Manifest - Unaccompanied Minor & Call Sign

Discussing Ep. 2.11 & 2.12

Since I missed the review of last week's episode, I decided to combine the two, which makes for an interesting comparison and a rather disappointing revelation.

I was excited. I was totally excited at the idea that these three shadows were somehow supernatural.

Only to find out that they belong to these three mere criminals.

What doesn't make a whole lot of sense was that the shadows appeared to Adrian, in the alley, after he came to the idea that perhaps they weren't doing good by following the Callings, but perhaps were bringing about the Apocalypse. That's why they gave off that element of the supernatural, that these shadows were somehow messengers of whoever was giving the callings.

So either Adrian has a part to play in taking these three criminals down and/or saving Cal, or that was all done to throw us off. Either way, it's massively disappointing that it's just three meth dealers, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, at least at this point. Why show up to Adrian, months back, if he has nothing to with them? From the get go of Ep. 11, it was revealed that months had passed by and in those months, Cal had been haunted by those shadows practically every night. They mentioned nothing about Adrian. So months of practically nightly visions of these shadows are appearing to Cal...for what?

Those shadows were simply prophesying Cal's abduction? What I also have a problem with in regards to this particular revelation is that this development could not and most likely would not have happened if Mick had done what she was supposed to do and followed the calling regarding the lead meth dealer, Jace.

Mick was emphatically told by the Callings to let Jace go and to not arrest him. She arrested him anyway....because that's her job and he was a guilty meth dealer. How in the world did the Callings expect her to not arrest him? But apparently, the Callings did, in fact, fully expect her to arrest him and defy a calling because the shadows were revealed to Cal and Adrian BEFORE Mick had ever even run across Jace. Like, MONTHS before! Hell, that first drawing that Cal made was from the year before. So he was essentially destined to run into these guys long before any of the callings started! Mick arresting Jace led to him wanting revenge and hatching a plan to overtake that prison transfer bus, a la Fugitive style!

So the Callings knew that these three would be guarded by a couple of incompetent security guards and would eventually commandeer the bus and head back into town to get revenge on Mick. If that's the case, then why give Mick a calling to let Jace go? Why give her a calling they knew she could not, or would not, fulfil? The whole premise of the past couple of episodes was that following the Callings was what was going to save all of them from the Death Date. At least, that's what they all believe. To fail to follow the Callings was believed to have tragic consequences. Hell, even trying to get rid of the Callings, like Saanvi had apparently done, would bring them all to a state of madness like what apparently occurred to Al Zuras and his crew and to Saanvi (more on that later). So they're sort of playing it up like Mick blatantly defying a calling is going to have a bad consequence for her. My question is: why?

I very much appreciated Mick's talk with the Callings (and I'm addressing them now as an entity because I basically have no choice at this point) because she couldn't figure out how or why she and Ben and all of them consistently obeyed the callings, now matter how vague or bizarre or counter-intuitive those callings were, and yet Zeke was still suffering frost bite and would succumb to his own Death Date in a few weeks time. It was a very poignant moment because it sort of mirrored what a lot of devotees to a particular faith often feels. When you do good works and you do all that you believe a God or Higher Power wants you to do, and yet tragedy seems to strike you and all the good you do doesn't seem to come back on you, you often feel like giving up. Job anyone? Certainly, many people have turned away from their faith for that exact reason, while some have stayed the course, even unto their death. So I understood why Mick was feeling what she was feeling. Given how TJ was miraculously saved, why wasn't the same thing happening for Zeke?

