5 Episodes In: “Manifest” Family ties and government agencies affected by time paradoxes make for addictive drama

Okay, so it’s not exactly “5 Episodes”, it’s 9 episodes, the first half of the first season (the mid-season finale aired November 26, with new episodes returning January 7, 2019).

Speculative dramas have always been hit or miss with me. I couldn’t stand LOST, but I liked Journeyman, and I liked where Awake was going before it was cancelled, and the same goes for Reverie which also aired on NBC this past summer (and unfortunately, was also cancelled after one season).

Time travel, or introducing time paradoxes is always fun (see Timeless, also prematurely cancelled this year by NBC, and also The 4400), so the ads for Manifest this past summer caught my attention immediately. I had thought the focus would be on the time anomaly, but I’m excited that the narrative focuses more on the people affected, both those on the plane and those dealing with having lost their loved ones and the new shock of them returning without being affected by the five year gap.

Our story begins with a plane flight from Jamaica to New York City; or rather, two flights. One flight is overbooked, and an announcement is made to offer $400 per person who chooses to take a later flight back to New York, Flight 828.

On the way back, Flight 828 disappears, and is presumed lost… until it reappears and lands in New York a little over 5 years later. No one on the plane has any idea that they’ve been declared missing and presumed dead; for them, there is no time gap and not one of them has aged a day. The mystery surrounding where the plane and its passengers have been for 5 years, and why they have returned unscathed will drive our story, and the pieces of the puzzle slowly come together, leading to more pieces and a larger mystery each time.

Our main protagonists are the Stone Family — brother Ben (Josh Dallas) and sister Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh), and Ben’s son Cal (Jack Messina) were on Flight 828, while Ben & Michaela’s parents, Ben’s wife Grace (Athena Karkanis) and Cal’s twin sister Olive (Luna Blaise) were on the earlier flight that made it back to New York City on time.

The conflicts are between the family members believed lost and the ones who moved on believing their loved ones were gone. During the five year gap, Michaela’s boyfriend-fiancee Jared (J. R. Ramirez) has moved on, marrying her best friend Lourdes; Ben’s wife Grace has a growing relationship with Danny, a man she met at grief counseling; and Olive is dating Cal’s best friend Kevin. So many entanglements beyond the obvious temporal ones.

An additional twist is Cal’s illness, leukemia, and how his condition is connected to the research that another passenger, Dr. Saanvi Bahl (Parveen Kaur), had been doing, and how that research led to promising results for the possibility of a cure while she was missing. What had previously been a likely fatal condition for Cal now seems less so, and getting him to be a part of the research that might save his life is a major concern for his family and for Dr. Bahl.

What starts off as a straightforward drama about people picking up the pieces of interrupted lives, and dealing with new situations after realizing their loved ones have moved on and created new lives with new people turns into a mystery surrounding what changed in the returnees and an experience that some of the returnees describe as The Calling. The biggest sources of tension involve the Grace-Danny-Ben relationship and how that affects Ben and his quest to save Cal and rebuild the family he knew before he went missing, and the Michaela-Jared-Lourdes relationship and how Michaela loves both Jared and Lourdes but doesn’t want to interfere with what they have built together without her, believing she was dead.

At the center of those trying to decipher the mystery of where the plane’s been for five years and what threats those returned passengers might mean to national security and humanity in general are a team from the NSA, led by Deputy Director Robert Vance (Daryl Edwards), and his role as skeptical investigator poses a threat to Ben and Michaela and Cal, and what appear to be burgeoning manifestations of supernatural or paranormal gifts.

Paths cross time and again, with most of the returnees under NSA surveillance, and some are discovered to be missing again, thanks to an investigation Ben is doing to try to make some scientific sense of what’s going on with all of the people who were on Flight 828. The biggest reveal so far might be a connection with a well-known neuroscientist who was also on the plane, Fiona Clarke (Francesca Faridany), and Unified Dynamics Systems, a corporation that has begun funding research into her theories about mirror neurons, something that was controversial when she disappeared but is apparently of great interest/value to this company. Even more disturbing is that UDS is using Ben’s missing passengers to explore the viability of Fiona’s theories.

