Manhattan 2.09
Dec. 9th, 2015 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which several characters go Macbeth on us, and I discover (again) I have a double standard.
To wit: last episode, I grumbled that Frank's horror at the idea of using the gadget on a civilian population is wildly anachronistic given that by the spring of 1945, practically every German city (lots of civilians) had been bombed (if want to read a truly gruesome eye witness count, check out Kurt Vonnegut, who witnessed the bombing of Dresden as a POW), and that the fire bombing of Tokyo, using conventional weapons only, either already had or soon would kill more people than both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (at least if we count the ones who died immediately). I'm not saying that characters living in that time couldn't/wouldn't be shocked, but they wouldn't have seen it as something new, something the Allies hadn't done before, a moral line yet to be crossed. (The documentary about Robert McNamara, The Fogs of War, has him talking about the bombing of Tokyo specifically, which he was involved in as a young man serving under Curtis Le May, and he says that if the Allies had not won the war, it would have been treated as a war crime, because it was. He also regarded it as necessary.)
However, when in this episode Charlie, in full Macbeth "I've steeped in blood so far" mood, makes his culminating argument about using the gadget not on a military target but on a densely populated city because of the death toll, I didn't grumble at all, and it's just as historically questionable. (Especially since Charlie gets to predict that using the bomb on humans this once (Nagasaki: always forgotten) will ensure it won't be used again, which is of course the conclusion a lot of people have drawn since.) In fact, instead of grumbling, I thought: this is the right pay off for Charlie's arc. Maybe the difference is that Frank's shock last episode is part of his season long heroification, whereas Charlie behaving as if "bomb a city full of people" was a new idea at that point is part of his show long development from naive idealist to ultimate "the end justifies the means" guy (while retaining a twisted version of idealism, i.e. the need to believe that the end really is the world where war no longer happens).
I'm also on board with the show, after leaving it ambiguous until that point whether Jean Tatlock committed suicide or was murdered, settled down on "she was killed", for the same reason. Following the professional reviews of the show, I kept being surprised no one seemed to remember the scene between Charlie and Darrow and everyone was treating it as a given that Abby's (understandable) belief she drove Jean to suicide was correct. Granted, Abby's guilt was the one we actually saw on display for several episodes after, but if the show hadn't intended to do something with it, I doubt they would have included the Charlie and Darrow scene to begin with. This was when Charlie stepped over the line, when he decided to kill an innocent was justified by the overall result, and so it's only fittting that the episode where the truth about Jean Tatlock's death finally catches up with him is the one where he comes to the conclusion that thousands would have to die in order to justify everything that happened so far and to achieve that war free world after all.
Abby's response to her own sense of guilt had been to find ways to atone for it, the latest being trying to contact Jean Tatlock's family, and, it's similarly narratively fitting that this quest is what leads her, via the contact with Jean Tatlock's father, to figure out the truth. Mind you, it was movie cliché style foolish to confront Darrow (telling someone you think he murdered someone, without witnesses to back you up, when he has the power to do the same to you is usually a surefire way to get you killed), but luckily for Abby's survival, Darrow doesn't need to get her killed, since he has Charlie on tape. (Another foreshadowing of the Cold War age and the world the show's events are truly creating.) The show doesn't make Abby into a saint: that both Darrow and Charlie let her believe that she was solely responsible for Jean's death, that emotional betrayal, is visibly impacting her nearly as much as realising they're both responsible for a murder. But she is willing to break the cycle. This is why the interlude with Isaacs Snr. needed to be in the previous episode. Note that Abby says to Charlie, re: their son, "he needs to be protected from you just as you should have been protected from your father", i.e. she sees Charlie's moral decline as partly started via having the father he did without excusing him with this. Since Abby doesn't let herself off the hook, either (her actions could have let to Jean's death), I was even a bit reminded of the fantastic Walt and Skyler scene in the Breaking Bad episode 51. It's not quite on that level, but then Walt and Skyler had seasons more of development.
