Manhattan 1.13
Oct. 21st, 2014 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This was the season finale, right? It definitely felt like one. And I am ever so glad we're getting another season.
If there is a more effectively sinister image than an adult man man handing a lollipop to a small child ever since Fritz Lang came up with a basis for this one in M, I don't know. In this case, it's Inquisitor!Schiff doing the honours, and I can finally remember his character's name: Fisher.
I could quibble about the likelihood of Abby's relations making it out of Minsk after all, but I'm not going to. BTW, do you think Charlie is right when he speculates this was Akley's doing, since he asked him whether there was something that could be done? If so, it adds posthumously to Akley's characterisation, just as the visit Liza pays to his widow, Rose, suddenly makes Rose into a character and gives us a glimpse at the Winters and the Akleys having known each other all the way back in Chicago. (Again: I just wish we'd gotten bits and pieces of this earlier - Liza running into Rose at the hospital, say, or trying to get her backup when she was investigating what was up with the bees etc.)
In any event, Abby's cousins making it to the US settles for Fisher the Inquisitor that Charlie is a spy, and we get more scenes of very contemporary relevance re: proving a negative. How every action, looked from a certain angle, can proclaim you guilty. Of course, Charlie did to something, though not what Fisher thinks he did, and when he's interrogated, there's the awareness he himself framed the repellent Tom (who was a groper, but not a spy) to suffer just this fate. It's also when the affair between Abby and Elodie finally comes to light, and the manner in which it does reminded me of one of the most revolting aspects of state surveillance and blackmail, the use of emotions as weapons to bludgeon someone into submission.
All of which looks like it will set up Charlie for the flash forward from the second episode when he's on the run with something that looks like plutonium, but no. In a thematically sound decision that brings us back to the start and the question what drives Frank more, the need of the many or the need to justify his own decisions/ego, Frank - maybe for the greater good (i.e. he thinks Charlie can contribute more to the project), maybe because of the guilt of Akley's suicide, maybe at least part of Charlie's current difficulties are due to him - takes the fall for both his and Charlie's actions (with the late Akley also framed, but he's dead and won't mind) in a way that exonorates Charlie. I figured out Frank's confession to Liza was really for the camp surveillance before they showed us the flashback. Not because I thought he didn't mean it when he said "I love you"; actually, I think he does. But there was no way he'd break the secrecy now, after Helen had just told him the guards had already come after Charlie, solely to tell Liza what Manhattan is really about. He'd never put the need to share with her above what he sees as the greater good. There is something both admirable and chilling about that, if you think about it. (And the visual of Frank talking to the bug - the implication that all the houses are bugged - hammered home again how anything private and personal is not allowed to exist as such in a self created surveillance state.)
Also: Liza leaving the room while Frank is still in the true part of his confession. At first I thought they were painting Liza as too naive here, because notwithstanding the efficiency of the atom bomb, which at that point was only speculative: bombing civilian populations in cities was already practiced by both sides a plenty. (And didn't, in the end, more people die in the "traditional" fire bombings of Tokyo than did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Immediately, I mean, not counting the radioactive aftermath. I seem to recall something like that from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara, who as a very young man was involved in said firebombings of Tokyo, mentions that if the Axis powers had won the war Curtis LeMay and his staff, including young McN., would have been indicted as war criminals for those.) But then I thought: no, she left because of Frank's naivete, because he said that the mere test demonstration of a devastating weapon like this would mean Germany and Japan would have to surrender, and it would never have to be used and usher in an era of peace at last. Frank, as a veteran of the previous "war to end all wars" , should know better, and we're brought full circle, also, with the Fritz Haber comparison from early in the season, the weaponizing of gas.
So Charlie ends up as the new leader of the implosion team while Frank gets transported away to parts unknown, and I have no idea what this will mean to the next season. Otoh: since they made such a great deal out of the terrible consequences should the Frank-Charlie conspiracy get discovered, and since Frank took the blame for that, then by the rules of the show he shouldn't come back. Which unfortunately would mean no more Liza, either, because why would and could she stay if her husband is deemed a security risk and lingers in some cell for the rest of the war? Otoh: why would they let Olivia Williams go when they still haven't used her nearly enough, and also when she's just been voted into the civilian council? I suppose they could handwave and have someone declare Frank is essential for the war effort and can return to the camp. Which would take some of the emotional power of his sacrifice. Hm, I really don't know where the show will go with this one, and honestly, I love not knowing and my tv being unpredictable.
Also: Meeks has always been the junior scientist with the least characterisation. However, what characterisation he did get beyond "harmless friendly team member" was that he was the most indignant, the most devastated by Syd being wrongly accused and killed as a spy in the pilot. Therefore, making Meeks the real spy (and there had to be one) not only makes emotional sense but also justifies his existence as a character in the ensemble.
In conclusion: definitely one of the smartest shows of the year, about complicated people and issues. So many pop culture stories treat WWII basically as the ultimate role playing game, clear cut good/evil issues, compromise with the other side impossible because the other side is bent on genocide and led by the embodiment of evil in the 20th century, therefore only dashing heroism on the Allies side. And so often it gets contrasted to the present with murky issues, endless wars, and ever shifting alliances and the impossibility to see anyone as the dashingly heroic side. Yet here is this show, picking up a very specific part of the homefront of the war seen as the "good war" in US public memory, and relates it directly to one of the most disturbing current day issues, the way state surveillance, "enhanced" interrogation and the giving up of liberties has become an accepted and even deemed necessary practice. Wow.
