see, here’s the problem: i didn’t necessarily dislike the ending
it makes sense that everything was building up to the passengers coming back to the beginning
BUT THEN
why give us a season of ben and saanvi if the original plan was ben going back to grace and saanvi going back to alex?
at this point i would have preferred ben and saanvi being JUST friends the whole series and nothing else, as much as i loved their scenes this season
the writers can’t keep their foot in both shoes and satisfy all audiences. they wanted ben and grace? great, then STICK TO THAT
(the same goes for jared and michaela vs zeke and michaela
i for one i am SO GLAD michaela chose zeke in the end but i still had to suffer through AN ENTIRE SEASON of her being back with jared for no reason)
Yep. Personally, I liked all the pairings: Ben x Saanvi or Ben x Grace (post season 1) or Mick x Zeke or Mick x Jared. (Ok. Not all pairings Alex treated Saanvi like garbage, so I’d never get behind that.)
It was frustrating watching them build the new relationships for 1-2 seasons only to rip them away in a contrived way in the 2nd to last episode. Come on, who ends a relationship/potential relationship like that on their last possible day alive. “Hey, we might be dead tomorrow, but I’m breaking up with you for your future happiness. Never mind that break-ups make both people feel like shit. No biggie to dump you on our last day alive. By-ye!”. “Hi, buddy. We might be dead tomorrow, and you’re the person I’m closest to other than direct family, but get lost. I still have some feelings for someone I’m never going to see again. So, I don’t want to hang out today. Cool? Cool. Good luck not dying.”
If they hadn’t built up Ben x Saanvi for a season and a half, I’d have been happy for Ben. But instead, I was disappointed. I’m sad for both him and Grace that he either has to keep secrets from his wife or admit that he slept the lady on the plane who is going to treat Cal. Either option isn’t ending well for Ben and Grace
For Mick, it made sense to me that after Zeke was gone, she and Jared would end up together again. It didn’t lessen Zeke’s importance that Mick moved on. But if it was going to go nowhere, I wish more time had been spent on explaining the mystery.
D: “I saw the divorce papers. The seal was there, but they weren’t signed. I thought you must’ve known that [Chuck] paid the dowry.”
B: “No. This has nothing to do with Chuck or the dowry.”
D: “Well, then why?”
DAIR REWATCH ⇢ 5.19 It Girl, Interrupted
“The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.”
yesterday i said in a previous post i didn’t necessarily dislike the finale and that’s still somehow true, but after having slept on all of this i want to add:
the finale only works if you don’t ask yourself any questions
let’s imagine ben wants to share the whole thing with grace - the poor woman wouldn’t believe a word. she (rightfully!) struggled to understand callings in season one, and only accepted what they were when she saw they were affecting cal as well. now cal has no memories. even if grace believes ben - is she going to understand him?
when watching season one i was sure the show was going to break ben and grace up. their conflict was SO REAL, so raw. grace couldn’t fully comprehend what ben had gone through, and he couldn’t accept she had moved on from him with danny during those 5 and a half years. i never fully believed them reconciling, although i had no particular problems with them doing so
now let’s pretend for a moment ben tells grace everything and she believes him. would he tell her as well he slept with saanvi? something tells me no, and starting over your marriage with a lie doesn’t look like a great beginning
also - it’s not like saanvi is going to disappear from ben’s life. she is going to cure cal, the stones are likely to see her every day. would grace (and alex, i guess) not pick up on the fact that ben and saanvi know each other, trust each other, have a very strong bond?
something tells me ben and grace’s marriage wouldn’t actually last. which doesn’t mean they don’t love each other, but they are just different people
i’m not even going to comment on saanvi and alex’s relationship, since the only thing we know about them is that alex bailed on saanvi because she didn’t want to leave her husband. once again, not a great start
(also, just for the lolz: imagine saanvi being pregnant in the reset after the hook up with ben a couple of days prior)
Exactly, thank you!
Also..Ben and Grace went on that trip to help their marriage in s1. Things weren’t good to begin with; and it’s fine. The initial voiceover said they’ve been together for 15 years already and though it said they were still in love, they weren’t peachy. It’s okay, it’s life. They had two kids to raise, one of them very sick. It’s draining for any relationship. Doesn’t make anyone the bad guy.
Now, after Ben “died” Grace moved on. And good for her! I actually liked that plot and it pissed me off whenever people tried to make her a villain for it. No. She had every right. She mourned her husband and son but she didn’t “die” with them. And she had to live for both herself and Olive. Let that sink in. She had a living kid, who lost just as much at a very tender age, parenting her (in case we forgot, Olive made her lunch with what hadn’t gone green in their fridge) because she was too much of a mess to even live. She connected with Danny over shared experience and eventually fell for him. It was okay she let go and loved someone else.
Similarly, when in the darkness of returning from “the dead”, Ben leaned onto Saanvi. It came naturally. She understood both what he was going through and his need to solve the mystery and help people. They are cut from the same cloth, they connected. And though it was obvious to the viewers that there were underlying feelings there, they never acted on them while Grace was around. But, after the kids, they always put each other first. And with Grace dead, Ben eventually learnt to live again, although reluctantly. And he leaned on Saanvi again and it’s okay he let himself show how he felt. Even after agreeing they couldn’t be together..the guy almost had a heart attack thinking he was losing her on the airplane; you can’t tell me he doesn’t love her openly now.
