'Manifest' Recap: Pointless

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 20, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 20, 2018 |

There’s a scene late in this episode of Manifest, “Point of No Return,” where Ben is standing behind a desk looking at a computer over NSA Director Vance’s shoulder. They make a discovery on the computer, and Ben walks toward the door. He’s standing about eight or nine feet away from Vance when he turns back and they have a conversation. It looks like this:

Vance is looking up at Ben as though Ben were standing over him, but Ben is actually standing across the room. My theory is, when they were shooting the back half of this scene, Ben and Vance shot their close-ups separately. Ben wasn’t even in the room, and Vance was told that Ben would be standing over him during this scene, but they forgot to tell Ben, who is standing further away, closer to the door.

This is the most interesting thing about what must have been the most pointless episode of television I have seen in 2018.

Here’s what we learned: Ben and Vance are working together now (which we could have easily gleaned from last week’s “Next on” scenes). They discover that the facility in which United Dynamic is experimenting on missing passengers has been moved to another location. They also discover that the United Dynamic “scientists” are administering electric shocks to the missing passengers in an effort to reproduce the ability among passengers to link their brains.

Meanwhile, another passenger, Harvey, throws himself off a building and kills himself because he believes he is the Angel of Death. He tells some people in a bar that they will die, and two days later, they die. I have no idea why this is pertinent to the story. However, Michaela is ignoring her “calling,” which is to “not let Jared go,” because Jared and his wife are trying to have a baby and Michaela doesn’t want to interfere.

Also, Ben and Grace go out on a dinner date, and Cal returns to school. His favorite sandwich is tuna. The end. That’s all you need to know about this episode. TUNA IS CAL’S FAVORITE SANDWICH. Dig into that metaphor. What does it all mean?

Next week’s episode is the fall finale. It cannot possibly be less interesting or more pointless than this episode.