Manhattan - General Discussion

[Fat Elvis 007]

I haven't seen this yet, but I'm not surprised Olivia Williams is the best part of it. She was the best part of "Dollhouse," too.

[ganesh]

I get he's under immense strain, but so is everyone else, and they're able to stay fairly civil to one another. He's a jackass to everyone.

 

Because they're like that. It's not a reason, but I know/knew people like that. I try to remember so I'm not like that. 

 

I guess that was supposed to be Charlie Isaacs getting a little of his own medicine.

 

That seemed to be the point for me. Especially since Frank, the guy who rejected Charlie's paper, was the one who solved it. Not quite so washed up.

 

I want the team to find out about him selling out Sidney.

 

As much as Frank is an ass, he didn't really do anything wrong. Sid stole classified work and Frank reported him. Sid knew what he was doing was wrong. It's harsh, but if I'm Frank I'm not losing my job and having my career discredited for colluding with a spy, who wasn't a spy, but no one is going to care in the long run. 

[Flame Princess]

Yeah, Phys-erys Targaryen would definitely be within his rights to flip the bird to everyone and join the Thin Man. ( I have to admit that seeing Harry Lloyd play a relatively nice guy, after the last two roles of his were both bastard-coated bastards with an airy bastard filling, is...confusing.) But I really disagree with the way the article characterizes Winters' daughter, who makes the adventures of Kim Bauer and the cougar seem like riveting television. "Don't pretend to know anything about me just because you put a bullet in my dad's mathematician" is a candidate for the worst angsty teen dialogue ever.

[shapeshifter]

...I really disagree with the way the article characterizes Winters' daughter, who makes the adventures of Kim Bauer and the cougar seem like riveting television. "Don't pretend to know anything about me just because you put a bullet in my dad's mathematician" is a candidate for the worst angsty teen dialogue ever.

I'm not impressed with her character either, but I *loved* that line for Sid's sake (may the character RIP), and Alexia Fast did deliver it at least adequately.

[Catherinewriter]

Shapeshifter, agreed.

Don't know how Frank can live with himself. I wonder if there's going to be some form of karma for his snitching on Sid, even though Frank knew Sid was no f--king spy.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Catherinewriter

[Rhetorica]

Toby's back, bound and determined to find all deviants; he's the hunter of the prey, be it deer or grouse. 

Babbitt will not win in this situation. USA was the beacon of freedom at this time but we know the history of our country. We certainly weren't progressive then. And I'm not sure we're all that progressive now. 

Why is there Colony Collapse Disorder in the camp already?

Charlie's looking for a girlfriend not a one night stand. Interesting that women are worth eight times as much as a lightbulb. 

The song "Someone to Watch Over Me" has a whole new meaning now...

[Ripley68]

I think it's a little early for the US to be so paranoid about communism.  That didn't really take off till 1944/45ish or later.  I'm surprised by wonder boy's wifes reaction.  I wouldn't be so upset about learning hubby plagerized that it would jeopardize my marriage.  Upset that Frank is knocking boots with the housemaid.

[merylinkid]

The US was terrified of communism in the 1930s.   One of the reason they ignored the threat of HItler for so long was that he was a bulwark against communism. 

[NorthstarATL]

I think it's a little early for the US to be so paranoid about communism.  That didn't really take off till 1944/45ish or later.  I'm surprised by wonder boy's wifes reaction.  I wouldn't be so upset about learning hubby plagerized that it would jeopardize my marriage.  Upset that Frank is knocking boots with the housemaid.

So much of who is is predicated on how brilliant he is, and plagiarism calls all of that into question. I can see it. I liked Mrs. Williams' storyline finally picking up a bit, but was annoyed that she was either so naive or so unconcerned about her housekeeper's welfare that she would have her smuggle mail in that atmosphere.

[dubbel zout]

I'm surprised by wonder boy's wifes reaction.  I wouldn't be so upset about learning hubby plagarized that it would jeopardize my marriage.

I thought Abby's reaction was a bit much, too. I get she idolizes Charlie's smarts, but if something like that is what's going to bust up the marriage, they have some problems.

 

I wonder if that paragraph was why Frank rejected Charlie's dissertation. I'm kind of surprised he didn't say something much earlier so Charlie could fix it—either give a citation or rewrite it. But maybe that's not how it works.

 

I loved Frank telling Abby "Gesundheit!" in the hallway. That was practically the first smile we've seen from him.

 

I didn't see it coming that Babbitt is gay. I would think as long as he's discreet, it wouldn't make any difference. The communism is probably the bigger issue right now.

 

Mrs. Williams'

 

Dr. Winters. ;-)

Edited August 25, 2014 by dubbel zout

[Skycatcher]

According to Charlie, Frank's outside line phone call "telling his dad" about the plagiarized paragraph was intended for Abby's eavesdropping ears.  How did Frank know she'd be the operator handling the call? Too many tiny coincidences like this.

[PepperMonkey]

Yeah, I don't like that Frank's having an affair with the housekeeper either, although I figured when she lovingly caressed his face last episode or the one before, that it was headed there.

I was pissed that Dr. Mrs. Winter's bees were dead and I don't know why. It's not like they actually killed bees, but I hate animal cruelty or death in almost any form onscreen, even when I know it's not real.

