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Donald McManley

Donald McManley is the abrasive FBI forensic examiner who works out of an RV crime lab and is called in whenever a Paranatural Incident Task Force case produces a body, a sample or a face in a bag.
Type NPC
Aliases McManley; Dr. McManley; Doc McManley; Don; the examiner; the M.E.
Affiliation FBI forensics
Status Alive (as of Radford Horrors 04); en route to Radford
First appearance Summer Service 01 (mentioned); Summer Service 03 (in person)
Played by Andre

Description

McManley's reputation arrives before he does: Diane reports from the secretary pool that he is good at his work, abrasive, called the team "flatfoots," and drove his previous secretary to quit. (Summer Service 01)

In person he is straight-laced and impatient, with a line in dark jokes that he delivers without a laugh and sometimes has to label ("See, that was a joke"). He does not "eat cholesterol," loves MRE instant coffee, is fussy about hygiene, and sleeps in floral pajamas and a nightcap with a shotgun to hand. He is openly contemptuous of rural Georgia and its "yokels." (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 05, Appalachia 04)

He is variously described as a forensic examiner, a forensic scientist, a medical examiner and "Dr." McManley, and he states that he is a badged federal agent. Andre confirms that he served in Vietnam. He is not in the team's chain of command: when Ezra took him for their boss, Andre corrected him that McManley is "your… pet medical examiner," and that the boss is Big Bill. Under the new FBI leadership of 1993 he still has a reputation for being abrasive but very good at his job. He "might be a little tainted" by his part in the team's cases, but he is not under suspicion, and his personal friendships with high-ranking FBI people are "why he is able to be kind of a jerk." (Appalachia 03, Appalachia 07, Walkers 08, Radford Horrors 04)

He travels with McManley's RV and a rotating set of browbeaten interns: two in Marblehead, three teenagers at one point in Georgia, and two again later. He will not drive the RV as far as Utah, preferring to fly "like God intended." At home he lives in a quaint cottage with rose bushes and many locks, kept clean but full of reptile terrariums, including tortoises and a very fat tegu named Cartwright. (Summer Service 03, Appalachia 06, Appalachia 07, Walkers 03, Appalachia 01)

History

The Summer Service

After Andrew Howard finds the severed arm in Marblehead, Diane arranges for McManley's team to arrive the next morning. (Summer Service 01)

Unrecorded session

McManley's arrival in Marblehead is not seen: Summer Service 02, the session in between, was never recorded. By Summer Service 03 he is already set up in town and knows about the nerve agent.

He is found working from a large mobile home outside Amos Shaw's house. He reports a full body's worth of blood, mostly in the bathroom, and a broken bathroom door that suggests a second party; because Andrew met Amos Shaw alive after the blood was shed, he reasons the victim is someone else. He accepts Huell Kendrick's "wellness check" explanation for having been inside, bags the crystal marbles without knowing what they are, and chooses not to inform the Marblehead police. (Summer Service 03)

Later, parked beside the post office, he and two interns put the communion wine under a microscope and find it swimming with the worms. He tells Andrew to get ivermectin from a large-animal vet and says he will call the CDC. (Summer Service 03)

He is reluctant to help fetch the drug ("just drive to Salem") until the Biz's Manipulate Someone (13) wins the loan of his assistant Henry ("You can take Henry. He's useless anyway"), who sets off on a Vespa in the storm and stops answering his radio. (Summer Service 04, Summer Service 05)

With no hot water in the RV, McManley takes a room at the team's hotel, the Ram and Arms Inn. There he is shown the still-living severed head of Puddles ("it's really bad"), wonders aloud why the cult does not simply contaminate the grocery stores, and notes that Jester took a phone call and all but ran out of the door. When armed church members surround the hotel at about 4 a.m. he joins the defense with his shotgun, and after Kurt leads the group to the RV he drives it out, up on two wheels in the gusts. The RV is abandoned behind the abandoned gas station. (Summer Service 05)

Unrecorded session

McManley does not appear in the recorded finale. Summer Service 06 establishes that the team left the lab technicians with the RV, which happened in the unrecorded session "05.5." McManley later says that on the same evening as the dog's head he punched a worm-puppeted corpse in the street, which is not seen in any recorded episode. (Appalachia 01)

The Things in Appalachia

By October 1992 McManley is on leave and close to being fired. Big Bill sends Huell to check on him. He answers the door of his cottage with a shotgun, a cigarette and an open bathrobe; the windows are covered in foil, takeout bags are piling up, and Saturday Night Live is on. Huell finds a second, dusty toothbrush and razor in the bathroom and three or four bottles of ivermectin, all but one used. McManley describes what he saw in Marblehead and spirals into an existential crisis. (Appalachia 01)

Huell's Manipulate Someone, at -1 forward because McManley hates him, comes up 3, and Zack spends a point of Luck. The two commiserate over Roseanne. McManley promises to return to work on Monday, says he should call someone named Keith, and drags his television to the curb. The team then invites him to Dahlonega, partly to get him out of the house. (Appalachia 01)

He radios ahead as he arrives with the mobile lab, delighted to hear there is a face in a bag, and relays Big Bill's order to handle the case by the book. Finding no RV hookups in town, he takes rooms at the Smith Hotel and runs a generator. He receives the folded face, Gene's shoe with its tuft of pale hair, and a small blood sample from the creature Kurt shot, complains that Kurt should have used a larger caliber, and proposes that the attacker was a huge man on meth and PCP. (Appalachia 03, Appalachia 04)

Unrecorded session

His analysis of the blood, which identified an ape-human hybrid and gave the Ape-Men their name, came back during Appalachia 05, which was never recorded. It is known from the team's references in Appalachia 06 and 08.