And yet, even after this crisis of faith, she still obeyed the Callings. The Callings told her to let this kid, Oscar, go....which started a chain reaction (as it often does) to them finding the bus driver, then finding the meth lab, then finding Jace. When Mick goes to arrest Jace, the Callings STRONGLY tells her to let him go. She couldn't because 1) there was no way she could explain letting a meth dealer caught making meth go to any of her superiors, and 2) he's a meth dealer that was getting kids and people on the streets strung out on meth. The quirk in all of it was that the meth lab mysteriously blew up and had she let Jace go, he might have been in there and died and everything would be fine. But playing that scenario out, then the three of them would not have abducted Cal because they wouldn't be alive (presumably). So why would Adrian and Cal be getting the visions of the three shadows BEFORE Mick ever even met Jace? Did the Callings count on Mick NOT obeying a calling? If so, why give her a calling to let Jace go at all? Why give her a calling they knew she would not fulfil? Was it so that there's going to be a consequence for Mick for disobeying a calling? If so, that makes no sense either.

Remember Grace and her calling? She was supposed to "open her eyes" to the truth. Open whose eyes? Erica's. The same Erica that was married and in cahoots with Simon and was arrested MONTHS AGO (according to the timeline now) along with Simon and we never heard or saw anything mentioned about either of them again. When Grace got the calling, she went to Erica and tried to talk to her, only to have Erica basically curse Grace and her unborn baby to Hell because she thinks anyone associated with Flight 828 is a freak. So Grace, being new to the whole Callings relationship, basically gives Erica a giant middle finger for being such a hateful bitch.

So she defied a calling. Where is her consequence? There wasn't any. So why would there be a consequence for Mick? There shouldn't be any. If Grace gets another chance to fulfil that calling, why wouldn't Mick get the same opportunity? I'm hoping she will, otherwise it's all horribly inconsistent. And I get the sense that even the writers perhaps don't know what the nature of the Callings are and what they all mean and how they all work. I give them credit for linking the things as they have done so far, but they're kind of writing themselves into a corner now. Especially when it comes to Zeke.

I will say that they've done a good job of making me feel sympathetic towards Zeke. I wasn't really high on the guy before because he seemed to be doing a lot more harm than good, but now that he keeps suffering the effects of frost bite and he inches closer to his Death Date, I've found myself feeling bad for the guy and even cheering on his relationship with Mick. The problem is, they sort of have to kill him at this point! Everything he's been doing up to this point has been because he believes he will die in a matter of weeks or days. Him reconciling with his mom, him proposing to Mick, him reconciling with his dad.....all of that occurred because he thinks he's going to die. And while it would be miraculous, if not very generous, to have the Callings save Zeke, they've already done that with TJ and so it would really make death on the show feel like nothing.

When TJ was thought to have died, that was pretty heavy. It affected Ben and Olive pretty badly and they essentially went through the motions of grieving, only for all of that to be for nothing. At this point, all of them are essentially prepared for Zeke to die. While none of them are necessarily at peace with it, they all seemingly have come to accept it. And I get the sense that God or the Callings are going to take Zeke because Mick's mom seemed to be at peace with this decision too.

I have to admit, this choked me up. I think anybody who has lost a loved one before experiencing a moment like this (like a wedding or a graduation or some other public milestone) would have wanted to see something like this....to see their loved one there, at peace and participating in that moment even though they had passed on. But what I also got from this, from the whole chain reaction of Ben getting the calling about the plane and meeting that airline technician to finding the vale that belonged to their mom to their mom showing up at the wedding.....that Zeke is going to die. Why else would the events and callings lead to these kind of rushed moments for Zeke if he wasn't going to die? Why arrange it that, even when Mick wanted to call the wedding off because she didn't want to believe that Zeke was going to die, Ben gave her their mom's vale which signified that Mick HAD TO go on with this wedding. It signifies that Zeke doesn't have that much time. If he doesn't die, then all of this was for nothing. My thinking is that he will die, but that they're going to discover something in his death that will help them all to understand the Callings and how to avoid the Death Date.