The connection Cal has with all of the returnees, the theories about mirror neurons, and which factions of the government may be working with or even supporting the off-the-books experiments with missing returnees points to unexplored or unexplained reasons for the disappearance of Flight 828, and I’m looking forward to finding out how that is explained (or what theories about it the passengers and the government come up with).

The mid-season finale brings almost all of the currently unveiled mysteries together, resulting in several more possible conspiracies, and a deeper implication of UDS’s interest in and actions around the returnees. Since Cal’s physical condition is now reflecting the torture and testing the captive returnees are experiencing, it increases Ben’s desperation to find these people and set them free to stop Cal’s pain. This and other clues lead to an explosive confrontation and series of revelations, but the operation’s success has a high price: the possible death of Vance, who’d become an invaluable ally on the inside, and Grace choosing Danny over Ben, forcing Ben to leave the house, but leave Cal at home with her.

So at mid-season we are left with a cliffhanger, where Ben and Michaela are homeless with resources and allies growing thin, and a new threat from within the passenger collective looming.

At first, I wasn’t sure about all of the characterizations, when I realized that the writing was effective, and doing a good job. There are characters I love, ones I empathize but not necessarily agree with, and ones I really want to punch in the throat. Michaela’s impatience in jumping at the first assumption she makes about the message a Calling tells her is exasperating, but understandable since she’s completely alone and doesn’t seem to know how to handle that except by throwing her entire being into her work and the Callings. Ben’s singular focus on Cal serves to distract him from the fact that Grace doesn’t seem to want to be with him anymore, but he didn’t want to accept or admit that to himself. Cal seems to be slowly adjusting to the fact that his twin sister and his best friend are 5 years older and dating each other, but he’s also dedicated to his father and their combined quest to uncover the truth. Danny seems nice enough, but Grace is trash. She is only concerned with her own feelings, and damn anyone who doesn’t enable or support her emotional tyranny.

That’s when I realized how subtle and effective a job the writers had done with this show, by layering Grace’s conflicts to lead us to initially sympathize with her predicament to flat out hating her emotional blackmail of Ben from one event to the next. Now at mid-season, with Ben and Michaela being forced from Grace’s house, and Ben separated from Cal and unable to continue to watch and pick up more clues from his son and his connections and insights are an emotional stressor I wasn’t expecting to experience.

And while I’m curious where the counter-surveillance on the Stones may lead, and what UDS might do when they discover that Cal could be the key to what they’ve been testing for all along, I find myself, for the moment, not putting the speculative mystery at the top of the stack for this show… I’m emotionally invested in hoping the good characters get some peace and joy. I still think Grace is trash, and I’m glad that she drove Ben away. He can now have the companions he deserves, and hopefully he can find a way to maintain his relationships with Olive and Cal while completely eliminating the toxicity that is Grace and her “it’s all about me” selfish neediness from his life.

Yep, I’m petty about how Grace is behaving, and I have to wonder to what end the writers are doing that, because we know it’s done on purpose. So yes, as of the mid-season finale I’m finally on board with the Ben-Saanvi ‘shippers… I wasn’t on that team when those fans started up on Twitter, but I’m so there now.

The writers are doing a good job, because to love or hate so many characters so strongly means that viewers are connecting, and that makes for good story. I hope NBC allows them to continue this beyond one season.

When Montego Air Flight 828 landed safely after a turbulent but routine flight, the crew and passengers were relieved. Yet in the span of those few hours, the world had aged five years and their friends, families and colleagues, after mourning their loss, had given up hope and moved on. Now, faced with the impossible, they’re all given a second chance. But as their new realities become clear, a deeper mystery unfolds and some of the returned passengers soon realize they may be meant for something greater than they ever thought possible. From Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke, Jeff Rake and Jackie Levine comes an emotionally rich, unexpected journey into a world grounded in hope, heart and destiny.

The cast includes Melissa Roxburgh (“Valor”), Josh Dallas (“Once Upon a Time”), Athena Karkanis (“Zoo”), J.R. Ramirez (“Power”), Luna Blaise (“Fresh Off the Boat”), Jack Messina and Parveen Kaur (“Saving Hope”).