MANIFEST Roundtable: Black Box

This week on Manifest’s season 2 second episode:

Michaela is pushed into the midst of a high-stakes bank robbery perpetrated by a mystery assailant. As Ben and TJ piece together an arcane set of mythological clues, Adrian draws Olive further into the world of the Believers.

Join us as we use our new ratings system known as SASSY – S(tupid), A(wesome), S(o) S(o) and Y(Your Thoughts):

Stupid:

Roz: I think Olive gets the biggest what the hell from me this week? Why is she spilling the tea of all the passengers to the Believers and to TJ? There’s probably a time and a place for everyone to know these things and this isn’t it. TJ at that Believer meeting seems ill advised and dangerous.

MANIFEST — “Black Box” Episode 204 — Pictured: (l-r) Garrett Wareing as TJ Morrison, Luna Blaise as Olive Stone — (Photo by: Will Hart/NBC)

Cay: Saanvi didn’t keep a backup of any of her data? Okay, I can see that she would lose the samples, but why the heck didn’t she keep the actual data somewhere on a secured cloud server? I learned that lesson the hard way back in grad school – a researcher of her caliber would have a backup, especially of something so clandestine! I’m tired of Saanvi getting the bad end of everything!

MANIFEST — “Black Box” Episode 204 — Pictured: Parveen Kaur as Saanvi Bahl — (Photo by: Will Hart/NBC)

Although it obviously wouldn’t have been as exciting to watch, why did the bank robber not just steal his brother’s key at some point and pretend to be him? Who doesn’t know that safe deposit boxes require 2 keys and that the only way to get into one without your key is to drill out the lock? That’s the whole point of them! I guess the whole experience of the plane and then re-entry and then the callings could certainly mess with someone’s ability to think clearly, but in a show where a lot of stuff is over-the-top this really defied believability.

MANIFEST — “Black Box” Episode 204 — Pictured: Melissa Roxburgh as Michaela Stone — (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC)

Roz: The plot for the safe deposit key was a bit much, but it did need to bring in all sides of these visions for some reason.

Awesome:

Cay: I like that Zeke is so loyal to Michaela. Not sure he’s “good for her” so to speak, but at least they seem happy right now in a situation where they have plenty to be unhappy about.

Roz: Zeke and Michaela make a great team and I’m so glad that they were together for this calling, and it feels right that they would finally get together together after all this time.

So-So:

Cay: My gut feeling is that the Believers are bad because they are so cult-ish. On the other hand, facing what the Stone’s family is facing, I do not blame her one bit for turning to faith as a way to get through and she seems to be in a much better place right now. Is it possible that they have the best intentions and it doesn’t end up being yet another crazy cult where bad things happen?

Roz: Yes, the Believers are making me very nervous about what their goal is in the end, but I think that they mean well if they creep me out. What’s the point of this creepy team if not to make me constantly nervous?

Your Thoughts:

Roz: Why is the General besting Saanvi here? I don’t get how anyone could assume that Saanvi would have a lab at her house with that work but clearly we needed to lose all that data and information to the bigger badder threat.

Cay: I’m really annoyed that they gave us hope – the Major was finally unveiled and we learned that Saanvi had set up her own lab and was continuing her research. For one episode she seemed very smart and put together. Then, it’s all pulled away from her [us] before she can do anything with the info! Couldn’t they lead the Major on for at least a full episode?

You can check out all of our previous Manifest coverage here.

Watch Manifest on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC!