NBC’s Manifest – a review

I believe I first heard about NBC’s new drama Manifest when, as all self respecting TV nerds would, I was watching all the trailers for the new fall shows back in the spring.

However, it was also the presence of lead Josh Dallas that stopped it from slipping through the cracks. Dallas is perhaps best known for his role as Prince Charming on ABC’s Once Upon a Time which ended in May. I was, to put it mildly, a fan of OUAT, and took notice when Dallas started promoting his new show on social media.

Manifest premiered tonight, but I had the opportunity to watch the pilot a bit early and thought I would share my thoughts. Side note: this is the one show where having the first episode be called “Pilot” is actually quite relevant.

For those not familiar with the premise, the show opens in 2013, with a family preparing to board a flight back to New York after a vacation in Jamaica. Members of the family include Ben (Dallas), his wife Grace (Saw movies’ Athena Karkanis), and their twins Olive and Cal. Along with them are Ben’s sister Michaela (Supernatural’s Melissa Roxburgh) and their parents.

As they wait, an announcement comes that the plane is oversold and anyone who is willing to take a later flight will receive a $400 travel voucher. It’s decided that Ben and Cal will take the offer, as the money is needed to travel for Cal’s cancer treatments. Michaela just wants to put off reality – and a decision on a proposal – for a bit longer. So they stay and take flight 828. And that changes everything.

While in the air, the plane with Ben, Cal and Michaela suddenly experiences severe turbulence. After a few moments, the disturbance settles and everything seems fine. That is, until they land in New York as scheduled and are told that it is now 2018. Three hours for them was really five years on the ground, and all on board have been missing and presumed dead ever since.

Before watching the first episode, the main question on my mind – and I’m sure other viewers’ minds as well – was what version of 2018 were they coming back to? Is Donald Trump president? What about the #MeToo movement? I mean, how do you even explain the last five years to someone who’s missed it all?

The answer is, they don’t try. At least in the first episode, there is extremely little mention of the changed world they’ve arrived in. Grace mentions giving up the landline phone, and that’s about the extent of it. While I don’t blame the show staying apolitical, I would find it extremely interesting to watch the characters hear about all the crazy developments, so let’s hope we get some of that in forthcoming episodes.

Of course a key part of a drama is relationship drama, and this show is a goldmine for that. Picture what would happen if your loved one came back from the dead after five years – just long enough for you to have to begun to move on.

That’s just what has happened with Michaela’s boyfriend – and possible fiancé. Jared Vazquez (J.R. Ramirez) has remarried to one of Michaela’s good friends. He doesn’t even come to see Michaela when the flight 828’s passengers are reunited with their families. To his defense, he’s working on an abduction case, but still. Jared tells Michaela that it was two years before he even looked another girl, but what good is that now? Suffice to say this should be interesting.

On the other hand, Grace has stayed faithful, waiting all this time for the love of her life to return. At the reunion she clutches him like…well like a woman who thought her husband was dead. Even before the flight, they’re shown to be so in love. Flash forward to 2018 and she tells Ben that she has “so much to apologize for.” She goes on to talk about things happening before they were separated but still....

Later in the episode, there it is – Grace is shown texting with an unknown person. This person misses her, wants to talk to her, and is asking if she has told Ben yet. Seems Jared isn’t the only one who found a new romantic partner. Grace texts back that it’s over, but in TV it’s never that simple.

There was one aspect of the episode that defied clichés, for which I was grateful. Ben shows up to Olive’s soccer practice, who now is less like Cal’s twin and more like his teenager older sister. There’s a bit of awkwardness at first but it’s an emotional scene, with Ben admitting not only the difficulty of his absence, but also that Olive was often overlooked with all the concern over Cal’s illness. It’s the kind of scene that usually happens a few episodes in, after dragging out a storyline of Olive being broody and distant. I’m happy that was cut short, at least to a certain extent.

Without a doubt, the main mystery is what exactly happened to that fateful plane, and from what is shown in the first episode, it looks like a biblical connection is likely. There are mentions of verse 8:28 – the same numbers as the flight. The verse was one of Ben and Michaela’s mother’s favorites, who is revealed to passed away in the five years they were gone.

In addition, the passengers on flight 828 start hearing voices in their heads telling them to do certain things. Michaela stops a child being run over by a car and solves Jared’s abduction case because of that voice. And remember Cal’s cancer? It’s no longer terminal because of new cancer research begun by another plane passenger. It’s hard to know how exactly this will play out, but that’s the point. As one of the investigators of the flight put it, “I think we’ve taken impossible off the table.”

All in all, I thought it was a quality episode from a fresh, original new show. Only time will tell how wild the show will get, but I’m willing to stick around to find out.

Manifest airs on Monday’s at 10pm on NBC