Manifest
“Reentry” (Episode 102)
October 1, 2018
In last week’s episode, we were introduced to some of the passengers on Montego Air Flight 828:
- Michaela Stone: officer whose fiancé married her best friend while she was missing, Ben’s sister
- Ben Stone: Michaela’s brother and father to Cal
- Cal Stone: Ben’s son, Leukemia patient – condition hasn’t changed in 5 years due to the flight, treatment from Saanvi’s research may cure him
- Saanvi Bahl: Doctor, working on cancer research, led the breakthrough on cancer treatment 5 years prior, right before the flight
The passengers of Flight 828 experienced a bit of turbulence on the flight and landed 5 years into the future. Ben and Michaela started hearing voices, which helped them solve a crime. Now, they are trying to make sense of these powers while trying to fit back into society. Catch the entire recap & review of the pilot here.
And now onto this week’s episode…SPOILERS AHEAD!
The episode begins with emergency crews putting out the fires on the plane. Radd (Curtiss Cook) is trying to explain to authorities that he needs to leave to get to his son, but they do not let him go. The authorities are questioning all the passengers and one of them says that he had an urge to see the plane. NSA Director Vance (Daryl Edwards) asks how 20 people had the same urge. They are all released with the condition of not speaking to anyone about the investigation. The Director Vance [Ed. Note: I found Director Vance’s name very confusing with NCIS’s Director Vance] says he wants eyes on all of them. As they are leaving, the media is surrounding them and Radd goes up to Ben to ask him for help with his son. Ben walks away from the media and Radd.
Ben returns home. Grace is still learning to be comfortable around him again, and Olive keeps brushing off his requests to hang out together. He starts to hear music playing and realizes it’s in his head. Olive asks her mom if she told Ben yet, and she says no, but she will soon.
“Mom, this isn’t cool. He deserves to know.”
Michaela goes to the precinct and sees Lourdes (Victoria Cartagena) there. She says a quick hello and goes to meet with her boss. He wants to get her back to work, but she needs to get a physical, firearms re-cert and a psych evaluation.
Ben begins to hear the eerie music again, outside on the street. The sound is coming from Radd, playing the violin. He believes the music brought them together for a reason. He begins to tell Ben that he left his 13 yr old son, Adio, with a neighbor when he went to Jamaica. When he came home, the boy was 18 and is now behind bars. Police say it was robbery, but Radd does not believe them. Since he is a resident alien whose visa has expired, he can’t get to see his son in prison.
“Can you imagine not being able to save your own son?”
At Michaela’s psych evaluation, the doctor asks about what happened five months before she got on the plane. While driving intoxicated, Michaela got into a car accident that killed her friend Evie. After the accident, there was an investigation and Michaela was exonerated. She was put on desk duty at work, because she didn’t want to drive. Her doctor tells her that she wants to see her again. As she is leaving, Ben calls to ask the favor for Radd.
“You don’t have to hide your emotions. I am on your side.”
At the prison, Radd visits Adio (Curtiss Cook Jr., the son of the actor playing Radd – fun Father-Son Combo!). The boy tells them that he got a job at a jewelry store and about a month ago, he was jumped in the back room. When he awoke, everything was gone. He didn’t do anything, but the cops think he was part of it.
As Grace and Cal are leaving treatment, a woman comes up to Cal and says, “He is risen. He is not here, he is risen.”
Ben and Radd go to see the jewelry store owner. The owner and his son are cleaning up. The son says that Adio gave them and fake ID and fake job references. Everything disappeared and there were no tripped wires. He was the only one there.
At home, Michaela asks Ben if he’s heard something again. He says not exactly, but he wants to get to the bottom of it. When Olive comes downstairs for dinner, Ben asks her if she wants to go for ice cream afterwards. She avoids his request again, because she has to study.
“Not everything is a puzzle that you have to solve.”
The next morning, Grace is on her cell phone with the person that has been texting her. Michaela overhears her conversation and tells her that it is none of her business, but she needs to figure it out before Ben does.
Ben is at a treatment with Cal and notices one of the passengers from the flight, Kelly (Julienne Hanzelka Kim), is on the news talking about her experience. Saanvi stops to talk to Ben and he asks her if she hears music. She tells him that she’s had similar experiences since they have been back. While in the waiting room, Cal started drawing a family portrait. Ben asked what the shadow figure was in the back and Cal said that he didn’t know.
At her next visit with the doctor, Michaela confesses that she misses her mom, Lourdes and Evie. The doctor tells her that she has accepted what’s happened, and that’s a good first step. She is recommending conditional reinstatement as long as Michaela continues to see her.
“You don’t just stop being in love with someone.”
When Cal wishes he had his old stuff, Olive asks Ben to go for a ride. She brings him to a storage facility, where she has been keeping everything her mother boxed up. She told him that she could feel Cal was still alive. Ben asked her whose locker this was and Olive replied that it was a friend of Mom’s. “Friend.” Ben starts to hear the music again and searches from where it is coming from. He sees the jewelry store owner’s son with all the stolen jewelry. The son blamed it on Adio, because he was “going nowhere.”
“I just want everything back the way it was”
Kelly is at home watching her interview and she gets shot…. End credits
Thoughts:
We got to meet new passengers in this episode and learn some more about the previous passengers we already met. It seems as though Michaela’s ability to hear voices is gone and now Ben is hearing music rather than voices. I was really impressed with Olive (Luna Blaise) in this episode. In her scenes, I often found myself asking, “Who is the adult and who is the child here?” When she told her mother that lying to her father isn’t fair to him, we got to see how much of an adult she is.
I was glad to see the store owner’s son get what he deserved. Blaming Adio, simply because he was “going nowhere,” was infuriating. Adio was working hard to support himself and it was nice to see him reunited with his father.
We did get some answers into the backstory of Michaela’s past in this episode. But more questions were brought to the series: who or what is the shadow figure, who exactly has risen, and what happened to the plane? [Ed. Note: As soon as I heard about the show’s premise, I was curious if there was going to be a religion theme – kind of what happened in The Leftovers. With tonight’s “he is risen” stuff, it made me think we are going to get something like a splinter religion angle … which I love.]
Episode Score: Overall, I give it a 4 out of 5 Casey’s. I hope they continue to answer questions and not leave the audience hanging with more and more questions piling up.