Turbulences

The Passengers of Montego Air flight 828 embark upon a seemingly ordinary flight back home to New York when their plane experiences heavy turbulence. While the plane arrives unscathed, the passengers are informed upon arrival that they disappeared for 5 and 1/2 years despite them only having been in the plane for a few hours. Once back in New York the passengers and crew of flight 828 must deal with not only the massive time gap, but also unwanted public attention, government surveillance, unexplained visions and voices, and a sinister conspiracy involving malicious groups with interest in the passengers.

From its high concept hook to the fact a plane is the catalyst of the ongoing plot, Manifest bears more than a few similarities to ABCs cultural zeitgeist Lost. Lost helped open the door for bolder and innovative serialized storytelling in TV and for the most part networks have dialed back their attempts to directly ape Lost, but occasionally one (such as Manifest) comes through. While it doesn't reach the heights of Lost clones like Jericho or Heroes' first season, it also doesn't embarass itself like Terra Nova, Revolution, or Under the Dome.

A big part of what makes Manifest work is in its emotional core of "how does one adjust to a world that has moved passed them?" underlying its central themes. The show does a decent job establishing this ad makes fertile ground for interesting conflicts and drama, but unfortunately this is where the obligatory Lost elements rear their heads and distractingly so. While some characters have trouble securing employment upon return, others(such as a cop and doctor) are able to return to their lives with very little. This is where Manifest starts to stumble, while the series is allegedly focused on the characters dealing with a massive shift, it's also got elements of a police procedural, a medical drama, a conspiracy thriller, and even some elements of Touched by an Angel and Early Edition with its reliance upon "cryptic mystical messages" directing our characters through the story.

There's a good central idea in Manifest that makes for an engaging mystery, but it's suffocated by excess bloat, poorly developed characters, and an over reliance on the mystery box format established by Lost. It'll keep your attention in parts, but will also try your patience in others.

Meh. Another typical show where the creators clearly woke up with an idea for half of their story, successfully pitched it, and will now make it up as they go along. These types of shows are all very similar in that they are very slow to develop due to the lack of a thoroughly flushed out storyline. Because of this, the show lacks necessary intrigue and the occasional efforts to drop in an mysterious omnidirectional subplot leaves the viewer disinterested.

Started out with a new and interesting theme. Some of the acting is terrible and one of the main characters consistently looks puzzled, no matter what emotion he is supposed to be portraying. Getting past his annoyingly horrific on screen persona is very problematic as he is so unbelievable when he is mad or sad or happy....he just always looks dumbfounded, sort of like a deer in headlights and it is very distracting from the plot.

They need to pick up the pace of this because it is starting to DRAG with very boringly predictable plot lines of the government vs them.

It has a LOT of potential and I would hate to see it canceled before the big reveal.

Started off good now it's dragging, needs more scify again like the trailer gave us in the beginning.

Now it's basically a soap box opera, overly melodramatic with very little mystery, if any. People constantly arguing is not entertaining to me.