Manhattan 2.04
Nov. 6th, 2015 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which Mr. and Mrs. Isaacs find out the price of meddling in the affairs of historical physicists.
I knew the show would use Jean Tatlock's suicide as a plot element since they included Oppenheimer's affair with her last episode, but I didn't know precisely how. (In the three fictional versions I've watched, the way it's used usually goes thusly: Groves gives Oppenheimer a "stop seeing your decade long on/off Commie girlfriend, or else!" ultimatum, Oppenheimer caves and tells Jean he can't see her anymore, Jean committs suicide.) Once more, that was clever, show. Also the red herring of the first fifteen minutes or so making it look as if Charlie, like not just Abby but everyone else assumed, really did want and was gunning for Oppenheimer's job made me go "hm, not sure that was a good plot idea, because everyone knows he won't get it because Charlie's fictional and Oppenheimer is not, so where's the suspense in that?" Cue show proving me wrong by letting Charlie lay out what he really wanted. And lo, it was another example of the morality play this show excells at.
At the end of this episode, both Abby and Charlie have reason to believe they're guilty of Jean Tatlock's death. Abby because of her phonecall to her in which she pretended to be Kitty Oppenheimer, which she now thinks drove Jean to kill herself, and Charlie because he point blank told Darrow to deal with Jean as the army dealt with Frank Winters, and at this point Charlie actually believes Frank is dead. (You can be charitable and say that Charlie might have told himself he just wanted the army to make Jean disappear by locking her up at a secret location, but, well... see his "but I thought you were dead!" exclamation upon seeing Frank in the very last scene. And he did explicitly make the Frank Winters comparison to Darrow.) They both acted for different reasons - Abby from a mixture of motives ranging from ambition to a certain degree of identification with Kitty, Charlie because THE PROJECT MUST SUCCEED in order to save the world from the German nuclear bomb. Which is why the episode ending with Frank showing up at Charlie's is such a masterstroke, because we know what Frank will tell Charlie, who just has according to his own knowledge committed murder or at least actively contributed to the death of a human being, for the sake of the Manhattan Project.
In order to get him and Abby to this point, the show makes a major detour from or at least unusual interpretation of historical circumstance by letting Oppenheimer plan to a) leave his wife for Jean and b) leave the Manhattan Project altogether not just because of Jean but because of having doubts. As far as I know, though I am no expert, neither was a serious possibility. (Though I suppose you could always argue everyone involved would have a vested interest to present it otherwise post Trinity.) This also serves to flesh out the show's version of Oppenheimer somewhat more as a character, and while the show is at it, it also answers the question itself has provoked, to wit, what does their Oppenheimer actually do for the Project since some of what the historical one did is given to their fictional characters. (Manhattan answer: salesmanship and keeping the political and financial funding coming. Fair enough.) It's the type of liberty in historical fiction which works for me, because it accomplishes something for the characters in the show's narrative. Their guilt (and the great thing about this construction of events is that it doesn't matter whether Abby's or Charlie's assumption re: Jean Tatlock's death are right - and even if she killed herself simply out of emotional instability/depression, whatever, it doesn't change what the Isaacs' did in their own heads) gives both Charlie and Abby now a downright Macbethian reason to want the Manhattan project to succeed. It HAS to have been worth it.
Meanwhilel, the other married couple of the show has of course come just to the opposite conclusion. I was a bit confused at first, because I thought Liza's visit to Einstein that concluded the last episode had been a flash forward to 1945, while the main show timeline is still in 1944. Turns out the visit to Einstein happened directly after Liza was smuggled off hill in 1944, and it succeeds, via Einstein petitioning Eleanor Roosevelt, in freeing Frank. Who is grateful but has a new obsession: to return to Los Alamos in order to tell everyone the truth re: the supposed German nuclear bomb plans. Proving, however, he did learn from last season, he ends up leaving the decision for this in the hands of the understandably appalled Liza. I loved their scenes together, but I had serious trouble suspending my disbelief once the episode was over and I was no longer in the emotion of the moment. Okay, Eleanor Roosevelt would be able to get Frank out of a supersecret army location, but why didn't Frank have to sign dozens of papers swearing he wouldn't reveal anything to anyone? Why didn't the army and/or US intellegence send someone to keep an eye on him and Liza? And after all the big deal about being trapped in Los Alamos if you don't have a friendly guard to smuggle you out, are we to believe Frank was able to re-enter so easily? The next episode better clear this up.
The episode also brings back several things: for example, Helen competing with Theo; the way the first season made the uncomfortable and dramatically very effective point that them both being members of a discriminated minority - her as a woman, him as a man of colour - doesn't stop them being played out against each other, and that Helen, for all her understanding of this, ends solidarity where it would interfere with the job advancement she wants to badly - was one of the things that kept me hooked about the show).
Also Paul's backstory with his arch nemesis, and his attempt to piss said arch nemesis off enough to get fired and thus out of the project which instead results in him getting the assignment that both Helen and Theo wanted, precisely because their new superior knows how much Paul wants to be fired. Thus are the ways of petty office politics, and they are, off course, extra galling for everyone involved.
The only one of the younger physicists who's having a reasonably good day is Jim Meeks, whose scenes with Nora the Communist fellow spy continue to be golden. I could get behind that relationship, especially since Nora is such a mistress of snark ("naming your daughter after a land war; it's adorable"), and "we may not be in love, but we're the only ones who know the truth about each other in a very dangerous situation" downright sounds like The Americans backstory. :)
In conclusion: while I still await some better post facto explanations in the Winters' storyline, see above, this was another great episode.
