Manhattan 2.06
Nov. 18th, 2015 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which, after last week's bizarre interlude, quality and good storytelling is back.
And so is emotional continuity. Abby seeing the miscarriage as a punishment for her guilt connects the before-last-episode established storyline to the new one. For added continiuity bonus, we get Paul referencing Eloise to her, and Abby trying to rediscover her faith offers the opportunity to introduce some new facts about Colonel Darrow; he's a) a Jew (since he mentioned having missed her at Seder) and b) a religious one. Meanwhile, Darrow's predecessor, not in terms of rank but role in the show in the form of Richard Schiff is back as a ghost, or rather, as the latest of Frank's hallucinations.
It made me realise that I'm totally on board with how the show explains Frank's mental reasonings via giving him head!people - head!Liza when he figured out the army had been lying to him re: the German nuclear project, and now head!Fisher to realise why Darrow wanted him to circulate the petition. Neither choice of imaginary person is random but makes sense given what Frank is contemplating at the time. And of course, it's always good to see Richard Schiff in action. When the show opened with Fisher's body being found, I thought the episode would be written around a manhunt and Jim Meeks getting increasingly more desperate, but no, Meeks has yet to learn the body was found at all, and instead the found body triggers Frank's thought process re: Darrow's machinations.
Speaking of which: first direct J. Edgar Hoover reference in the show, I think. And that was a clever way to use this particular contemporary element, because yes, of course anyone signing such a petition would make themselves an F.B.I. target and would afterwards be accused of being part of a Communist cell. (Which Nora knew, and that was why she didn't want Meeks to sign it, as he realised when Frank gave his big speech.)
Speaking of Nora: her describing The Mikado as racist and Meeks later seeking reassurance from Fritz who says Gilbert and Sullivan were men of their time was one of the show's most blatantly anachronistic moments. I mean, these are all characters living in a world where every day anti Japanese propaganda included incredibly racist cartoons and where Japanese Americans had been put into camps. Most likely, all of the characters, including the socialists, would have been referring to the Japanese as "Japs" without even considering this could be taken as racism. And if it's very implausible that Nora the Communist would critique The Mikado on racial caricature grounds (she's more likely to see Gilbert & Sullivan as decadent Imperialist propaganda), it defies belief that Fritz would use the "men of their time/different times" phrase, implicitly conceding the point but offering a very 21st century explanation. (Not to mention that Victorian Britain felt a whole lot more friendly towards Japan than the wartime US did, for obvious reasons.)
I haven't googled yet whether or not the scientists weren't originally supposed to be part of the target choosing committee; I seem to recall they were, not least because they had to provide calculations for the effect the bomb would have on various possible cities. Anyway, I don't think anything like Frank's speech and the resulting demonstration ever happened, but it was ic for Frank and the other characters as presented by the show, and letting it occur just when Darrow gets the news of Roosevelt's death, only to derail by said news, cleverly explains why it didn't make the history books in the show's 'verse.
Mind you: I hope the implication isn't meant to be that Roosevelt might not have used the nuclear bomb on a city (as opposed to a demonstration an an island or what not) and that Truman was a pawn of the military. Harry "The buck stops here" Truman owned his decisions, including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ones, and nothing I ever read about Roosevelt made me believe he'd have decided differently in this particular question.
And to go back to the beginning: Frank trying to spread the word via Helen at first is far more in tune with the previous show than last week's behavior. The only problem is that the time jump means he's doing it months after he's likely to have done it, but there we go.
Fritz and Liza collaborating because of (well founded) radiation worries and Liza squaring off with Darrow was another continuity goodness to her storyline from last season. It also makes me wonder whether the show is using it as a set up for Liza being present during Trinity.
And so is emotional continuity. Abby seeing the miscarriage as a punishment for her guilt connects the before-last-episode established storyline to the new one. For added continiuity bonus, we get Paul referencing Eloise to her, and Abby trying to rediscover her faith offers the opportunity to introduce some new facts about Colonel Darrow; he's a) a Jew (since he mentioned having missed her at Seder) and b) a religious one. Meanwhile, Darrow's predecessor, not in terms of rank but role in the show in the form of Richard Schiff is back as a ghost, or rather, as the latest of Frank's hallucinations.
It made me realise that I'm totally on board with how the show explains Frank's mental reasonings via giving him head!people - head!Liza when he figured out the army had been lying to him re: the German nuclear project, and now head!Fisher to realise why Darrow wanted him to circulate the petition. Neither choice of imaginary person is random but makes sense given what Frank is contemplating at the time. And of course, it's always good to see Richard Schiff in action. When the show opened with Fisher's body being found, I thought the episode would be written around a manhunt and Jim Meeks getting increasingly more desperate, but no, Meeks has yet to learn the body was found at all, and instead the found body triggers Frank's thought process re: Darrow's machinations.
Speaking of which: first direct J. Edgar Hoover reference in the show, I think. And that was a clever way to use this particular contemporary element, because yes, of course anyone signing such a petition would make themselves an F.B.I. target and would afterwards be accused of being part of a Communist cell. (Which Nora knew, and that was why she didn't want Meeks to sign it, as he realised when Frank gave his big speech.)
Speaking of Nora: her describing The Mikado as racist and Meeks later seeking reassurance from Fritz who says Gilbert and Sullivan were men of their time was one of the show's most blatantly anachronistic moments. I mean, these are all characters living in a world where every day anti Japanese propaganda included incredibly racist cartoons and where Japanese Americans had been put into camps. Most likely, all of the characters, including the socialists, would have been referring to the Japanese as "Japs" without even considering this could be taken as racism. And if it's very implausible that Nora the Communist would critique The Mikado on racial caricature grounds (she's more likely to see Gilbert & Sullivan as decadent Imperialist propaganda), it defies belief that Fritz would use the "men of their time/different times" phrase, implicitly conceding the point but offering a very 21st century explanation. (Not to mention that Victorian Britain felt a whole lot more friendly towards Japan than the wartime US did, for obvious reasons.)
I haven't googled yet whether or not the scientists weren't originally supposed to be part of the target choosing committee; I seem to recall they were, not least because they had to provide calculations for the effect the bomb would have on various possible cities. Anyway, I don't think anything like Frank's speech and the resulting demonstration ever happened, but it was ic for Frank and the other characters as presented by the show, and letting it occur just when Darrow gets the news of Roosevelt's death, only to derail by said news, cleverly explains why it didn't make the history books in the show's 'verse.
Mind you: I hope the implication isn't meant to be that Roosevelt might not have used the nuclear bomb on a city (as opposed to a demonstration an an island or what not) and that Truman was a pawn of the military. Harry "The buck stops here" Truman owned his decisions, including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ones, and nothing I ever read about Roosevelt made me believe he'd have decided differently in this particular question.
And to go back to the beginning: Frank trying to spread the word via Helen at first is far more in tune with the previous show than last week's behavior. The only problem is that the time jump means he's doing it months after he's likely to have done it, but there we go.
Fritz and Liza collaborating because of (well founded) radiation worries and Liza squaring off with Darrow was another continuity goodness to her storyline from last season. It also makes me wonder whether the show is using it as a set up for Liza being present during Trinity.
