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Manifest: Full Upright and Locked Position

Eagan: “Adrian's super dead by now. The passenger I'm trying to save is me.”

Cal Gabriel has been taken to the Registry on suspicion of murder. Jared and Michaela are trying to find the real murderer, while Ben starts hearing music again.

The fact that the police want to bring Cal in for questioning is reasonable. He was the last person to see Violet alive. However, if the police have the bit of video where she’s (playfully) pushing him away, they should also have the bit where the pair are smiling, where they’re kissing. And where they are going in opposite directions. Sure, he should be questioned, and there’s the fear that having his DNA taken will still lead to bad results, but suspecting him of murder seems like an overreach. At least the new guy in charge, Captain Fahey, is open to this – eventually. He’s sympathetic as he listens to Cal say he wished he had gone home with Violet, because he just might have saved her.

Anyway, while Ben is sitting at the Registry, Drea is doing her best to run interference, including tempting a colleague away from her desk with cupcakes. Ben, after being there all night, starts hearing the music that was a part of one of his earliest Callings. That leads him to Radd. There’s a sort of symmetry in this episode. Ben once helped Radd Campbell find his son and get him out of the system for something he did not do, now it’s Radd’s turn. It's impossible to miss this, because Manifest tells us. The Calling consists of music (for Radd) combined with math (for Ben). They discover ten digits, the first three being 212, which is a clue that it’s a NYC phone number.

Ben calls, and reaches “Oncology. Dr. Bates,” and he doesn’t need more than a second to put it all together. He lived with leukemia in his son before; he should have noticed the symptoms in Cal earlier. He’s right to reproach himself for having been a wretched father; I’m not willing to forgive him yet. However, the fact that Cal has cancer is enough to get him released into his doctor's custody.

As we know Cal is not the murderer, who is? Not Angelina, because she’s too small to have committed the crimes. Michaela and Zeke – nice to see them working together – go in search of potential victims, looking first for Adrian but finding Eagan instead. Eagan insists on getting protection from Michaela, so he goes to her house. Obviously, the motel where he and Adrian were staying was not safe as Adrian was taken. Eagan, of course, betrays them by not telling them what he had in his Calling when he gets tested at the Bird Nest the next day. But his back story – if we can believe it – explains why he doesn’t trust anyone.

Saanvi is still working on the whole Calling thing, and she consults with Dr. Gupta, who was involved in the Major’s research and says she feels terribly guilty for what happened to them. I still don’t have a complete read on Gupta. Anyway, Saanvi believes the passengers taken by the Major are in a perpetual state of Calling, which is interesting. She wants to replicate it without torturing people. It’s kind of nice to see Saanvi with a bit of authority over Gupta.

Michaela and Jared do some sleuthing to locate Noelle Meyer and to rescue Adrian at the very last minute. Noelle is arrested, but Drea has bad news. Although Noelle has murderous intentions, she could not have killed Violet. So the murderer is still out there. And it’s Noelle’s husband, Kenneth.

Olive is fantastic in this episode. She gets rid of Kenneth Meyer, pushing him out of a window and killing him (I don’t think Olive will suffer as much remorse for this as Zeke did after killing Erika, but it’s still tough). And then, although she’s traumatized herself, we find her outside, holding her little sister; Zeke unable to step up because he was injured by Kenneth and is in the back of an ambulance getting treated. Ben comes back with Cal, and Mick is there for her husband. Olive is left without anyone to comfort her – she’s telling TJ’s voicemail it’s been a really rough day – and then he arrives in a taxi. I want to cry for her as well.


The episode ends in sweet places for many in the Stone house (Mick’s house, actually). Ben checks on his young daughter (but not really on Olive, and her day was also awful) and then does what Ben and Grace always did with the most traumatized child. He goes up to Cal’s room and gets into bed with him and holds him. Zeke finally confesses to Michaela that he fell off the wagon – honestly, given the problems addicts have, combined with the stress he has been under, it’s amazing he didn’t fall off before – by passing her his one-day sober chip. She’s understanding. And Olive gets a kiss from TJ, who has finally returned from Egypt.

Title musings: “Full Upright and Locked Position” is the title of the episode. All airplane passengers and crew know the phrase well: it’s the position for takeoff and landing, but also the position you need to take if something terrible might happen (although not as bad as “Brace! Brace!” which signals a likely crash). It signals tension and a system in high alert.

There's lots of tension in the episode. Cal is locked away at the Registry for being a suspect in Violet’s murder, but the Stones, at least, know that he is not the murderer and so the murderer is still out there. Olive and Zeke have locked the door but Olive lets Angelina’s father, dressed in a police uniform, into the house. Tension rides high throughout the episode. I like the title of the episode.

Bits and pieces

The reason New York City has the area code 212 was because in the time of rotary phones, New York City was the most populous in the land and that area code took the least amount of effort to dial (when dialing was actually dialing). The two next shortest were the other largest metropolitan areas: Chicago (312) and Los Angeles (213).