Both Isaacs' have scenes with Robert Oppenheimer, who comes back to the show on screen for the first time since the Jean Tatlock episode: Abby early in the episode, when she tells him what she's found out via Jean's father only to realize Oppenheimer had that suspicion since eons but had tried not to know for sure (btw, how did the scriptwriter resist using the name "Heisenberg" in Robert Oppenheimer's little speech about uncertainty?) in order to continue, and Charlie late, during his big speech and after when Oppenheimer confronts him. Both scenes in very little actual screentime for Oppenheimer gave the actor who plays him more to do, acting wise, than the entire show so far. The one with Abby where he goes from lecturing to brittle to this short of breaking in the space of a short monologue was great, and you could see the moment in which Oppenheimer realizes Charlie's personal involvement in Jean's death during Charlie's speech just by the expression in his face. Given that show!Oppenheimer, when he did show up, usually did so with a bland non-expression, the Jean episode excluded but even there mostly, I had no idea the actor had it in him, and I draw my non-existant hat. Well done, Sir.
In other subplots, characters get to confront their inner monster as well, and their loyalties (again). Paul, having thrown his lot in with Uncle Sam, is drafted into Darrow's interrogation of Nora's handler, where he also meets a character not seen since episode 2.2., i.e. Frank Winters' fake fellow prisoner, "Joe". Who turns out to be a psychiatrist, which irresistably brings to mind the psychiatrists involved in the current day C.I.A's torture, excuse me, "enhanced interrogation" program. Given he's then revealed as a co-founder of the not yet existing C.I.A. ("a more centralized organisation"), I think it's a very deliberate allusion. At any rate, the actor is still great, and I'm glad the character is back, sinister as he is. (Though still with some ambiguity; telling Frank about his mother in Alabama can be an indirect threat, or information because Frank told him about his mother, or both.)
Paul starts the episode certain of his loyalties and of having made the right decision, and Victor the Russian Handler's attempt to persuade Paul into enabling him to commit suicide badly misfires, since it tips Paul off and set him on the course that will allow him to identify Jim Meeks as the spy eventually. But the sight of Darrow's "interrogation" methods (and their lethal result) and "Joe"'s casual lecture on the various ways to stage a suicide while doing just that (as well as Joe being an example of a scientist using his expertise without ethics and in total service of the state) leave him so shaken that when Paul HAS figured out it was Meeks, he doesn't go to Darrow; he goes with Frank, with whom he hasn't shared screen time since season 1 and with whom he always had the most tense relationship among the members of Frank's original team. I'm really looking forward to finding out how that will work out; their scenes were always great, and I can't tell how Frank will respond, not that Frank will have much time to respond, since Helen just reported him to Darrow on another matter.
The preceding Helen and Frank scene was a welcome return to non-romantic scenes with Helen, and for Frank scenes in which he's a high handed jerk not presented as being in the right. Also a logical follow up. As Helen said, she put herself on the line for Frank a lot, believed in him, and for all his big talk about principles, he never deigned to share the truth with her. I also love that it was Helen who figured out (as Charlie didn't) that Frank created the whole situation last episode in order to make himself into the problem solver, and that this was but one of an ongoing series of sabotage acts.
Meanwhile, in spy country: Nora correctly predicts Victor won't break and give them away; his early "confession" was a neat misleading the audience moment until the name he gave, which was the dead (and hence unable to be harmed) Sid Lao. This isn't reassuring to Jim Meeks, but it's still better than the hammer of a conclusion Nora later draws, after Victor is dead: her new idea that instead of just sabotaging the Trinity test so it doesn't happen, Jim should sabotage it so it happens too early and kills all the scientists on site. It's the mirror scene to Charlie's big argument in front of the committee, with the same coup de grace (kill these people, and no one will ever die this way again), and given both Charlie and Nora are responsible for the death of a woman before that, it occurs to me they're mirror characters here. Also reverse mirrors: Nora's argument is "kill your friends, save the many more innocent strangers" while Charlie's is "kill the innocent strangers, save our kids in the future".
At a guess, and never mind history (in which the Trinity test doesn't kill anyone): Jim won't be able to go through with this, but he will try to commit suicide by Trinity, which will be prevented by Paul.
Liza's "fallout" scene (where she gets to invent the term), complete with spooking the scientists with muffins, was neat, but it also reminded me that Liza since the time jump has had no scenes that connected with me as deeply as everyone else's did, which is a pity.