Plus, I think it's only fair that Jared isn't the only one who has to suffer. I've said this before and I'll say it again: Jared is a good guy. Yes, there was that slip up with him threatening Zeke but given everything he gave up and everything he lost because of Mick and Zeke, can you blame the guy for flipping out a little bit? In the end, he infiltrated the Xers and brought them down. He made peace with Mick and even showed up at Zeke and Mick's wedding and shook Zeke's hand. He's always had Mick's back and looks like he always will. And though I believe that if Mick wanted to get back together with Jared that he would take her back in a heartbeat, I truly believe that he's moved on. And if so, I think I know who he should pair up with.

I'm calling this now. I'm shipping these two. Jared and Drea (or Mikami as I address her). Jakami! I love it! I totally think these two should get together, although that would probably make things very awkward for Mick but who cares at this point. She's been making things awkward for Jared for a while now so turn about is fair play. And I like Mikami. I like her attitude, her intelligence, her style. I think she'd be a perfect fit for Jared at this point.

One pairing that seemingly will not continue is TJ and Olive. I thought this was a bold move, albeit somewhat redundant. So TJ got a scholarship to do some studying in Egypt, where he hopes to study Al Zuras's writings more thoroughly so as to help Ben and the rest avoid the Death Date. I'm curious to know how this will affect his callings because he's been rather instrumental, as of late, in helping Ben figure out and fulfil the callings. Consider that, in this episode alone, without TJ there, Zeke would have never had the chance to reconcile with his father.

It was TJ who got the vision of the phoenix on the subway station wall, while Ben only got the vision of the subway train bearing down on him. They wouldn't have found the right subway terminal without TJ's part of the vision. It was TJ, not Ben, who picked up that matchbox of Zeke's dad and gave it to him, essentially making that connection. Had TJ not been there, would Ben have arrived in time to save Zeke's father? So with TJ leaving, what happens to his callings? Will he still get them? If not, then it seems that all one has to do to avoid getting the callings is leave town! TJ is making the assumption that if he leaves, the Callings will leave him alone as well. Why? I don't know....it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

And finally, we get to Saanvi. I have to admit, I'm sort of intrigued and yet disappointed in Saanvi's story arc. I think because, right from the beginning, her whole purpose on the show has revolved around her research. On the one hand, that's great because she's an invaluable member of the team. But on the other hand, who is she without her research? And also, whatever happened to the consequences of her getting rid of the callings?

I like her tenacity, that even faced with the idea that her getting rid of the callings would have negative consequences didn't seem to deter her. And for a time, it seemed like her going all loopy was a spiritual consequence of her getting rid of the callings. In the end though, it wasn't spiritual but rather chemical. Which only backed up what she pointed out to Zeke, about how Al Zuras's ship didn't have modern medicine or technology, so the same fears aren't necessarily warranted in the here and now. Which kind of removes the threat of disobeying the Callings....again! This is why I can't accept Mick getting punished for disobeying the Callings because Saanvi blatantly defied the Callings and continues to defy them, and whatever consequence she endured was fixed with modern medicine. So I can't accept that anything will happen with Mick because it wouldn't be fair.

But it seems like Saanvi has another fight on her hands. And I have to say, I loved her tenacity here too. The way that she was bent on taking down The Major, how she wasn't afraid of facing her but is absolutely determined to take her on. I loved her determination though the way she went about it kind of put Vance in a bit of a precarious position. It's actually good that they're returning to this storyline because I think Saanvi and her research basically hit a dead end and she couldn't go further with that anymore. Which is yet another reason why I think Zeke will die because that life-saving research that Saanvi was doing is now, most likely, gone. And Saanvi's belief that the Major may have made a crack in her research means that she can no longer work towards finding a cure and will have to let Zeke die. Plus, with Zeke and Mick and the Stone family looking for Cal, I think everything will shift from saving Zeke to saving Cal and stopping The Major.

