Manifest - Emergency Exit

Discussing Ep. 2.7

So I missed commenting on last week's episode, and since there is no episode this coming week, I was able to catch up. And DAMN!.....there was a lot to catch up on.

It was rather surprising to see Cal again considering we haven't seen much of him this season. Last season, he was the Wonder Kid, the 828er who was receiving all the weird callings and feeling the pain of the 828ers who were being experimented on. Now, he's barely been profiled. I think that was really one of the things that shocked me about last week's calling, when they were all in that burnt out plane, how Cal never got anything about it. He's really faded into the background and though he got some TV time in this episode, it wasn't really impactful, other than to show how much of a brat he's become. Instead, it seems like all the adults are getting callings, including Grace.

I thought this was surprising and somewhat pointless given that Grace didn't really do anything in the end. At least Zeke went in and helped Mick save that woman from underneath that burning beam. Grace didn't really do anything, other than perhaps alert Jared. Not that I was expecting her to given that she's pregnant, but why didn't Ben or Mick or TJ or any other of the 828ers who were present at the club get a more clearer calling? They were right there!

And it was odd because though Adrian and Ben and Mick and Saanvi all got that calling and the vision of being in that burnt out wreck last week, it wasn't anything specific. Grace and Zeke got a more specific vision, where they saw people dancing and saw someone lighting a fire. I don't get how the callings work and why the work the way they do because, at best, they're very inefficient and unnecessarily confusing. That latter vision would have been a ton more helpful to Ben and Mick had they gotten it rather than Grace and Zeke, because Ben and Mick were actually there.

I also don't get this message from Adrian that they're trying to pitch to the viewer, that somehow he believes that all 828ers are miracles who are ALSO somehow immortal. Where did that come from? I never got the impression that he taught that or that anyone believed that the 828ers were somehow immortal or invincible. Last season, there were a bunch of 828ers who died! I don't know why Ben never pointed this out to Adrian. So where did this idea that the 828ers were somehow invincible? Regardless, it seems like that isn't the case anymore....or is it?

I thought it was very ballsy of them to kill off TJ, especially in the midst of this budding romance with Olive (which was sort of getting on my nerves already, to be honest). I'm taking this as I did with Vance....SHOW ME A BODY! Unless they show definitively that he died, then he may very well still be alive for all we know. And if he is, that spells trouble because not only does it validate what Adrian was teaching, to an extent, but it also creates a problem regarding what Saanvi was able to do.

So she apparently was able to reverse the callings affliction by genetically engineering it out of her system. So she no longer gets the callings. But if that's true, then it's quite possible that if one could genetically take it out, then one could conceivably put it back in or implant it in someone else. If the power is limited to callings alone, then it's not a great weapon to have. It's more annoying than anything else to get confusing callings to save people. But if it also includes the power of immortality, or some kind of invincibility (like Zeke seemed to have exhibited), then I could totally see The Major wanting to weaponize that, use it for American troops in battle. Hell, she might use it on herself, to essentially live forever. It's an intriguing premise considering they could use it to help people (with the cost that they would receive callings that they would have to fulfil) or use it to help themselves.

But speaking of Saanvi, I have to get this out of the way.

What was the point of this swerve? Why couldn't they establish that Saanvi was a lesbian (or bi-sexual) last season? Why spring this on the audience like this? I felt like they did it for the shock factor and it came off very cheap. Like they did with Hope on Legacies and Freya on The Originals, they present a character as leaning one way in terms of sexual orientation, only to shock the audience when they begin a relationship that subverts that orientation. I have zero problem with Saanvi being a lesbian or being bi-sexual. But they totally built it up that she was strictly hetero, considering she seemed to have this chemistry with Ben (to the point that folks, myself included, were shipping them), and even this season, she talked about how excited she was that Troy was interested in her. But now we have this. And it seemed rather pointless other than for the shock value. Much like having Saanvi's father show up (where the hell was he and her mother when she was in the hospital the week before, or when she returned from Flight 828?), there were elements that they just decided to insert for no other reason than to provide some kind of shock value to it all.

I have to admit, this part was very strange. When Ben carried Olive out of the nightclub and saw that shining light....what was it? Was it directing him to the outside? Is that the same light that Cal saw when he was on Flight 828 when he looked out the window? And of course, why would it be depicted here? Whoever or whatever is initiating these callings, I'm assuming there's a much bigger plan to it all. Because that calling left some 828ers for dead, like that guy from last week who gave his son a liver transplant. He was left for dead, as was TJ and who knows who else. The calling implied that Ben and Mick and Saanvi and even Adrian had to prevent that tragedy and save the passengers. Well, they failed. While they saved SOME of them, they obviously didn't save all of them. So what does that mean? It's a failed calling. What are the consequences of that other than the deaths of some 828ers?

I'm also beginning to wonder if I was perhaps wrong about Jared. I still think he's on the right side but him going behind Mick's back and accessing her case files was really sketchy. Also, him being hounded by Billy to get the files seems rather out of place for Jared, who I can't imagine would stand being bossed around by anybody other than an official authority in the precinct. Still, given the fact that he went to check on Mick and helped with the evacuation and saw first hand how the hysteria surrounding the 828 phenomenon could have tragic consequences, I can't see him moving forward with an anti-828 agenda that would see any of them come to harm, especially Mick and Ben and Cal. So while his actions have me worried, I'm still thinking he's doing everything covertly to uncover the agenda and overall power structure of the Xers.

So at the end of all of it, we get a glowing book! Which was a little bit corny, to be honest. Like, if that book is glowing, it's got to be like something akin to The Ark of the Covenant or something like that, right? Actually, that would be rather funny, if it was like Indiana Jones and Ben showed the book to The Major and her organization and the book started to glow and everybody started melting away!

Seriously though, I'd imagine that that book is the key to everything at this point. I mean, it fucking emits light! It has to give answers to a bunch of questions that are plaguing Ben. And I figure that it will become a centrepiece in the war against The Major. Couple that with Saanvi's apparent cure, and I could totally see it all coming down to a sort of personal choice: keep the callings and save the lives of a bunch of people (or at least make a significant difference) while having a definite Death Date...or...take Saanvi's cure and live your life as a regular human being, with no idea as to when you're going to die.

It's an interesting choice.