Submitted by smashmouthrules t3_10670se in television
It's a show on NBC/Netflix from 2018 (still airing) that is about the passengers on a commercial plane that mysteriously disappears without a trace mid-flight, and then suddenly lands five years later. The passengers are unaware they were missing for many years.
The sounds amazing, right? So many opportunities for compelling, eerie, and unique premises that have never been seen before. I am still confounded by the MH370 mystery, so I was so into the premise of the show.
But it's a trick.
The show is strangely uninterested in the central mystery, at least in the first season, and focusses more on B and C plots, such as the impacts of family members of the missing and re-discovered passengers. For example - It has many tearful reunion scenes where passengers return to see their kids and family members grown up without them, which, sure, is emotionally specific and definitely needed inclusion - but not at the expense of exploring the most central mystery to it's full extent.
The episodes I watched before losing interest also seem to imply that many of the returning passengers have developed heightened powers, and for a while the show feels like it's going down a Heroes path, crossed with a police procedural feeling (an early episode has one of the passengers solving a crime using their powers, unrelated to the missing flight). It's confounding and frsyrating.
I have no doubt that the central mystery is explored in later season and episodes. They probably want a multi-season arc about it, like Lost, but where Lost effectively "teased" the central mystery throughout and gave 'peeks' into clues about in most plotlines (depending who you ask), Manifest instead tries to buy time by distracting the viewer with less-interesting side-plots and characters.
(The show also has some strangely Christian themes, which isn't a bad thing, just worth noting).
I'm sure people love it - it's recently been put on Netflix for a new season - but I just felt cheated and stopped watching.