So next week is the season finale, and we'll see how it all connects and how it all ends. I'm really am prepared that Zeke dies and by rights, he should. They've built it all too much for him not to. However, I'd be fine with some kind of weird fluke if perhaps he somehow travels into the future or that he disappears without dying thanks to the Callings. They obviously have to do something weird with him considering he wasn't on Flight 828 and yet received the callings and got a death date and time travelled like the 828ers did. So I'm hoping they will shine some kind of light on all of that. Also, I do hope that Adrian shows up as well because that would help to close some loose ends in regards to the visions of the shadows and why they appeared to Adrian and Cal.

Can't wait!

Legacies - Facing Darkness Is Kinda My Thing

Discussing Ep. 2.16

This sucked! This really, really sucked! And I don't even know where to start with all of this.

I'll start with the end of something that was good while it lasted.

So Dark Josie was just a means to an end. That's it. That's all she was. She was just there to eventually transfer her dark magic over to Ted, the Necromancer. She was just there to get Lizzie to a point where the truth about how everyone felt about her was revealed so that MG could come in as a white knight and show just how special and good she really is. Dark Josie was just there so that Hope could gripe about sexist pigs (literally) and non-consensual fairy tale kisses and tell Good Josie that all she needed to do to beat Dark Josie was "change the story." She was just there so that the show could pull out another gimmick episode revolving around Red Riding Hood and flex their wanna-be Disney muscles.

That's all she was there for.

Like Baby often says about her, she's become like Bonnie....sidelined and neglected for the sake of the other characters. Just like when Bonnie became a vampire hunter and could have had a really cool story arc, only for it to be cut short for the story to return to the other characters, so it was with Dark Josie.

This fucking sucks!

My only compliment in regards to Dark Josie in this episode was that I liked her outfit in the fairy tale world. She had that Sauron look to her and it was really, really cool. Other than that, this was a major fucking disappointment. I can't stress that enough. She had such potential. She had IMMENSE power. She even manipulated Ted! And they throw that all away? Why? For what? Just to make Ted powerful? I don't get his plan at all. He wanted Josie to absorb that dark magic, or so it seemed. I think initially he wanted that hourglass thingy that contained her dark magic for himself. But he seemed pleased to have Dark Josie appear, and I don't get why. She did exactly what I thought she would do. She took over!

There was no way that Ted could have anticipated the plan that Hope had implemented. He thought he had the upper hand. He didn't know how powerful Dark Josie would actually turn out to be. So for him to strike a deal with Alaric and eventually get the dark energy that Josie had was just far too convenient! And plus, I don't even understand what that dark energy was. From what I remember, Josie had touched black magic when she was saving Lizzie. And that black magic was making her feel sick so Vardemus/Clarke had her transfer all that black magic into that hourglass thingy. It had NOTHING to do with Josie's dark side of her personality. But now, all of a sudden, she's become like Stefan and Ripper, two sides of her personality vying for control, and it made no sense.

Dark Josie should have had a longer run, like going into S3. This was cut far too short. And the way they cut it short was just asinine. I'm trying to be sensitive to the situation since it was corona virus that affected their writing of the season, but I do wonder if their original plan was all that much better. I said before that it couldn't be Hope who brought out Good Josie because she didn't have that connection. Not that they had to copy the Dark Willow story arc beat for beat, but when they had Xander be the one to save Willow, it made sense and gave off a very emotional and powerful scene. They could have had something with Josie too. Having Hope tell Josie that she merely needed to "change the story" and in the end, that's all that was needed.....all Josie needed was a real good pep talk in order to conquer her dark side?

WEAK!

Dark Josie should have run to the end of the season and into next season. She should have magically beat the shit out of Ted and taken over his whole operation. She should have absorbed Malivore or did something with it that would have made her even that much more powerful. She should have laid waste to Mystic Falls and threatened to lay waste to the rest of the world. Then, and only then, would all of them (Hope, Lizzie, Landon, MG, Kaleb, Raf, Alaric...hell, the entire school) come together to stop her. Have Caroline finally show up and reach Good Josie in a way that nobody else could. Instead, they do this, and it was anti-climactic as all hell!