He collects the body of Troy Cleaver, noting that the bandolier of the Chewbacca costume had been removed and mud rubbed into the fur, and sends three teenage interns to sort and dust a dumpster's worth of garbage bags at the Motel and Suites. (Appalachia 06)

It is McManley who breaks the news of the Clinton surveillance scandal to the team, quipping that for all they know he could have been the spy. He takes custody of the SHA tracking device, endures the drunk Biz interrogating his interns in the cramped RV, and is asked at the freeway crash site to work out where the dirt in the Spud Hut truck came from. He is then called to process the blood-soaked cab. (Appalachia 07, Appalachia 08)

The Walkers in Skin

McManley pages Huell early in the Utah case with one demand: tell him the moment it looks real, because he has to fly and needs time to repack. Huell puts off the call, then makes it at about 3 a.m. and hangs up. McManley eventually takes down Andrew's wish list for a field kit, warns that the expenses will have to be justified, and still maintains that the ape-men should have been "basically chimpanzees." Evidence piles up for him in the meantime, including a carbonized crow in a dog-waste bag. (Walkers 03, Walkers 04, Walkers 05)

He arrives a day later than planned and under fire. On the road between Ballard and Roosevelt a spike strip rolls his Suburban and four townspeople attack without making any demands: a woman with a shotgun, an older man with a handgun and two children with kitchen knives. McManley and his two interns kill all four, and one intern is shot in the leg. He did not realize that two were children until it was over, and he looks worse than he did after "the worms incident." He refuses Andrew's offer of a meditation technique and instead takes a cigarette from Huell, despite having quit. (Walkers 08)

At the Roosevelt police station he examines the prisoners and performs the autopsy that explains the arc. In general terms, he finds that the bodies are not ordinary people but manufactured hosts, each steered by a separate creature inside the skull, and he lays out how the two depend on each other (see Pilot and host biology and Skinwalkers). The removed organ goes into break-room Tupperware (Pilot organ in Tupperware). He is the last to learn that the adult and the child he shot on the road were hosts too. (Walkers 08)

Unrecorded session

In the unrecorded session "08.5" the team left McManley, his interns and a few Guardsmen at the Roosevelt police station to continue the autopsies. This is known from Walkers 09 and Roulet Estate 01.

The team collects him, the interns and the Guardsmen from the station at the end and drives them toward a hospital. In the medical tent outside Roosevelt he limps to Andrew's bed with his analysis of the white powder that covered the Guardsmen: a mix of sedatives and hypnotics with something unidentified, which only the rising wind kept from overdosing the soldiers. His case of autopsy samples is among the little evidence that survives. (Walkers 09, Roulet Estate 01)

The Roulet Estate

McManley is only mentioned: as the examiner the agents would need to establish a cause of death for the remains in the Roulet basement, and in a later phone call in which Andrew asks Diane not to tell him about Huell's Roseanne habit. (Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)

The Radford Horrors

During Huell's months of convalescence McManley sends him only a curt get-well card. When the team finds pearlescent goo in Radford, Kurt wants a sample sent to him, and Huell phones from a payphone. McManley agrees to bring the RV and is expected the following day. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 04)

Relationships

Memorable quotes

Quote

"I could not give less of a shit, Huell." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Summer Service 03)

Quote

"Howard, come put your eye on the microscope, Howard. Don't be a coward." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Summer Service 03)

Quote

"What do we do if the universe turns out to just be full of the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard in my life? And that's just what's there instead of reality, for all of time." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Appalachia 01)

Quote

"Oh, oh, tell me you have a body." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Appalachia 03)

Quote

"I'm a forensic scientist, not a fucking wizard, but I'll see what I can do." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Appalachia 07)

Quote

"This is not a person. This is a vehicle. Somebody made this. And whatever you killed inside of it was its pilot." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Walkers 08)

Quote

"I think I shot something a lot worse." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Walkers 08)

Quote

"Hey, is there a face this time?" and, told "Not yet": "Well, small fucking mercies. I'll be down." Andre (as Donald McManley) (Radford Horrors 04)

Trivia

  • His name draws jokes as soon as Diane mentions it: "So not a real manly, huh? Just a McManley." Andre stumbles over it more than once as "Mc-McManley." (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03)
  • His tegu shares a name with the missing boy Gene Cartwright, who is introduced later in the same episode. (Appalachia 01)
  • Ezra twice lost track of who McManley was: "Is McManley the— the examiner guy?" in Marblehead, and "I thought McManley was our boss" in Georgia. (Summer Service 05, Appalachia 07)
  • The GM mixed up whether McManley was flying to Utah or sending his interns by road, and apologized. (Walkers 05)

Appearances