to find him a lawyer. Enter Teresa Yin (Czarina Mada), a public defender, who agrees to do so at the urging of Michaela. Her first move is to stop by the precinct to ask for Zeke’s arrest report, further unsettling Jared’s already tetchy state of mind (more on this below).

This sets off a chain of events that will have disastrous consequences for him, as opposed to merry ones for Michaela and Zeke. It plays as one of the two A stories of the episode – two A stories being a recurring pattern in Manifest outings – and relies heavily on its emotive foundation, while the other A story with Saanvi and the Major grazes on the analytical. Taken from this angle, building the former around two characters with big hearts in Michaela and Zeke (and the hapless Jared) while delegating the latter to your two brainy characters, is a decision that certainly makes sense.

Back to grouchy Jared… He scolds Michaela again – what’s new? – for not letting go of Zeke’s case. She asks him to clarify the report and say that the shooting was an accident. Jared not only refuses but also seems to threaten Michaela, “You keep pushing this, it’s not going to end well for you.” Unfortunately for him, it backfires when Michaela turns the tables on him by making clear that she is committed to saving Zeke at all costs and that he should “be prepared!”

She first has to track down Zeke who was apparently moved to an unknown location that will only appear in the system a few days later because, you see, the NYPD’s system somehow, mysteriously and astonishingly, needs that long to update itself. Can I get a wut? Shall I just fool myself into believing that no detective in the history of the NYPD ever needed to urgently speak to a prisoner who has recently been transferred, and thus the system taking a few days to update a prisoner’s new location has simply never come into question in this day and age? Oh-kay.

Fret not, however, because our hero Michaela is on it! Following a boatload of phone calls neatly shown in an accelerated montage scene, she finds his location. At that moment, she has the vision, again, of Zeke standing in the aisle of the plane with Cal sitting next to her. She extends her hand, but Zeke gets pushed back and blown out the hole in the back of the plane. In reality, Zeke was also having the same vision, but could not stay in it long enough to reach Michaela’s hands due to the drugs being injected in his veins by the doctors who noticed him shaking. Michaela eventually finds Zeke and instructs him to contact Teresa for legal representation before the guards come and kick her out.

Vance and Ben’s efforts have yielded no results in their investigation of the Major. Ben is all gung-ho about saving Saanvi from the mole, but Vance has a plan. He wants to use Saanvi as a bait to lead them to the Major and his plan involves feeding Saanvi “the ultimate soldier” – a fake passenger – that she can mention to the Major, which then would lead them to identify the mole. The problem here is that Saanvi, who is unaware of the fact that Ben has been collaborating with Vance or that Vance is even alive, must be left in the dark. And by God, for our Mr. Straight-as-a-die Ben Stone, the model citizen-father-agent, that indecorous plan is simply not acceptable! Vance, for his part, is not interested in Ben’s championing of virtues. “Set the trap,” he firmly tells Ben.

Ben obeys Vance at first, but gets veeery uncomfortable watching Saanvi turn all giddy about testing the DNA sequencer on this new passenger that he mentioned. Josh Dallas is pretty good in these scenes, distilling every droplet of morality from a character who redefines the boundaries of magnanimity. Ben is not going to be able to keep up the deception for long. You can see it coming from miles away.

The inevitable takes place later in the episode when he visits Saanvi in her lab. Before he arrives, Saanvi attempts to finish an email to Alex that she apparently began writing after he (or is it a ‘she’?) seemingly abandoned her. One of the sentences reads, “it was never my intention to break up a marriage.” Ok folks. I am fine with Saanvi the super-smart, beautiful, and awesomely nerdy scientist. I do not, however, wish to add “homewrecker” to her credentials. Don’t make me do it please. I shall resist!

