Manhattan 2.08
Dec. 4th, 2015 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which there are cons of all sorts of cons, and the people who run them.
You know, I spent part of the episode grumbling about how I'm so not onboard with Special Snowflake Frank, the only scientist who can solve all the Manhattan Project's problems and how this ruins the ensemble approach to science and what not, but I'm TOTALLY on board with Smart Bastard Frank who created the problem in the first place so Charlie would have to ask him for help, because Charlie and Colonel Darrow are primed to believe only Frank could provide the solution. Also, the show set this up fairly while also providing red herrings - i.e. the audience is led to think the problem was created by Jim Meeks as an act of sabotage, or possibly was genuine, and yet we've all seen Frank and army pal working on detonators through the last few episodes. So, well done, show!
Paul not having truly spied for King and Country but having reported the original recruitment approach by his not!father-in-law to Darrow, working as a double (for the US, or does this make him a triple?) ever since, was another thing I should have seen coming, because of Darrow's "eh" reaction to Abby reporting the Paul-Constance telephone shenanigans. Someone as paranoid as Darrow WOULD have taken this far more seriously - if he hadn't been already informed and on top of the whole thing.
Speaking of Darrow, this (non romantic, so do we call mentorly?) thing with Abby here is shown to work both ways for the first time, when she asks him to let her see Charlie's father in the name of Jewish family reunions, and he actually obliges. Which, btw, is also smarter than Charlie's refusal to as much as talk about the whole thing, because the encounter disillusions Abby pretty quickly re: her father-in-law's motives and ensures far more efficiently that she won't want to see him again than a non-encounter would have. It also is yet another version of the ongoing theme of various people being aware of the post war use of the Manhattan project and trying to make money of it. The thing is: only a few minutes later, we see Helen's new beau from the patent office making a very similar pitch to her, not about the nuclear bomb (but then Isaacs Sr. doesn't know there is one, either, he just has his educated guess Charlie is working on a war important weapon), but about using her scientific knowledge gained in war to make cash by letting the oil industry commercialize it. Helen doesn't say yes (yet?), but she's visibly flattered. And yet the only difference to what Isaacs Snr. proposes is that he wants to go into arms trading, not oil trading. Well, that, and the way he tries to use Abby's earlier voiced emotions: re: Jewish solidarity in the face of the Holocaust, which I guess is what clinches it for her and makes her go from wanting to know him to being disgusted with him.
(BTW, note that Abby has learned her lesson re: secrets - she doesn't give away what Charlie's actually working on even while still wanting to connect to her father-in-law.)
Isaacs Snr. in reply to Abby mentioning her knowledge he used Charlie as a boy to run his schemes tells her Charlie as a man sprang the trap for the cops to him and is such a good liar that even he, Isaacs Snr. the professional, had no idea. Here I'm not sure whether or not the audience wants us to agree with him, because the thing is, in s1 Charlie wasn't a good liar at all. He was the first of the scientists to cave and tell his wife about the project, his big lie about plagiarization didn't hold long, Abby figured out he was attracted to Helen, then cheating on her with her in no time flat, and Fisher would have had him pinned (correctly) as the department sharing information flood if Frank hadn't intervened. In s2 Charlie's a bit better re: lies, i.e. he still hasn't let on to anyone how things really went down with Frank in s1, or his own involvement re: Jean Tatlock, though he hints at it a bit in his conversation with Frank about how "sacrificing a few to save more" becomes to dominating that you don't even remember anymore what your original goal was. But still, at the end of the episode we find out one of our two main fictional physicists on this show has been lying through the episode, and it wasn't Charlie. It was Frank.
Though given Charlie's father is a con man, the already more than evident fact that Charlie is projecting daddy issues on Frank gives that a layer of its own.
Meanwhile, in my favourite subplot, Jim Meeks predictably is full of guilt and self loathing re: the late Jeanie but keeps it together better than Fritz, who is downright suicidal. My problem in the scene with Nora was the logistics: why would Nora the Communist spy note her estimations down (uncoded, readable for everyone) in a book that's just lying around in her quarters? She's supposed to be a professional, not someone who got into the spying game relatively recently like Jim! My suspension of disbelief, it broke. This said, it was a good scene emotionally, not least because it's both possible that Nora was telling the truth (especially since I'm assuming Klaus Fuchs still exists in this 'verse, so there IS another physicist who is a spy for the Russians on the hill), and that she's lying to keep Jim Meeks on her side. (That she herself has positive feelings for Meeks was evident in her scene with her handler last week, but that wouldn't exclude this estimation.) If only they would have found a less ridiculous plot device for the scene to exist! But seriously, the mere existenc of a spy diary for Nora is stupid, and it being written uncoded and just lying around... ARGH. James Bond is more realistic than that, people!
Anyway, it fits with the general theme of people lying to each other through the episode. Jim himself, of course, is lying to Fritz and yet isn't (nothing he says is factually untrue, he's just leaving out the horrible truth) and has turned into an excellent liar.
