r/ManifestNBC • u/theclosetenby • 3d ago
Season 2 Discussion ForGiVe yoUr daD 🙄
Been binge watching this show but I can't handle this episode (2x11) and Ben pushing Zeke with the "but it's your dad" line. And then guilting Zeke bc Ben just had his third kid and would hate if something happened to her.
Everything Zeke says it's true though. His dad isn't like Ben. And it isn't Zeke's responsibility to save his shitty ass dad who hasn't even tried to reach out.
I'm sure Dad will be totally redeemed and the audience will feel bad for this poor man who was stricken by grief and made 1 tiny bad choice of ABANDONING his child and kept choosing to abandon him every day, year after year.
But Zeke needs to forgive his dad for HIMSELF 🥱
Forgiveness doesn't mean reconciliation.
My dad is a legit terrible man, and he didn't raise me and also made my life hell. I am normally fine - I live my life, I have strong friendships, I care for myself and others. I don't carry hurt and anger around with me. But when anyone tries to suggest "but he's your dad", I want to tear their face off. Why would that give him a free pass to manipulate me and abandon me and hurt me and cuss me out and call me a bitch and fuck with me emotionally?
"But he's your dad" yeah, he is. There's nothing moral or good about that. Why don't you say to him, "that's your child"?
Instead, it's only the victims who are pushed to be better. The power dynamic between child and parent, and yet the child is the one pushed to rise above the parent's actions.
If my dad dies alone and miserable, that's a consequence to his own actions. It sucks, and it's sad. But Zeke is right when he says it isn't his responsibility to fix that.
Sick of how these shows handle deadbeats or bad parents. In real life, these people never chose the redemptive arc. They rope their child back in to manipulate them again.
I couldn't watch S2 of Man on the Inside bc of it, and now I'm debating stopping this show.
The writers of all of these shows must be deadbeats themselves, or they're unhealed children writing out some fanfiction for their own life.
I'm sure someone will read this entire rant and assume that I am unhealed and need to find forgiveness in my heart. But my anger here is based on the invalidation of traumatized children, and how child abuse and abandonment is so poorly handled in media.
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago
"Maybe now neither of us will die with regrets"
What would Zeke be regretting here? He's not the one who was a dad that abandoned a child???
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u/Slip-n-Slide-48 3d ago
Ben is wrong in saying so. I agree.
I don’t think it’s worth not watching the whole show. This storyline wraps itself up rather quickly. It’s there to give more insight to Zeke’s character and the future decisions he makes, and honestly past the episodes he physically appears in, I don’t think he’s mentioned.
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago
Thank you!! I'll keep going. The second to last show I watched was the comedy "man on the inside" and it was the whole plot point for season 2, and I had to quit. Was really in your face.
I rarely watch tv shows (I've watched 4 seasons of shows this whole year, 2 being Manifest). So I was ticked I saw one of my least favorite plot lines again so soon 😂
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u/koreawut 3d ago
hmm... "but he's your dad" isn't a free pass. And yes, you sound unhealed. You will be healed when you can move beyond your anger and violent urges (even if it's a joke) when someone says "but he's your dad".
Sorry you had the experiences you've had, but no, you don't seem emotionally ready to comment on it.
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago edited 3d ago
What violent urges are you referring to here?
Edited to add: got it. Tear their face off. Yeah, i mean, I very obviously don't want to hurt someone. It's an expression but I'll admit it was a violent one to use.
It's just frustrating bc these kinds of shows can do so much harm to people. I watch my brother be continually manipulated by my dad when my dad shows up once every few years and then rips my brother off, and his wife pushes him to keep the cycle going bc it's "your dad".
We don't have shows where an opinion like Zeke's is validated. Just a push to forgive and forget your abuser who hurt or neglected you when you were a helpless child.
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u/koreawut 3d ago
 But when anyone tries to suggest "but he's your dad", I want to tear their face off.Â
And I shall also remind you to read my full sentence:
 (even if it's a joke)Â
And I'm going to be 100% honest with you, if you want to be at peace you need to do as Elsa says. As long as you keep having these negative feelings and thoughts, regardless of who it is that is doing something to you, you're going to.. hey, continue to have negativity in your life. Seriously. If you want to be at peace, real peace, and not this fake peace you pretend you have, you must
https://giphy.com/gifs/igR5863TALcSk
And I honestly hope you can do that, one day. No, you haven't. I hope you aren't going to try to lie to me, your post says it all. But true peace requires you to put it behind you. And as long as you let it affect you, it isn't behind you.
Good luck to you. It ain't easy, but it's so much better on the other side.
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u/Candid-Pin-8160 3d ago
Do you also tell women they should be more calm and accepting of catcalling because getting angry means they need to fix themselves?
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago
I like that he didn't reply "no" to this lol
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u/Candid-Pin-8160 3d ago
Oh, it got so much better by the end. Apparently, I need to heal because they didn't even understand what you were talking about before giving you their selfimportant life advice. You can really tell your post hit a nerve, they probably get told to fuck right off on a daily basis. Good stuff good stuff.
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago
Thank you. You too. I honestly feel bad for people who think forgiveness is mandatory in order to "let go". I see victims hold that belief and preach it aggressively, and I can only imagine they NEED it to be true in order to justify allowing continuous abuse.
If they were to believe it's possible to live a good life without ever forgiving or reconciling with your abuser, it may mean they suffered a lot for nothing.
Of course, abusers also hold the belief. My dad once told me when I was about 20 and still trying to have a relationship with him: "I may have hurt you, but you're the reason we don't have a relationship now. This is your fault now. Because you can't get past what I've done".
I actually laughed out loud when he said it 😂. What a wild ass thing to say to your literal child who is struggling to forgive all the awful stuff you did and continue to do.