Next: Trinity, I presume. And given his storyline in this show, it ought to be Charlie who gets to say "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds".
To wit: last episode, I grumbled that Frank's horror at the idea of using the gadget on a civilian population is wildly anachronistic given that by the spring of 1945, practically every German city (lots of civilians) had been bombed (if want to read a truly gruesome eye witness count, check out Kurt Vonnegut, who witnessed the bombing of Dresden as a POW), and that the fire bombing of Tokyo, using conventional weapons only, either already had or soon would kill more people than both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (at least if we count the ones who died immediately). I'm not saying that characters living in that time couldn't/wouldn't be shocked, but they wouldn't have seen it as something new, something the Allies hadn't done before, a moral line yet to be crossed. (The documentary about Robert McNamara, The Fogs of War, has him talking about the bombing of Tokyo specifically, which he was involved in as a young man serving under Curtis Le May, and he says that if the Allies had not won the war, it would have been treated as a war crime, because it was. He also regarded it as necessary.)
However, when in this episode Charlie, in full Macbeth "I've steeped in blood so far" mood, makes his culminating argument about using the gadget not on a military target but on a densely populated city because of the death toll, I didn't grumble at all, and it's just as historically questionable. (Especially since Charlie gets to predict that using the bomb on humans this once (Nagasaki: always forgotten) will ensure it won't be used again, which is of course the conclusion a lot of people have drawn since.) In fact, instead of grumbling, I thought: this is the right pay off for Charlie's arc. Maybe the difference is that Frank's shock last episode is part of his season long heroification, whereas Charlie behaving as if "bomb a city full of people" was a new idea at that point is part of his show long development from naive idealist to ultimate "the end justifies the means" guy (while retaining a twisted version of idealism, i.e. the need to believe that the end really is the world where war no longer happens).
I'm also on board with the show, after leaving it ambiguous until that point whether Jean Tatlock committed suicide or was murdered, settled down on "she was killed", for the same reason. Following the professional reviews of the show, I kept being surprised no one seemed to remember the scene between Charlie and Darrow and everyone was treating it as a given that Abby's (understandable) belief she drove Jean to suicide was correct. Granted, Abby's guilt was the one we actually saw on display for several episodes after, but if the show hadn't intended to do something with it, I doubt they would have included the Charlie and Darrow scene to begin with. This was when Charlie stepped over the line, when he decided to kill an innocent was justified by the overall result, and so it's only fittting that the episode where the truth about Jean Tatlock's death finally catches up with him is the one where he comes to the conclusion that thousands would have to die in order to justify everything that happened so far and to achieve that war free world after all.
Abby's response to her own sense of guilt had been to find ways to atone for it, the latest being trying to contact Jean Tatlock's family, and, it's similarly narratively fitting that this quest is what leads her, via the contact with Jean Tatlock's father, to figure out the truth. Mind you, it was movie cliché style foolish to confront Darrow (telling someone you think he murdered someone, without witnesses to back you up, when he has the power to do the same to you is usually a surefire way to get you killed), but luckily for Abby's survival, Darrow doesn't need to get her killed, since he has Charlie on tape. (Another foreshadowing of the Cold War age and the world the show's events are truly creating.) The show doesn't make Abby into a saint: that both Darrow and Charlie let her believe that she was solely responsible for Jean's death, that emotional betrayal, is visibly impacting her nearly as much as realising they're both responsible for a murder. But she is willing to break the cycle. This is why the interlude with Isaacs Snr. needed to be in the previous episode. Note that Abby says to Charlie, re: their son, "he needs to be protected from you just as you should have been protected from your father", i.e. she sees Charlie's moral decline as partly started via having the father he did without excusing him with this. Since Abby doesn't let herself off the hook, either (her actions could have let to Jean's death), I was even a bit reminded of the fantastic Walt and Skyler scene in the Breaking Bad episode 51. It's not quite on that level, but then Walt and Skyler had seasons more of development.