Anachronism alert: not sure, but Frank's feelings re: the Japanese strike me that way. Not just because of US wartime propaganda but because of Japan actually waging a ruthless war in the Pacific, which even Europe-oriented Frank would have been aware of. True, the Japanese never had an atomic bomb project, but Frank in his argument with Charlie comes across as very present day, or at least the way the scientists felt after Hiroshima, not before. And what's this about "massacring civilians" as a new shocking idea? What did Frank think happened in every single conventional style air bombing in Europe, no matter whether the Germans bombed British cities or the Allies bombed German cities? I haven't looked it up yet, but since we're now in the spring of 1945, on the day of Hitler's death, didn't the firebombings of Tokyo already happen? More people died in them than there were to die in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
You know, I spent part of the episode grumbling about how I'm so not onboard with Special Snowflake Frank, the only scientist who can solve all the Manhattan Project's problems and how this ruins the ensemble approach to science and what not, but I'm TOTALLY on board with Smart Bastard Frank who created the problem in the first place so Charlie would have to ask him for help, because Charlie and Colonel Darrow are primed to believe only Frank could provide the solution. Also, the show set this up fairly while also providing red herrings - i.e. the audience is led to think the problem was created by Jim Meeks as an act of sabotage, or possibly was genuine, and yet we've all seen Frank and army pal working on detonators through the last few episodes. So, well done, show!
Paul not having truly spied for King and Country but having reported the original recruitment approach by his not!father-in-law to Darrow, working as a double (for the US, or does this make him a triple?) ever since, was another thing I should have seen coming, because of Darrow's "eh" reaction to Abby reporting the Paul-Constance telephone shenanigans. Someone as paranoid as Darrow WOULD have taken this far more seriously - if he hadn't been already informed and on top of the whole thing.
Speaking of Darrow, this (non romantic, so do we call mentorly?) thing with Abby here is shown to work both ways for the first time, when she asks him to let her see Charlie's father in the name of Jewish family reunions, and he actually obliges. Which, btw, is also smarter than Charlie's refusal to as much as talk about the whole thing, because the encounter disillusions Abby pretty quickly re: her father-in-law's motives and ensures far more efficiently that she won't want to see him again than a non-encounter would have. It also is yet another version of the ongoing theme of various people being aware of the post war use of the Manhattan project and trying to make money of it. The thing is: only a few minutes later, we see Helen's new beau from the patent office making a very similar pitch to her, not about the nuclear bomb (but then Isaacs Sr. doesn't know there is one, either, he just has his educated guess Charlie is working on a war important weapon), but about using her scientific knowledge gained in war to make cash by letting the oil industry commercialize it. Helen doesn't say yes (yet?), but she's visibly flattered. And yet the only difference to what Isaacs Snr. proposes is that he wants to go into arms trading, not oil trading. Well, that, and the way he tries to use Abby's earlier voiced emotions: re: Jewish solidarity in the face of the Holocaust, which I guess is what clinches it for her and makes her go from wanting to know him to being disgusted with him.
(BTW, note that Abby has learned her lesson re: secrets - she doesn't give away what Charlie's actually working on even while still wanting to connect to her father-in-law.)
Isaacs Snr. in reply to Abby mentioning her knowledge he used Charlie as a boy to run his schemes tells her Charlie as a man sprang the trap for the cops to him and is such a good liar that even he, Isaacs Snr. the professional, had no idea. Here I'm not sure whether or not the audience wants us to agree with him, because the thing is, in s1 Charlie wasn't a good liar at all. He was the first of the scientists to cave and tell his wife about the project, his big lie about plagiarization didn't hold long, Abby figured out he was attracted to Helen, then cheating on her with her in no time flat, and Fisher would have had him pinned (correctly) as the department sharing information flood if Frank hadn't intervened. In s2 Charlie's a bit better re: lies, i.e. he still hasn't let on to anyone how things really went down with Frank in s1, or his own involvement re: Jean Tatlock, though he hints at it a bit in his conversation with Frank about how "sacrificing a few to save more" becomes to dominating that you don't even remember anymore what your original goal was. But still, at the end of the episode we find out one of our two main fictional physicists on this show has been lying through the episode, and it wasn't Charlie. It was Frank.
Though given Charlie's father is a con man, the already more than evident fact that Charlie is projecting daddy issues on Frank gives that a layer of its own.
Meanwhile, in my favourite subplot, Jim Meeks predictably is full of guilt and self loathing re: the late Jeanie but keeps it together better than Fritz, who is downright suicidal. My problem in the scene with Nora was the logistics: why would Nora the Communist spy note her estimations down (uncoded, readable for everyone) in a book that's just lying around in her quarters? She's supposed to be a professional, not someone who got into the spying game relatively recently like Jim! My suspension of disbelief, it broke. This said, it was a good scene emotionally, not least because it's both possible that Nora was telling the truth (especially since I'm assuming Klaus Fuchs still exists in this 'verse, so there IS another physicist who is a spy for the Russians on the hill), and that she's lying to keep Jim Meeks on her side. (That she herself has positive feelings for Meeks was evident in her scene with her handler last week, but that wouldn't exclude this estimation.) If only they would have found a less ridiculous plot device for the scene to exist! But seriously, the mere existenc of a spy diary for Nora is stupid, and it being written uncoded and just lying around... ARGH. James Bond is more realistic than that, people!
Anyway, it fits with the general theme of people lying to each other through the episode. Jim himself, of course, is lying to Fritz and yet isn't (nothing he says is factually untrue, he's just leaving out the horrible truth) and has turned into an excellent liar.
Anachronism alert: not sure, but Frank's feelings re: the Japanese strike me that way. Not just because of US wartime propaganda but because of Japan actually waging a ruthless war in the Pacific, which even Europe-oriented Frank would have been aware of. True, the Japanese never had an atomic bomb project, but Frank in his argument with Charlie comes across as very present day, or at least the way the scientists felt after Hiroshima, not before. And what's this about "massacring civilians" as a new shocking idea? What did Frank think happened in every single conventional style air bombing in Europe, no matter whether the Germans bombed British cities or the Allies bombed German cities? I haven't looked it up yet, but since we're now in the spring of 1945, on the day of Hitler's death, didn't the firebombings of Tokyo already happen? More people died in them than there were to die in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