And then you have the Lizzie storyline. Again...WEAK! If only because we've travelled down this road before. How many times does she need to go through this? How many times does she have to be told or shown that she's a horrible person only for it to be told or shown that she's NOT a horrible person? The idea that she "died" and everybody at the school couldn't have cared less about it was not merely unbelievable, it was stupid! Throughout the two seasons, we've been shown glimpses of Lizzie being this self-centered, selfish person, but we were never shown her being THAT bad! Alyssa had been shown to be far more horrible to her classmates and people in general, and she still had Kaleb and Jed falling all over for her! Writing it that Lizzie was so horrible to the point where her classmates would struggle to not only shed a tear over her death, but to find any tragedy whatsoever in her dying? I mean, that's fucking cold! It says more about them than it does about Lizzie. But I get the sense this was all built up for MG to, yet again, show what a good guy he is and come to the rescue and show how much Lizzie overlooks and under appreciates him.

We get it! He's a good guy and he genuinely cares about Lizzie and deserves to be treated better! WE GET IT! STOP BEATING US OVER THE HEAD WITH IT ALREADY!!! For fuck's sakes, how many episodes are we going to get with this? And if we get to the point now where Lizzie starts to develop romantic feelings for MG, I'm fucking done! I'm done, man! That would be the worst bit of writing that this show could do. Have them be friends. Have MG stay in the Friend Zone. Have him fall in love with some other girl or have Lizzie be like his wing girl in getting him some dates. Have them be like Xander and Buffy. But be done with this! The one thing that made me laugh and I don't know if anyone caught this, but they revealed Lizzie's middle name. Her middle name is....Jenna! What?

As in, Aunt Jenna? As in, Alaric's first love on the show who was killed in that ritual by Klaus? As in, someone who has no relation whatsoever to Jo or Caroline and therefore has no relation to either Lizzie or Josie either? THAT Aunt Jenna? I mean, who else is there? Elizabeth JENNA Saltzman! I fucking howled with laughter at that. Is Josie's middle name Isobel then, in honour of Alaric's first wife? Is it Meredith? Why would you give your daughters, as a middle name, the name of your ex-girlfriend? Why not give them Bonnie or Elena? No, you had to go and give the name Jenna. That made no sense.

While the Raf storyline was, ironically enough, the only one that I was genuinely interested in, I hated the end result of it. I liked that there was some genuine emotion and fear involved when Landon was not waking up. He didn't do his phoenix thing and burn away and then wake up in a pile of ash like he usually did. And after Raf showed Alaric how he killed him with the golden arrow, the look on Alaric's face said it all. If anything, I felt bad for Alaric. Not only is he dealing with trying to get Josie back and putting up this front that Lizzie died and worrying about Hope, but now he's presented with this new problem that Raf has given him. And Raf too was really conflicted, having killed his best friend and having no control over his actions. Not only that but Raf himself was also dead, as was Chad and Alyssa. Well, wouldn't you know....all that tension and drama would go away and it would all amount to a hill o' beans by the end of the episode.

I hated this. Again....WEAK! The idea that Chad and Alyssa and Raf not only were released from Ted's control, but that they're alive and well, as if they didn't die at all, was really stupid and really cheap! THEY'RE DEAD! They died! There should be some kind of quirk to them now...some kind of consequence. None of them should be given a free pass into life again. Perhaps their lives are tied to Ted or there is indeed some kind of consequence. If so, then I'll hold back my criticism. But if not...if they're alive and well with no consequences just because Ted made some bizarre deal with Alaric, then that fucking sucks too! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though. Death was rendered useless and impotent in the TVD universe a LOOOOOOONG time ago so why should I be surprised by this now?