If there is a more effectively sinister image than an adult man man handing a lollipop to a small child ever since Fritz Lang came up with a basis for this one in M, I don't know. In this case, it's Inquisitor!Schiff doing the honours, and I can finally remember his character's name: Fisher.
I could quibble about the likelihood of Abby's relations making it out of Minsk after all, but I'm not going to. BTW, do you think Charlie is right when he speculates this was Akley's doing, since he asked him whether there was something that could be done? If so, it adds posthumously to Akley's characterisation, just as the visit Liza pays to his widow, Rose, suddenly makes Rose into a character and gives us a glimpse at the Winters and the Akleys having known each other all the way back in Chicago. (Again: I just wish we'd gotten bits and pieces of this earlier - Liza running into Rose at the hospital, say, or trying to get her backup when she was investigating what was up with the bees etc.)
In any event, Abby's cousins making it to the US settles for Fisher the Inquisitor that Charlie is a spy, and we get more scenes of very contemporary relevance re: proving a negative. How every action, looked from a certain angle, can proclaim you guilty. Of course, Charlie did to something, though not what Fisher thinks he did, and when he's interrogated, there's the awareness he himself framed the repellent Tom (who was a groper, but not a spy) to suffer just this fate. It's also when the affair between Abby and Elodie finally comes to light, and the manner in which it does reminded me of one of the most revolting aspects of state surveillance and blackmail, the use of emotions as weapons to bludgeon someone into submission.
All of which looks like it will set up Charlie for the flash forward from the second episode when he's on the run with something that looks like plutonium, but no. In a thematically sound decision that brings us back to the start and the question what drives Frank more, the need of the many or the need to justify his own decisions/ego, Frank - maybe for the greater good (i.e. he thinks Charlie can contribute more to the project), maybe because of the guilt of Akley's suicide, maybe at least part of Charlie's current difficulties are due to him - takes the fall for both his and Charlie's actions (with the late Akley also framed, but he's dead and won't mind) in a way that exonorates Charlie. I figured out Frank's confession to Liza was really for the camp surveillance before they showed us the flashback. Not because I thought he didn't mean it when he said "I love you"; actually, I think he does. But there was no way he'd break the secrecy now, after Helen had just told him the guards had already come after Charlie, solely to tell Liza what Manhattan is really about. He'd never put the need to share with her above what he sees as the greater good. There is something both admirable and chilling about that, if you think about it. (And the visual of Frank talking to the bug - the implication that all the houses are bugged - hammered home again how anything private and personal is not allowed to exist as such in a self created surveillance state.)
Also: Liza leaving the room while Frank is still in the true part of his confession. At first I thought they were painting Liza as too naive here, because notwithstanding the efficiency of the atom bomb, which at that point was only speculative: bombing civilian populations in cities was already practiced by both sides a plenty. (And didn't, in the end, more people die in the "traditional" fire bombings of Tokyo than did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Immediately, I mean, not counting the radioactive aftermath. I seem to recall something like that from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara, who as a very young man was involved in said firebombings of Tokyo, mentions that if the Axis powers had won the war Curtis LeMay and his staff, including young McN., would have been indicted as war criminals for those.) But then I thought: no, she left because of Frank's naivete, because he said that the mere test demonstration of a devastating weapon like this would mean Germany and Japan would have to surrender, and it would never have to be used and usher in an era of peace at last. Frank, as a veteran of the previous "war to end all wars" , should know better, and we're brought full circle, also, with the Fritz Haber comparison from early in the season, the weaponizing of gas.
So Charlie ends up as the new leader of the implosion team while Frank gets transported away to parts unknown, and I have no idea what this will mean to the next season. Otoh: since they made such a great deal out of the terrible consequences should the Frank-Charlie conspiracy get discovered, and since Frank took the blame for that, then by the rules of the show he shouldn't come back. Which unfortunately would mean no more Liza, either, because why would and could she stay if her husband is deemed a security risk and lingers in some cell for the rest of the war? Otoh: why would they let Olivia Williams go when they still haven't used her nearly enough, and also when she's just been voted into the civilian council? I suppose they could handwave and have someone declare Frank is essential for the war effort and can return to the camp. Which would take some of the emotional power of his sacrifice. Hm, I really don't know where the show will go with this one, and honestly, I love not knowing and my tv being unpredictable.
Also: Meeks has always been the junior scientist with the least characterisation. However, what characterisation he did get beyond "harmless friendly team member" was that he was the most indignant, the most devastated by Syd being wrongly accused and killed as a spy in the pilot. Therefore, making Meeks the real spy (and there had to be one) not only makes emotional sense but also justifies his existence as a character in the ensemble.
In conclusion: definitely one of the smartest shows of the year, about complicated people and issues. So many pop culture stories treat WWII basically as the ultimate role playing game, clear cut good/evil issues, compromise with the other side impossible because the other side is bent on genocide and led by the embodiment of evil in the 20th century, therefore only dashing heroism on the Allies side. And so often it gets contrasted to the present with murky issues, endless wars, and ever shifting alliances and the impossibility to see anyone as the dashingly heroic side. Yet here is this show, picking up a very specific part of the homefront of the war seen as the "good war" in US public memory, and relates it directly to one of the most disturbing current day issues, the way state surveillance, "enhanced" interrogation and the giving up of liberties has become an accepted and even deemed necessary practice. Wow.