I knew the show would use Jean Tatlock's suicide as a plot element since they included Oppenheimer's affair with her last episode, but I didn't know precisely how. (In the three fictional versions I've watched, the way it's used usually goes thusly: Groves gives Oppenheimer a "stop seeing your decade long on/off Commie girlfriend, or else!" ultimatum, Oppenheimer caves and tells Jean he can't see her anymore, Jean committs suicide.) Once more, that was clever, show. Also the red herring of the first fifteen minutes or so making it look as if Charlie, like not just Abby but everyone else assumed, really did want and was gunning for Oppenheimer's job made me go "hm, not sure that was a good plot idea, because everyone knows he won't get it because Charlie's fictional and Oppenheimer is not, so where's the suspense in that?" Cue show proving me wrong by letting Charlie lay out what he really wanted. And lo, it was another example of the morality play this show excells at.
At the end of this episode, both Abby and Charlie have reason to believe they're guilty of Jean Tatlock's death. Abby because of her phonecall to her in which she pretended to be Kitty Oppenheimer, which she now thinks drove Jean to kill herself, and Charlie because he point blank told Darrow to deal with Jean as the army dealt with Frank Winters, and at this point Charlie actually believes Frank is dead. (You can be charitable and say that Charlie might have told himself he just wanted the army to make Jean disappear by locking her up at a secret location, but, well... see his "but I thought you were dead!" exclamation upon seeing Frank in the very last scene. And he did explicitly make the Frank Winters comparison to Darrow.) They both acted for different reasons - Abby from a mixture of motives ranging from ambition to a certain degree of identification with Kitty, Charlie because THE PROJECT MUST SUCCEED in order to save the world from the German nuclear bomb. Which is why the episode ending with Frank showing up at Charlie's is such a masterstroke, because we know what Frank will tell Charlie, who just has according to his own knowledge committed murder or at least actively contributed to the death of a human being, for the sake of the Manhattan Project.
In order to get him and Abby to this point, the show makes a major detour from or at least unusual interpretation of historical circumstance by letting Oppenheimer plan to a) leave his wife for Jean and b) leave the Manhattan Project altogether not just because of Jean but because of having doubts. As far as I know, though I am no expert, neither was a serious possibility. (Though I suppose you could always argue everyone involved would have a vested interest to present it otherwise post Trinity.) This also serves to flesh out the show's version of Oppenheimer somewhat more as a character, and while the show is at it, it also answers the question itself has provoked, to wit, what does their Oppenheimer actually do for the Project since some of what the historical one did is given to their fictional characters. (Manhattan answer: salesmanship and keeping the political and financial funding coming. Fair enough.) It's the type of liberty in historical fiction which works for me, because it accomplishes something for the characters in the show's narrative. Their guilt (and the great thing about this construction of events is that it doesn't matter whether Abby's or Charlie's assumption re: Jean Tatlock's death are right - and even if she killed herself simply out of emotional instability/depression, whatever, it doesn't change what the Isaacs' did in their own heads) gives both Charlie and Abby now a downright Macbethian reason to want the Manhattan project to succeed. It HAS to have been worth it.
Meanwhilel, the other married couple of the show has of course come just to the opposite conclusion. I was a bit confused at first, because I thought Liza's visit to Einstein that concluded the last episode had been a flash forward to 1945, while the main show timeline is still in 1944. Turns out the visit to Einstein happened directly after Liza was smuggled off hill in 1944, and it succeeds, via Einstein petitioning Eleanor Roosevelt, in freeing Frank. Who is grateful but has a new obsession: to return to Los Alamos in order to tell everyone the truth re: the supposed German nuclear bomb plans. Proving, however, he did learn from last season, he ends up leaving the decision for this in the hands of the understandably appalled Liza. I loved their scenes together, but I had serious trouble suspending my disbelief once the episode was over and I was no longer in the emotion of the moment. Okay, Eleanor Roosevelt would be able to get Frank out of a supersecret army location, but why didn't Frank have to sign dozens of papers swearing he wouldn't reveal anything to anyone? Why didn't the army and/or US intellegence send someone to keep an eye on him and Liza? And after all the big deal about being trapped in Los Alamos if you don't have a friendly guard to smuggle you out, are we to believe Frank was able to re-enter so easily? The next episode better clear this up.
The episode also brings back several things: for example, Helen competing with Theo; the way the first season made the uncomfortable and dramatically very effective point that them both being members of a discriminated minority - her as a woman, him as a man of colour - doesn't stop them being played out against each other, and that Helen, for all her understanding of this, ends solidarity where it would interfere with the job advancement she wants to badly - was one of the things that kept me hooked about the show).
Also Paul's backstory with his arch nemesis, and his attempt to piss said arch nemesis off enough to get fired and thus out of the project which instead results in him getting the assignment that both Helen and Theo wanted, precisely because their new superior knows how much Paul wants to be fired. Thus are the ways of petty office politics, and they are, off course, extra galling for everyone involved.
The only one of the younger physicists who's having a reasonably good day is Jim Meeks, whose scenes with Nora the Communist fellow spy continue to be golden. I could get behind that relationship, especially since Nora is such a mistress of snark ("naming your daughter after a land war; it's adorable"), and "we may not be in love, but we're the only ones who know the truth about each other in a very dangerous situation" downright sounds like The Americans backstory. :)
In conclusion: while I still await some better post facto explanations in the Winters' storyline, see above, this was another great episode.