Even in the New Timeline, though they were friendly, at some point Grace was on Saanvi’s case telling her Ben had to sit out of their quest and that he didn’t need her encouraging him. Grace, though knowing what life was for them, felt the need to freeze her husband’s support system out. Note she never told that to Mick, though she was usually the one dragging him into trouble.
You can’t tell me any woman wouldn’t feel insecure with another woman being her husband’s most trusted. Especially with one that was sharing his exact experience while being the one to save his son. That’s a lot.
Imagine now, in the Original Timeline, with only the passengers knowing what went on for over 5 years of their lives in the other timeline, what would happen. And it’s normal. I think being suspicious and jealous would be normal. Ben and Saanvi supposedly spent only a few hours together on a plane, not even sitting close to each other. And if Cal was to be asked, he’d say they never even interacted, that’s what the kid knows. If I was Grace (or Alex) I’d suspect my partner had his sidepartner meet in Jamaica and was now trying to insert them in our lives. Point being..good luck finding a plausible explanation for all the heart eyes, being in each other’s space, inside jokes and all.
On another note, and most likely an unpopular opinion, Eden was the most pointless storyline in Manifest. She did nothing to further their Destiny or change it. She existed just for drama; to degrade Ben’s mental state and keep the Angelina drama going. The plot seemed invested in making Ben seem hellbent on focusing only on ONE kid, ignoring the needs of the other two scrapping his character development as a parent since s1. Also, Grace was actually heartbroken and torn having to choose between Ben and Danny. You can’t tell me otherwise, if Eden was Danny’s, Grace would have left Ben faster than he’d say “828”. And maybe it would have been better for both. They could both be happy and it would be a lesson, a moral; that your life changing may seem daunting but it can also be good for you or something. Not to mention Grace would be alive and my poor twin babies wouldn’t have to be traumatized by her loss.
Thank you for joining my somewhat irrelevant TedxTalk.
there’s no morning glory, it was war, it wasn’t fair
“You know what I mean. How are you doing?”
Saanvi took a long sip of coffee to have the time to come up with an answer. How was she? She wasn’t bad, per se. Considering what they had been through for the past five and a half years, this month of normality could be counted as absolute bliss. She had her own apartment, her cancer research was going great, she could spend her weekends with her parents instead of being cooked up in a lab trying to save the world.
see, here’s the problem: i didn’t necessarily dislike the ending
it makes sense that everything was building up to the passengers coming back to the beginning
BUT THEN
why give us a season of ben and saanvi if the original plan was ben going back to grace and saanvi going back to alex?
at this point i would have preferred ben and saanvi being JUST friends the whole series and nothing else, as much as i loved their scenes this season
the writers can’t keep their foot in both shoes and satisfy all audiences. they wanted ben and grace? great, then STICK TO THAT
(the same goes for jared and michaela vs zeke and michaela
i for one i am SO GLAD michaela chose zeke in the end but i still had to suffer through AN ENTIRE SEASON of her being back with jared for no reason)
I agree to an extent.
I loved the Ben and Saanvi content, but even more, I love their friendship.
I loved that Ben admitted that he wasn’t over Grace (even though I would have preferred if he stated that he finally let her death go).
But I hated that they brought Grace back, and that they’ve essentially went back in time. What’s the point of having Ben forgive Angelina for Grace’s death if nothing were to have happened to her in the first place? I think the symbolism there is messy.
What’s also messy is Ben’s feelings for Saanvi (and although this is a series finale, and there is no more story to tell) but imagine needing to explain to your wife that you have a close, close friendship with a woman for (5 ½ years worth of friendship), and that friendship was turning romantic because you were dead in the future that they’ve lived.
yesterday i said in a previous post i didn’t necessarily dislike the finale and that’s still somehow true, but after having slept on all of this i want to add:
the finale only works if you don’t ask yourself any questions
let’s imagine ben wants to share the whole thing with grace - the poor woman wouldn’t believe a word. she (rightfully!) struggled to understand callings in season one, and only accepted what they were when she saw they were affecting cal as well. now cal has no memories. even if grace believes ben - is she going to understand him?
when watching season one i was sure the show was going to break ben and grace up. their conflict was SO REAL, so raw. grace couldn’t fully comprehend what ben had gone through, and he couldn’t accept she had moved on from him with danny during those 5 and a half years. i never fully believed them reconciling, although i had no particular problems with them doing so
now let’s pretend for a moment ben tells grace everything and she believes him. would he tell her as well he slept with saanvi? something tells me no, and starting over your marriage with a lie doesn’t look like a great beginning
also - it’s not like saanvi is going to disappear from ben’s life. she is going to cure cal, the stones are likely to see her every day. would grace (and alex, i guess) not pick up on the fact that ben and saanvi know each other, trust each other, have a very strong bond?
something tells me ben and grace’s marriage wouldn’t actually last. which doesn’t mean they don’t love each other, but they are just different people
i’m not even going to comment on saanvi and alex’s relationship, since the only thing we know about them is that alex bailed on saanvi because she didn’t want to leave her husband. once again, not a great start
(also, just for the lolz: imagine saanvi being pregnant in the reset after the hook up with ben a couple of days prior)