Anyhow, that is when Ben visits her and this time he breaks down after about a minute. He spills out everything. I mean, everything! Yes, he fed her a fake passenger. Yes, he knew it was a fake one and did not tell her. Yes, others are in on the scheme. Yes, Vance is one of them, and in fact, he heads the operation. Yes, he is alive. Et cetera…

Saanvi is devastated by what she considers to be a betrayal of their mutual trust and tells him to leave, after which she furiously smashes her phone and throws it in the trash. The news of a mole has now made her suspicious to the point where she doubts anyone and everyone she comes across. This is portrayed in a well-filmed scene as Saanvi advances through the corridors of the hospital, in fear of being watched, with camera angles emphasizing her point-of-view as people walk by her. Poor Troy ends up as the ultimate victim of her increasing paranoia when she curtly tells him that his services as her lab assistant are no longer needed. Parveen Kaur is impressive in bringing Saanvi’s insecurity to the surface in “False Horizon” more than she has in any previous episode, except maybe in the aftermath of her trauma following Alice’s assault in “Upgrade.”

There are two side stories to complement the two main ones, and the writers wisely converge all of them in a clever and satisfactory way by the end of the outing. The first one gravitates around Ben’s quest to get hired at the university where his old friend Suzanne holds the Dean’s position. She kept her promise from “Grounded” (her first appearance) and got the hiring committee to consider Ben for a teaching position. He is to be evaluated during a special-guest lecture to the students on some aspect of mathematics – feel free to listen to the math-o-babble uttered for more details.

This is a nice nod to continuity as not only Suzanne makes her second appearance, but so does TJ, the young man that Ben helped in “Grounded.” As a matter of fact, he plays a crucial role when Ben’s lecture gets derailed, because the students in the packed auditorium are more interested in learning about the anomalies resulting from his experience as a Flight 828 passenger – “Is your IQ higher than it used to be?” – than in hearing his presentation. TJ rescues Ben by asking a question that references the flight but also relates to the topic of his presentation, allowing Ben to reestablish control of his lecture. TJ may have become the favorite recurring character of Manifest fans after that stunt. More on how this plotline converges with the others later.

The second side story pertinent to the others involves Grace getting a new calling, namely, “Open her eyes.” When she first hears it, she also spots a gargoyle on top of the car of a woman named Erika (Susan Pourfar) whom she just met at the yoga studio. Later at the house, Ben advises her to track Erika down and offer her help. This leads to a hackneyed scene designed to beat the drums on Olive’s role as the outcast in the family, as she watches her father, mother, and brother discuss Erika and work together on the computer to locate her while she watches them from a distance. Moreover, she gets quasi-ignored when she asks if she can be of any help.

In a later scene, again designed to foreground Olive’s lack of connection with her family members, she makes a passing comment to Grace and Michaela about how they should share their abilities with the world to make it a better place (or something like that). Grace and Michaela are unconcerned and brush her comment off with a half-laughter. If only they knew that Olive was absolutely not joking and that she is headed straight to the Church of the Believers again, volunteering this time to stand up and declare her acceptance of the miracle in front of the members of the cult.

Back to Grace and Cal who manage to track Erika down at a soccer field… The previously friendly Erika turns icy when she notices Cal with Grace, and leaves abruptly after a short conversation. As she is walking away, Grace notices another gargoyle perched on top of the field’s lights. The shift in Erika’s attitude reaches explosive levels when Grace runs into her a third time as she comes out of the yoga studio. Still thinking that her calling is related to Erika, Grace asks her if there is anything she can do to help. Erika’s hostility barometer skyrockets in a matter of seconds as she briskly tells Grace to stay away from her family and refers to Cal as an abomination. When Grace gets mad, Erika doubles down with, “I hope you lose that baby,” as she walks away!

Zeke’s court date has arrived and Teresa tells the judge that her client moves to withdraw his guilty plea. If you are an astute observer and you hear Teresa explain to the judge that the reason for the request to withdraw is the veracity of the investigation coming into question under new evidence, and couple that with Michaela’s “be prepared” imperative to Jared earlier, you know something disastrous is about to take place. Especially when you hear Teresa call Michaela to the witness stand! Yes, Michaela is about to basically throw Jared under the bus. Oh, how far have the betrothed fallen!

