Manifest
“Hard Landing”
February 11, 2019
It’s taken me a while to recover from the previous episode’s breakout superstar and the new love of my life, CGI WOLF …
… but I’m ready to dive back in and finish these last two episodes of Manifest and then never watch this God-forsaken show ever again.*
Alright, so last we left these stick-figure drawings that we are calling “characters,” Michaela had just opened the door to a van that had been pulled out of the East River after having been submerged there for nearly 3 days, and the driver of the van, miraculously — or whatever — he gasps to life.
FLASHBACK: Some dudes in a utility van play with some wires in midtown Manhattan, but it’s all a dupe, they’re really staking out an armored vehicle parked across the street. When the armored truck drivers emerge from the bank they are servicing, the “utility” guys hurry across the street, tase the armored truck dudes, steal all the money bags and run back to their utility van. Robbery success! But then one of the “utility” dudes shoots the other two “utility” dudes and drives off with all the monies and apparently directly into the East River. Robbery fail!
And that is where the NYPD find him. Michaela tricks the ambulance drivers to take him to Dr. Saanvi’s hospital before calling Ben who tells her about Cal’s most recent crappy drawing. The two of them based on literally nothing else decide that this guy is the wolf from the drawing and Hiker’s vision? So I guess Hiker and Wolf are connected somehow?
Ex-Boyfriend shows up at the hospital where Michaela explains that this river guy is like the 828ers and, oh, by the way, she and her brother also found another guy who 828-ed in a cave for a year. Funny story: he’s staying at her apartment and she needs Ex-Boyfriend to be cool about it. Spoiler alert: for the next two episodes, Ex-Boyfriend is NOT COOL ABOUT IT.
In fact, later in the episode, Ex-Boyfriend has Hiker followed, catches him trying to break into a very nice Fort Greene townhome and has him arrested. Except: another funny story, it was his mom’s house he was trying to break into, for reasons, so Michaela releases him and encourages him to tell his mom he’s alive.
Oh, and in other boring subplots, Dr. Saanvi is experiencing PTSD after her kidnapping adventure and she spends a lot of the episode shrinking against walls and staring into the middle distance pitifully.
OK, so this Wolf guy. As the emergency doctors are treating him, he has a “calling” and starts screaming about an explosion and people dying and there are kids and OH THE HUMANITY! The doctors think that he’s delusional and sedate him while Michaela and Dr. Saanvi are yelling at them not to.
Oh, and Dr. Saanvi? She figures out that Wolf had been underwater for — you might want to sit down for this — 82 hours and 8 minutes.
828 Y’ALL.
Anyway, she takes a sample of his blood to see if he also has this special wormhole marker, which is a plot point that they don’t actually forget about in the next episode.
When Wolf wakes up, Michaela explains to him that she was on 828, she now sees the future, she thinks he saw the future, and it sounded really scary and if he could just please tell her a few more details about his vision, he can prevent an explosion. But Wolf is all, “Wait, so you’re saying that I, the guy who is currently in custody for robbing a bank of some $75 million and a double homicide, I might be a hero and prevent a future bomb attack? I can’t wait to tell the D.A. about this and have them take me seriously when I tell them that in exchange for my freedom I will give them information about a future crime according to a psychic vision I had! Toodles!”
And so the rest of the episode is spent with the entire Stone family trying to find some leverage that will convince Wolf to do the right thing which is to tell them about the “calling” without demanding his freedom in exchange. It’s part of this whole theme where the main characters believed they were 828-ed for some higher purpose, for good, and this very bad man who was also 828-ed is throwing a wrench into this theory. So they convince themselves that this is part of his redemption story: that they will show him he should just give the information about the calling without expecting anything in return and thereby making him worthy of the callings. Or something.
But he doesn’t. He cuts the deal, and walks free. Because the FBI is up in here willing to make deals with dangerous murderers as long as they have ESP.
I mean, look, I could go into the whole story where they learn that he and his best friend/foster brother were involved in a robbery gone wrong and Wolf pinned it on his foster brother and then his foster brother went to prison where he was killed, but I care about this McGuffin of a story about as much as the Wolf character does which is to say NOT AT ALL.
So Wolf tells the cops where to find the bomb — in a pretzel cart in Times Square — and they defuse it in time. By the way, we never find out who planted the bomb or why they planted the bomb or why the FBI didn’t have a shit ton of questions for the Wolf like, “HOW DID YOU KNOW THE BOMB WOULD BE HERE?” and “WAIT, DID YOU PLAN THE BOMB?” because this show is stupid and bad.
But who cares because here comes THE BEST MOMENT OF THE EPISODE: Michaela looks into the crowd of onlookers and she sees CGI WOLF again, and somehow, he’s even more spectacular than before.
JUST LOOK AT THIS GLORIOUS LUMPY GOD:
WHY ARE ITS LEGS LIKE THAT?
WHERE IS ITS NECK?
DOES IT HAVE ANTLERS?
DO THE ANIMATORS KNOW WHAT WOLVES ARE?
And now a few other wolves that are more realistic:
I can’t wait to use these Manifest wolf gifs in my Game of Thrones recaps, y’all.
Oh, and there’s a whole subplot where Pre-Pubescent Son builds a dragon out of popsicle sticks. Believe it or not, this becomes VERY IMPORTANT in the finale because this show is incredibly stupid and I hate it.
Manifest airs on NBC on Mondays at 9 p.m.
*Who am I kidding. If this show is renewed, I’ll absolutely be tuning in to this shitshow if only for the CGI wolves. MOAR CGI WOLF, MANIFEST.