Tag: Jeff Rake

Manifest Season 1 Episode 10: Crosswinds Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

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Manifest returns from its midseason break this week with episode 10, Crosswinds. Much of the episode is spent reminding the audience of what happened in the first half of the season, and picking up the pieces from the dangerous rescue of the missing 11 passengers from the Red Hook warehouse, where UDS was illegally holding them hostage. There is some forward momentum for the love triangles between Ben, Grace and Danny and Michaela, Jared and Lourdes. And there are new clues as to the identity of “The Major.”

The episode opens on Michaela, who is standing at her mother, Karen’s, grave, telling her mother about everything that’s happened since the plane landed. Michaela tells Karen that the passengers wanted to just walk back into their loved ones’ lives as if no time had passed, because for them it hadn’t. But everyone else had moved on, so they have to start over.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 10- Crosswinds: Sneak Peek, Extended Promo and Surprise Returns [Video]

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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Update 1/8/18- Added a 2nd clip and the episode 11 promo. NBC took down the extended promo, so it was replaced with the regular length promo.

NBC’s new scifi show Manifest will return from its winter break tonight (January 7th), with a new episode titled “Crosswinds”. Up until a few weeks ago, the promotional materials had the episode title listed as “Unaccompanied Minors”. The emphasis of the episode must have changed in the final stages of editing. It may not be as family centric as the original title and promo suggested, or the new title could suggest more focus on conflict and characters working against each other. Perhaps some hostilities that have remained mostly unspoken will be brought out into the open.

Or maybe some forward momentum will be lost, hopefully for UDS rather than the passengers:

A crosswind is a strong wind that blows across the direction that vehicles, boats, or aircraft are traveling in, and that makes it difficult for them to keep moving steadily forward. (CollinsDictionary.com)

Sneak Peek and Extended Promo videos after the cut.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 9: Dead Reckoning Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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Well, the Fall Finale of Manifest certainly lived up to its name, Dead Reckoning. There were real and metaphorical deaths, though it wasn’t a Walking Dead or Game of Thrones style bloodbath. I’d like to thank the Angel of the Waters for that. There were a few minutes where that looked entirely possible, but then Grace calmed down. 😘

We learned a lot in this episode, especially about Fiona Clarke. She thinks quick in crisis. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty. If she wants to, she can provide safe houses, and probably many other resources, for the passengers. She probably isn’t as outraged about the way her research is being used as she should be, if Saanvi’s reaction to Autumn’s injuries is anything to go by.

And she’s very, very willing to take sole responsibility for 10 fugitives who have been declared dead or missing, are severely injured, have no other friends or relatives to miss them, and who have developed psychic abilities from experiments based on her work.

Did she ask Saanvi to meet them at the safe house to provide medical care for the passengers? No. Did she tell Ben she’d text him the location of the safe house? No. Did she grab a big stack of the paperwork that was still in the lab? Yes.

I believe that Fiona has been playing the other passengers from the beginning. Either she was working with the Singularity Project or she was working for another government faction (DARPA), but took advantage of Ben and Vance’s raid on the secret experimental site to screw the government agencies over and kidnap the test subjects. She intends to continue her work on her own terms, completely off the radar. Or, she just helped DARPA steal the experiments from the CIA, because DARPA offered her better terms.

How do I know all of this?

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 7: S.N.A.F.U. Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Episode 7 of Manifest continues the exploration of faith vs skepticism that we examined in episode 6. After Michaela’s calling leads her to stop the recipient of Evie’s donated heart from ruining his life, she becomes more certain than ever that the messages are good and she should continue following them.

But Ben continues to watch Cal struggle with his deepening involvement with and knowledge of the other passengers and the investigation. Cal’s life is in danger because of his callings, and Ben is unable to help him. It’s much more difficult for Ben to take the same leap of faith that Michaela now finds easy. Even worse, Michaela doesn’t seem to quite understand Ben’s difficulty.

The callings appear to be changing and manifesting in new ways. Are we going to be focussing more intensely on an alternate definition of the show’s title soon, as more than just the flight’s manifest (secure list of passengers, cargo and crew)? Are we waiting for Cal to manifest something in particular, for the passengers as a group to manifest a new ability, or for something entirely new and unexpected to manifest as a result of Flight 828? The calings and Cal’s abilities have been there all along, but Dr Clarke and Marko bring in new elements with larger implications.