Michaela testifies that the shooting was an accident and talks about how “Detective Vasquez abused NYPD resources to lift and run Zeke’s prints” and “had him followed.” She sharply rejects the idea of staying quiet while an innocent man is unfairly convicted. It’s an emphatic and genuine defense of Zeke (well-milked by a fine performance by Melissa Roxburgh) and it ultimately works. Zeke’s charges are reduced and he can go free thanks to time served. Michaela is there, naturally, to pick up Zeke as he finally walks out of jail, a scene featuring a sans-smooch hug with strong enough romantic undertones to make any sentimental viewer smile from one ear to the other. Zeke tells her that nobody has ever done anything like this for him, “you didn’t just storm the castle, you burned it to the ground.”

Jared, by contrast, is definitely not having a jolly evening. He is drinking to his woes in a bar. Some skeevy dude makes a vile comment about how “828 wingnuts” should not be allowed to carry guns, and there goes the melancholic Jared telling the bartender to put Mr. Skeevy’s drink on his tab. I must admit that I did not expect him to sink this low, and it feels as if he has yet to hit the bottom. Jared’s spiraling down has been meticulously embroidered into the fabric of the second season’s narrative and I appreciate the writing room taking the slow-burn route to convey his transformation rather than using the one-episode info-dump method or some shocking twist.

We catch up with Saanvi during another session with her therapist “Ellen” the Major. This scene is shrewdly set up following a phone call from Saanvi who expresses an urgent need to talk to her following that fall-out with Ben, leading viewers to think that the forlorn Saanvi is about to fall to the hilt into the clutches of the Major. We should know better though, shouldn’t we? This is Saanvi, the genius-nerd with an atmospheric-level IQ.

Thus, we should not be surprised when we learn that she has already considered the possibility, hatched up a plan, calculated every step, and put into motion her own little scheme to uncover the identity of the mole. After telling Ellen how much these sessions have helped her – is that the epitome of “buttering up someone” to lower their defenses, or what? –, Saanvi delivers the big news to the Major. She has made a “key discovery.” It’s “huge.” It may even be “the key to discovering” what happened to them on that plane. Heck, she even tells the Major its location, “it’s in my fridge in the lab.” The hook is complete. The Major’s interest is piqued. Her eyes appear perky.

Saanvi’s mission is such a success that Vance, with his sly smile that is quickly becoming his trademark, cannot help himself but deliver the best line of the outing to Ben, “Oh, she is a much better spy than you, Stone.” Not only did Saanvi lift the Major’s mask, but her plan also outed Dr. Matthews when the surveillance cameras catch him looking into her fridge to retrieve the vial she mentioned to “Ellen.” Oh, and for good measure, Saanvi put a fake vial in the fridge that will occupy the Major’s team for weeks before they realize that she put them on the wrong trail. Her name is Bahl, Saanvi Bahl!

Vance pulls up the list of high-security clearance female officers working within the Department of Defense and Saanvi finds the Major among the photos. We finally have her real name: Major General Kathryn Fitz, a psychological warfare specialist with 30 years of black-ops background. It’s a key moment in the show, possibly a game-changer I reckon, because for the first time, our protagonists hold the initiative over the Major who is presumably unaware of them having discovered her identity. I am curious to see where this pendulum swing will lead and how it will be handled by the showrunners.

More good news ensue for Ben who has been offered a position at the university. One of the professors in the hiring committee named Simon White (Maury Ginsburg) welcomes him before walking to his car to leave with his wife, or so he says. Erika (!) is waiting for him in the driver’s seat, because no episode of modern TV can end without some teaser setting up a new question mark via the use of a big reveal. The reveal here being that Erika, with whom Grace clashed earlier, and Simon, the professor in the hiring committee, know about the Stones and have a secret agenda. The details of who they are and for whom they precisely work remain vague at this point, which is usually how episode-ending reveals work. As long as the pay-off is worth it, I am willing to wait.

Until the next episode…

PS1: You can find the links to all my episode reviews by clicking on “All Reviews” at the top.
PS2: Follow Durg on Twitter and Facebook