Both Isaacs' have scenes with Robert Oppenheimer, who comes back to the show on screen for the first time since the Jean Tatlock episode: Abby early in the episode, when she tells him what she's found out via Jean's father only to realize Oppenheimer had that suspicion since eons but had tried not to know for sure (btw, how did the scriptwriter resist using the name "Heisenberg" in Robert Oppenheimer's little speech about uncertainty?) in order to continue, and Charlie late, during his big speech and after when Oppenheimer confronts him. Both scenes in very little actual screentime for Oppenheimer gave the actor who plays him more to do, acting wise, than the entire show so far. The one with Abby where he goes from lecturing to brittle to this short of breaking in the space of a short monologue was great, and you could see the moment in which Oppenheimer realizes Charlie's personal involvement in Jean's death during Charlie's speech just by the expression in his face. Given that show!Oppenheimer, when he did show up, usually did so with a bland non-expression, the Jean episode excluded but even there mostly, I had no idea the actor had it in him, and I draw my non-existant hat. Well done, Sir.
In other subplots, characters get to confront their inner monster as well, and their loyalties (again). Paul, having thrown his lot in with Uncle Sam, is drafted into Darrow's interrogation of Nora's handler, where he also meets a character not seen since episode 2.2., i.e. Frank Winters' fake fellow prisoner, "Joe". Who turns out to be a psychiatrist, which irresistably brings to mind the psychiatrists involved in the current day C.I.A's torture, excuse me, "enhanced interrogation" program. Given he's then revealed as a co-founder of the not yet existing C.I.A. ("a more centralized organisation"), I think it's a very deliberate allusion. At any rate, the actor is still great, and I'm glad the character is back, sinister as he is. (Though still with some ambiguity; telling Frank about his mother in Alabama can be an indirect threat, or information because Frank told him about his mother, or both.)
Paul starts the episode certain of his loyalties and of having made the right decision, and Victor the Russian Handler's attempt to persuade Paul into enabling him to commit suicide badly misfires, since it tips Paul off and set him on the course that will allow him to identify Jim Meeks as the spy eventually. But the sight of Darrow's "interrogation" methods (and their lethal result) and "Joe"'s casual lecture on the various ways to stage a suicide while doing just that (as well as Joe being an example of a scientist using his expertise without ethics and in total service of the state) leave him so shaken that when Paul HAS figured out it was Meeks, he doesn't go to Darrow; he goes with Frank, with whom he hasn't shared screen time since season 1 and with whom he always had the most tense relationship among the members of Frank's original team. I'm really looking forward to finding out how that will work out; their scenes were always great, and I can't tell how Frank will respond, not that Frank will have much time to respond, since Helen just reported him to Darrow on another matter.
The preceding Helen and Frank scene was a welcome return to non-romantic scenes with Helen, and for Frank scenes in which he's a high handed jerk not presented as being in the right. Also a logical follow up. As Helen said, she put herself on the line for Frank a lot, believed in him, and for all his big talk about principles, he never deigned to share the truth with her. I also love that it was Helen who figured out (as Charlie didn't) that Frank created the whole situation last episode in order to make himself into the problem solver, and that this was but one of an ongoing series of sabotage acts.
Meanwhile, in spy country: Nora correctly predicts Victor won't break and give them away; his early "confession" was a neat misleading the audience moment until the name he gave, which was the dead (and hence unable to be harmed) Sid Lao. This isn't reassuring to Jim Meeks, but it's still better than the hammer of a conclusion Nora later draws, after Victor is dead: her new idea that instead of just sabotaging the Trinity test so it doesn't happen, Jim should sabotage it so it happens too early and kills all the scientists on site. It's the mirror scene to Charlie's big argument in front of the committee, with the same coup de grace (kill these people, and no one will ever die this way again), and given both Charlie and Nora are responsible for the death of a woman before that, it occurs to me they're mirror characters here. Also reverse mirrors: Nora's argument is "kill your friends, save the many more innocent strangers" while Charlie's is "kill the innocent strangers, save our kids in the future".
At a guess, and never mind history (in which the Trinity test doesn't kill anyone): Jim won't be able to go through with this, but he will try to commit suicide by Trinity, which will be prevented by Paul.
Liza's "fallout" scene (where she gets to invent the term), complete with spooking the scientists with muffins, was neat, but it also reminded me that Liza since the time jump has had no scenes that connected with me as deeply as everyone else's did, which is a pity.
Next: Trinity, I presume. And given his storyline in this show, it ought to be Charlie who gets to say "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds".