Just don’t tell me that aliens laid eggs inside them, and the fetuses are creating the callings. And especially don’t tell me that it was all USD’s idea.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 6: Off Radar Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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In Off Radar, we watch as the connections between the main characters on Manifest are either deepened or further strained. Everything is connected, but not all connections are going to remain strong forever. If the callings are tests, then they are, in part, a test of which connections the passengers are willing to risk losing, and which they’ll fight to keep.

In real life, radar uses reflected radio waves, broadcast over the air, to determine the speed and position of a targeted object. In Off Radar, Cal is the receiver, as he has been before in other ways. He’s receiving emotional, physical and mental information from one of the other passengers, a Bulgarian man named Marko. At the same time, Cal becomes gravely ill. It’s up to Ben, Michaela and Saanvi to interpret Cal’s symptoms and newfound ability to speak Bulgarian, determine if this is a calling, and what the calling wants.

It turns out Marko and ten other passengers have gone missing since the passengers were released by the Feds. Ben uses his data analyst skills to determine where they might be, then Michaela and Jared follow-up on the ground. This brings Michaela and Jared to a turning point in their relationship, when Jared demands that Michaela finally tell him the truth about the callings.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 5: Connecting Flights Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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In episode 5, Connecting Flights, we learn that “It’s all connected.” What’s all connected? Well, the subway system, for one thing, and it’s ancillary hidey holes. Olive and Cal, for another, though we’re still exploring the extent of their connection, and they don’t appear together in this episode. Beyond that, the use of the phrase is vague, other than definitely relating to Flight 828 and its passengers. We seem to be building up to discovering that the passengers and the callings are all connected, but there’s no telling what else might be part of the larger picture, and what this connection means.

Are the people who are close to the passengers connected? Did this connection direct their lives during the 5 1/2 years their loved ones were missing? There were, after all, two flights in the air that night. Just because one came home on time doesn’t mean it wasn’t affected by something. An episode title like “Connecting Flights” has to make you wonder. Did something more subtle happen to the passengers on the first flight, as well?

For now, the focus is on how the people who weren’t on Flight 828 coped with their losses. Some, like Grandma Karen, focused on the positive and tried to quickly move forward. Others, like Grace, couldn’t let go. A few, like Jared and Grandpa Steve, seem to have managed to find a middle path of mourning then moving forward, but never forgetting their losses.

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Manifest S1 Ep5- Connecting Flights Promo [Updated with Videos]

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

The end of episode promo is the only one out so far for next week’s episode of Manifest. If/when more sneak peeks are released, I’ll gather them in this post.

In the meantime, here’s a photo with Jared brooding over his map and Lourdes looking on. It’s good to see that Lourdes hasn’t been completely forgotten by Jared or the writers.

Episode description from NBC:

10/22/2018 (10:00PM – 11:00PM) (Monday) : Stories unfold for those left behind in the aftermath of Flight 828’s disappearance. Meanwhile in the present, Cal (Jack Messina) takes Ben (Josh Dallas) on a mysterious adventure that awakens Ben to his son’s perplexing abilities. Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) tries to protect Jared (J.R. Ramirez) from consequences at work, while keeping her romantic feelings at bay. Also starring Athena Karkanis and Luna Blaise.

Promo after the jump.

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Manifest Season 1 Episode 4: Unclaimed Baggage Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

This week’s episode of Manifest, Unclaimed Baggage, drew together Saanvi, Michaela and Flight Attendant Bethany to solve the mystery/case of the week: What happened to Bethany’s stowaway friend after the plane landed? They were an effective and appealing dream team, who I hope we get to see continue working together. Ben’s role in this case was to act as skeptic and briefly as driver.

What’s up with him being left out of the callings since the first episode?

Instead, Ben carried the family drama again, which this week centered around Olive’s adventures with shoplifting. Olive drew Danny back into the family mix, precipitating the overdue meeting between him and Ben. Or maybe it was just overdue that we met Danny. You can’t cast Daniel Sunjata, then keep him off my screen. At any rate, Grace is now officially a sketchy Femme Fatale in my book, and the Stones have gone from being a typical suburban family in the opening of the pilot to being a truly messed up suburban family.

Why is Grace a Femme Fatale? Not just because of the unexplained, secret strife that’s drawn her, Danny and Olive close enough together that they act like they’ve been through a war together. The other Stone family thread this week concerned Ben’s life insurance pay out of $500k, which the insurance company wants back, since he’s actually alive and all. Grace goes through a vague set of circumstances, most of them expected, and somehow comes up with having spent the entire half a million dollars already, in 5 years, on her and Olive. Plus all of the equity in their house.

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