Manifest has used chloroform in other episodes. From what I have read, it’s not as instantaneous as we see in Manifest.

Kenneth, Noelle and Angelina are all murderers or would-be murderers. At least Kenneth is dead now.

Adrian has been betrayed repeatedly by Eagan and by Angelina. He really ought to put his trust in others.

The episode talks about high-grade sapphire, omega sapphires, connected to Egypt. I bet the necklace Olive wears is made of it. Note that the actor who played Grace, Athena Karkanis, is part Egyptian in real life.

When Olive is first talking about omega sapphires with Zeke, they hide the sapphire she’s wearing behind her computer.

Zeke is telling Eden a bedtime story about a bear in a cave, which reminds us of his time in a cave. Also, I love how Eden calls him “Uncle Zeke.” Through his marriage to Michaela, he is her uncle, just as he is uncle to Olive and to Cal – although I have never heard either of them use the word uncle with him (at least not in the English version; I have heard it in the French version).

Quotes

Jared: Look. We have reason to believe Noelle may be using one of her job sites for criminal activity. Can we possibly look at the project files?
Pissed-off employee: Do you have a warrant?
Jared: No, we do not, but...
Pissed-off employee: Good. Then this never happened. Come on inside. Look at whatever you want.
Michaela: Oh, wow. Okay. Uh... Only 10,000 project files.
Jared: This'd be a great time for you to get one of those Callings.

Eagan: About a month after 9/11, there was this other immigrant kid at school getting bullied. I already took my share of abuse and figured, why not jump further into the fire? So I stuck up for him.
Logan: Yeah? Must've felt good.
Eagan: It felt good for about two seconds. Then it turned into a fistfight with the star linebacker. Golden boy got one week suspension. But me? I got a fat lip and a full expulsion. Years of honor roll up in smoke along with my college prospects. Lesson learned. Best to rely on me, myself, and I.

Radd: I'm glad you come.
Ben: Last time our Calling helped your son. I'm hoping we can help mine. He's been arrested by the Registry. They think he's killing these passengers.
Radd: Cal? I thought he ran off.
Ben: No, he's back, and he's... older now. It's hard to explain.
Radd: I've become accustomed to the unexplainable.

Vance: The only reason I agreed to allow you in my building is Saanvi assured me the process would be extremely painful.
Eagan: You allowed me in because a passenger's life is in danger, and I'm the only one who can help. So let's save the ball-buster act.
Vance: After you drop the good Samaritan routine. We both know you don't care about anyone but yourself.
Eagan: Did you think I was serious? Adrian's super dead by now. The passenger I'm trying to save is me.

Saanvi: I will not sacrifice a life to save another. If there is a god at the other end of this frequency, this can't be how she wants to communicate with us.

Ben: I know Saanvi trusts you more than anyone in the world, and I trust Saanvi, so please. My son, is – is he sick again?
Alex Bates: I'm so sorry. This isn't how anyone should receive news.

Olive: Okay. Well, first, you're a really bad liar for an empath, which is ironic. Second, you've been off for a couple days now. Spill.
Zeke: I messed up. Fell off the wagon about two days ago. I'm back at it. Went to a meeting. But I still gotta tell Mick.

Ben: Why didn't you tell me?
Cal: You have enough to worry about.
Ben: You are my son. And you will always be my son, even when I'm not being the father that I should.
Cal: It's okay, Dad.
Ben: No, it's not. I'll never be able to make up for how I treated you.

Zeke: Hey, it's fine. Angelina's father came for Eden. Kenneth. Olive sent him out the window.
Michaela: Damn.

Captain Fahey: Just released your buddy from custody. Dropping all charges. How'd you crack the case? One of your special friends get one of their special feelings?
Jared: No, just good old-fashioned police work. You know, the passengers, they're just normal people who came back to a very abnormal world. You just gotta understand that world to police it. I guess you're still calling my boss?
Captain Fahey: Damn straight. Calling to request a transfer to 828. Your talents are wasted on patrol. And the Registry could use another good detective.

TJ’s voicemail: Hey, it's TJ. Leave a message.
Olive: Where are you? I – I've been texting, and, um... today was a really rough day. So it'd be nice to hear your voice.
TJs text: Come outside. :)
...
TJ: I only got two questions for you. Do you wanna go on a sapphire hunt with me? And, can I kiss you?

Overall rating

Really good, really satisfying, but must be knocked down a tad due to logical problems. Three and half out of four cupcakes.

Victoria Grossack loves math, birds, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

2 comments:

  1. Go, Olive! And I'm feeling so much for Zeke now, and I didn't even like him when the character was introduced.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, Zeke has grown on me as well. I could not understand why Mick was attracted to him at first, although I expect shared Callings build a powerful bond.

    ReplyDelete

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