While trying to survive the hell the Pacific Northwest turned into this last weekend, I decided to binge the TV show Manifest.

I had seen the first season quite a while back when it first came to Netflix but had gone on to other shows, like Lucifer, while waiting for season 2 to drop someday. So imagine my surprise to find out now there was not only a season 2, but also a season 3 that had been filmed since I last watched!  Great.  That should distract me while trying to live full-time in a sauna…

I started with season 1 to refresh my memory about the story so far.  It had been so long since I watched it, it was a nice surprise.  I had forgotten quite a few of the threads and some of the characters.  Once caught up, watching season 2 helped kick up the story a few notches with both flashbacks giving more of the history of Flight 828 and new twists to explore.  I got through all 29 episodes of 1 & 2 and looked forward to starting season 3 but it wasn’t available on Netflix yet.

Not wanting to wait another year or so before it dropped (and I forgot again where the story left off), I found it was showing on Peacock TV.  So I tried to watch that channel on my Amazon Firestick.

Man, talk about a pain in the backside.  Constant freezing up and warnings about “slow Internet” every 20-30 seconds made any of the episodes practically impossible to watch.  (To note, I have a 600-800Mbps connection and everything else on my Firestick works fine.)  I even tried to watch the Peacock TV App on my Android phone.  Same thing using Internet and 4G: freezing up in the middle of scenes.

I was getting really frustrated.  I did some research and found that I have Peacock as part of my Xfinity package.  So I tried their Xfinity Stream app and voila!  I could finally watch the shows all the way through without them freezing.  The trade-off?  Having to watch 2-3 minutes of commercials 4-5 times a show.  Just like the old days of TV…  If nothing else, they gave me time for bathroom breaks and getting snacks.  (Yeah, yeah, I know – “pause” is now a thing on TV/streaming.  What can I say?)

So I get through all the new twists and surprises, including a MASSIVE set of new cliffhangers in 13th episode.  I went to see when season 4 will be filmed, only to find out THEY’VE CANCELLED THE SHOW.  Way to go NBC.  You did it again.  You took a show that was doing well, middle of the pack, and killed it.  (They killed one of my all-time favorites, The Pretender starring Michael T. Weiss, too, while leaving many, many plot threads hanging.)  Seems the people at NBC just don’t get when they have a good thing going.

It appears that the Manifest showrunners have tried to shop additional seasons to Netflix, Hulu, etc., but no one has stepped up (yet) to give the fans closure.  (I guess the “streamers” have decided to keep all the profits of shows to themselves by producing original content rather than licensing someone else’s cancelled/rescued show.  Rodents.)

Hopefully, the showrunners will find someone to give us the answers to all the questions.  Or even most of the questions.  Maybe, like The Pretender, they’ll be able to do a movie or two to try to wrap up the plot lines.  (Although The Pretender writers did throw in a new cliffhanger at the end of the 2nd one, hoping to get to make a 3rd, but after 20 years, no such luck.  So we’re still left hanging. <sigh>)

Well, luckily in the meantime, temps have finally dropped 20-30 degrees, down from hell to just heck, so maybe I can get back to thinking again and get something accomplished.  Right after I take a nice, long, cold shower.

If you, too, enjoyed Manifest and want to know how it’s supposed to end, let NBC and the streamers know – use #SaveManifest in your posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.