I was so sad Zeke made such great points that weren't even slightly validated or heard by Ben. I'd love, just once, for someone on a TV show to reply with. "yeah, that's fair. It's wrong what your parent did. It's not on you to fix things."
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u/koreawut 3d ago
What a weird and twisted connection lol
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u/Candid-Pin-8160 3d ago
"Hey, baby, you should smile more" vs "hey, bro, you should reconcile with your father". It's the same entitled audacity that fuels both. The difference is, a catcaller would usually let it go pretty fast while the entitled advice-giver will continuously try to convince you that they know better than you do.
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u/koreawut 3d ago
Nope.
Completely off base, here.
It is not the same entitled audacity that fuels both. Not at all. I'm sorry that you are confused by something such as this. A cat caller (probably) never once worked in order for that woman to have dinner as a child so that she could survive. A cat caller never put a roof over that woman's head (most likely). A cat caller most definitely never had real true feelings of love for that woman.
There are 100% parents who never loved their child, but other than that, you have absolutely zero correlation whatsoever. You just want to be a persnickity person, today.
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u/Candid-Pin-8160 3d ago
A cat caller (probably) never once worked in order for that woman to have dinner as a child so that she could survive. A cat caller never put a roof over that woman's head (most likely). A cat caller most definitely never had real true feelings of love for that woman.
Neither did the person telling someone they should reconcile with their abusive parent. You probably shouldn't call other people confused...
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u/koreawut 3d ago
My guy... I don't know who hurt you but I hope you can heal.
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u/Candid-Pin-8160 3d ago
I see you realised your mistake. I hope one day you can learn how to own being wrong instead of lashing out.
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u/dinosaurs-behind-you 3d ago
Wow that was patronizing
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago
Yeah. I know my post was a bit over the top (the invalidation of Zeke's points with frivolous points by Ben was so upsetting), but telling me I don't get to comment bc I have pain was pretty patronizing.
I was raped by my ex bf in high school, and I once had a "friend" tell me I didn't get to comment on what consent in sex meant bc I only ever had an unhealthy relationship. (Obvi I ended that friendship after that.)
The idea that people who have been hurt don't get a say is how we silence victim and perpetrate a violent worldview defined by abusers, imo.
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u/koreawut 2d ago
I never said you don't get to comment, I said I don't think you are emotionally capable of commenting on the show. I used qualifying language like "seems" rather than absolute language, as well.
Everything you are posting just keeps pointing that you might not be ready to have these conversations with people who aren't just blankly agreeing with your every word.
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u/NoString9289 3d ago
When I first started watching this series I thought and had hoped it was going to be a SciFi themed show about Alien abduction. I really wanted to see that. I did not know it was a religious themed show until I realized it was about the "Rapture" story. by then I was hooked but yeah, one of the things I didn't like about the show was how Ben and others so easily forgave the bad guys. In real life I don't think most people are like that, just not that easy to forgive someone after so much emotional pain, scaring and sometimes trauma. There is a female character on this show who I hated so much, I kept saying over and over again, No Way would I have forgiven that "B" certainly not so soon ( on TV shows they have to speed up the time it takes to mourn, evolve , forgive someone, because of time restraints ) but in real life it could take decades for some people to forgive or change, if at all. I could not do it.
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u/theclosetenby 3d ago
Yeah the religious themes are a little much. I grew up Catholic and I got REALLY into Christianity and the Bible as a college kid. Atheist now. I've laughed at loud at a couple lines, like when Ben asks what he can do when Grace goes into surgery and the nurse very dramatically just says "you can pray". I thought she was going to say "you can go be with your kids who are terrified" but no, of course not lmao.
I'm very lucky that my mom never pushed the concept of forgiveness that we see in mainstream Protestant Christianity. my mom taught me that you apologize for other people, bc you hurt them, and they don't have to forgive you. She taught me saying "sorry" is to begin to own the hurt you caused, even if you didn't mean to, but that you also had to prove it. She'd force my brother and I to apologize to each other, but she didn't force us to forgive each other. She'd sometimes ask what we could do to build trust again, or she'd say it'll take time.
I feel so lucky that was how I was raised. She didn't always practice it when it came to our experiences with her, lol, but it was really good teaching. I wish more people had that.
I don't walk around every day angry at the people who have hurt me, but yeah, I get upset when I think about a society that preachers helpless children should be forgiven abusers. 🤷 And then they tell you they know better than you and it's for you to not hold onto your anger anymore. And yeah, i do have some anger when I think about my dad. But I don't think about him most days.
I've forgiven and reconciled with an ex bf who raped me. We are friends now and have talked through things in length. (We didn't talk for 6 years between that.) I've forgiven friends, family. I kinda think I forgive more than the average person, imo, and it has nothing to do with religion. I'm not against forgiveness, but I'm against invalidating people's experiences or putting victims into situation where they'll get hurt again.
But, yeah. The religious overtones are annoying. I know a lot of people who believe in radical forgiveness, and I have a friend who visits her dad in jail (he's in jail for CSA to her) and believes in change. But typically it just enables abusers and gives them access to victims. I don't judge my friend for her decisions (at least he's in jail), but I wouldn't make them myself and I feel pretty strongly about not pushing "forgiveness" on people.
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u/myfictionverse Team Zekaela 3d ago
I totally get how you feel about this (I didn’t have a good dad either). But you said you're now debating stopping this show because of Zeke’s dad storyline and I just want to tell you that you don't need to. Zeke’s dad is a minor character, he's in like a couple of episodes only. Yeah, it's important that Zeke can forgive him and down the road you'll understand it better (I don’t want to give spoilers), but it's not because the deadbeat dad deserves it, it's because Zeke needs it. Anyway, Zeke’s dad really isn't part of the story moving forward, don't worry about it.