Finally, we get to Hope. The saviour. The hero. The star of the show. The one that everyone SAYS is special but we don't really get to see it. And while sticks and stones may break her bones, its names that apparently hurt her! I will say, DRR felt a lot more 'alive' in this episode, if that makes any sense, so my criticism won't necessarily extend to her. But whoever wrote her lines needs to take this time in self-isolation and get some fucking perspective! I mean...what was up with Hope and her waking up to wokeness?!?

The pig spouting out old-timey terms like "toots" and "broad" seemed to really get on Hope's nerves, and I couldn't understand why. Okay, obviously they are outdated and sexist terms. I'm not disputing that. But considering that the character was clearly a play off of a typical 1940's character (an era that they just mimicked in that Chambre de Chasse episode), I don't see why that was considered so offensive to Hope. But it seemed like that wasn't all that offended Hope in this episode.

When Hope finds Josie's body and the pig facetiously suggests that she give Josie a kiss to wake her up, a la Sleeping Beauty style, Hope responds with: "I know this is a fairy tale but a non-consensual kiss is never the answer."

What was that? Like, really? Who wrote that line? Is it the same person who complained about the song Baby It's Cold Outside back in the winter time? I mean, the irony of it all was that Hope would later make a reference to bacon, which offended the pig (and PETA people as well, I'm sure). But when it was later revealed that the pig was actually Josie herself, Hope chastised her because she said "patronizing and sexist things" to Hope!

QUICK! SOMEONE CALL AN AMBULANCE FOR HOPE! HER FEELINGS WERE HURT!

The fuck is this writing?

The pig called her "toots." First off...HE'S A PIG! Secondly, he didn't call her bitch, or slut, or whore, or any other really offensive terms. Toots, by comparison, is quite tame! But you'd have thought that he said that women shouldn't have the right to vote or that women should stay in the kitchen all barefoot and pregnant with the way Hope reacted to everything he was saying!

Then, to top it all off, Josie goes on about how she remembers Caroline reading her these fairy tales as bedtime stories and that's essentially how she learned about the concepts of good and evil and the so-called "rules" that such tales followed. Hope decided to shit all over that, seemingly having a real problem with these fairy tale stories of yesteryear as a means to teach little kids about the concepts of good and evil. I'm surprised she didn't mention something about the patriarchy the way she was going on her SJW way. Of course, Hope saves Josie by telling her to "change the story," and it works! Josie realizes that as a good person, she doesn't have to be weak and that hate and evil doesn't always equal strength. A good lesson, but the way they taught it felt very lacklustre. It didn't have the impact that it should have.

I don't know if that was intentional irony, but they managed to accomplish it. Hope's advice was about as fairy tale as those fairy tales she was shitting on. This storyline had such potential. Some real fucking potential. Having someone confront their dark side is nothing new. It's been done. But they had a chance to do a good job with this, to have Josie go all the way and become the big bad of the season running into next season and have Hope tap into all her latent tri-brid powers and bring the others together as a team in order to save Josie or to stop her.

But no. Instead, we're left with Josie conquering her dark side thanks to some fortune cookie advice from Hope and finally removing her siphoning powers and putting them into a coin. She mimicked what her mother, Jo, did but that never made sense to me when Jo did it either. Siphoning magic is not magic in and of itself, or at least it shouldn't be. It's what allows a Siphoner to DO magic by siphoning magical ability from a person or an object. So how can you magically remove that? It's like using your hands to cut your hands off. It doesn't make any sense!

So with everything going on with corona virus, this episode will apparently serve as the season finale. I'm not going to shit on that. I applaud the crew and everyone involved for getting it out there during these difficult times. Perhaps that's why they cut Dark Josie's run so short. Still, I think Dark Josie should have gone on into the next season, leaving it as a cliffhanger as to what trouble she was going to do in S3. And perhaps they had a longer run written for her this season. Who knows, other than the writers? If so, it's a shame that plans had to be altered. At least Hope got to end the season off as the main focus rather than as a bit player in the background. We'll see if things change with the next season.

I hope so. See what I did there? HA!