I'm liking this show but I don't like Frank and/or Charlie so I'm not sure who I'm supposed to root for on the bomb front. Love seeing Daniel Stern as Babbitt and was glad he's okay so far, although with this show, you're kind of always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Like everyone else, I didn't understand why Charlie's wife reacted so violently to his possible plagiarism. Does she come from a family of academics? Because I know in academia, plagiarism is the unpardonable sin. If not, then her "not being able to look at him" was a little over the top. I'm pretty sure that plagiarism IS the reason Frank wasn't high on his paper as they discussed at their initial meeting; I remember Frank saying something to the effect of "it's not new."

Edited August 25, 2014 by PepperMonkey

[dubbel zout]

How did Frank know she'd be the operator handling the call?

Maybe she covers the pay phone? It makes sense to me that the operators are assigned to listen in to specific lines. (Though I don't know if that's technically possible with what they were using back then.)

[Broderbits]

Given the rampant gossiping among the wives, it didn't really matter who heard the call; the info would inevitably get to Charlie's wife. Speaking of Charlie, I don't care how brilliant he's supposed to be, he's still a standout douche in a whole town full of them. 

 

I don't think it was colony collapse that killed the bees. From Dr. Winters' conversation with the army guy, I gathered either he had it done or one of the complainers did.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Broderbits

[Rhetorica]

I don't think it was colony collapse that killed the bees. From Dr. Winters' conversation with the army guy, I gathered either he had it done or one of the complainers did.

Oh, I connected it to the odd colored flower Dr. Winters found and assumed they were both from contaminated soil. But that wouldn't make sense, since the soil wouldn't be contaminated at this point would it?

[mjc570]

Man, I wish something good would happen to at least one of these characters,  Well, in addition to the "husky" guy buying himself a girlfriend.

 

My DVR cut out in the last minute or so - it was the guy (??) with the hat walking down a hallway.  Did anything happen?

[JodhaBai]

 

 

My DVR cut out in the last minute or so - it was the guy (??) with the hat walking down a hallway.  Did anything happen?

 

It was the same guy following Frank earlier.  He was reporting to Richard Schiff's character and the ep ended with him saying "he's with her again"

[bentley]

mjc570, The guy with the hat was the old man who was following Frank at the beginning of the episode. He was heading for Richard Schiff's office (sorry don't know his character's name). He tells Richard something like, "He's with her again" and it cuts to Richard's face. He's got Frank in his sights.

 

I'm really starting to hate this Richard Schiff character. He's  nasty and suspicious and relentless and he can't be reasoned with. He doesn't really seem to want the truth. He just wants, in the immortal words of Wilford Brimley in Absence of Malice, to "leave with somebody's ass in his briefcase." I'm scared for Frank now. The only thing may save him is if he and his team have a breakthrough on their bomb.

 

I liked that the show stayed true to its era. Coming out as a homosexual or as a commie. Not sure what would have been worse in that environment. It rang true that although Frank would do everything in his power to save his mentor, he still wasn't comfortable with his sexuality. He let Babbitt know that they would not be sharing sentimental reminiscences of his past loves.

[mjc570]

Thanks, JodhaBai and bentley -  :) 

[Ripley68]

I was just thinking of the McCarthy era, it  came after the war.  Yea, the fear would have been there.  totally bought the fear of homosexuality..  Did the plutonium have that kind of effect in real life?

[pasdetrois]

I love that the Manhattan Project story is being told. I love the New Mexico scenery - bleak as it can be - and the period details. I really appreciate the writers' challenge of helping lugheads like me understand all the technical stuff enough to comprehend the challenges the teams faced.

 

However, Frank as tortured martyr who stomps in and out of every scene is turning me completely off.  Charlie's wife jumping Charlie's bones non-stop is annoying too. In fact, except for the botanist, the wives' story isn't very interesting, and it could be.

 

The lone woman on the physicist teams could be a very interesting character. I work with physicist genius types every once in a while, and it can still be an insufferable boys club.

[Julie23]

I am fascinated with the science, but like others here, I am having trouble rooting for Frank.  He is just not a nice person. I like Charlie and Frank's wife the best. Loved the visiting scientist.  I think it's strange how in history books Oppenheimer gets all the "credit" for the bomb, but he hardly seems to be involved in any of the science behind it.

[Latverian Diplomat]

I think it's a little early for the US to be so paranoid about communism.  That didn't really take off till 1944/45ish or later.  I'm surprised by wonder boy's wifes reaction.  I wouldn't be so upset about learning hubby plagerized that it would jeopardize my marriage.  Upset that Frank is knocking boots with the housemaid.

On anti-communism, There are always hardcore anti-communists around. It's probably more accurate to think of their power and influence as waxing and waning in various time periods. In this period, their power was on the wane, because of the need to maintain good relations with the Soviet Union and because many of them had said admiring things about Mussolini and Hitler before the war and they were treading lightly. So, while someone like Schiff poking around is reasonable, his ability to make or break key project scientists seems overblown.

 

Plagerism is among the biggest academic sins (at the end of the day, credit is how researchers are really paid for their efforts). But more importantly, I'm sure that Frank made it sound as horrible as possible. The maybe flaw in his plan is that if Frank was criticizing a fellow project member by name on an outside line, wouldn't that have been flagged for review?

 

For that matter, I'm surprised that Frank just turned down Charle's paper without flagging the plagiarism in his feedback. He might even have contacted Charlie's adviser about something like that, I should think.

 

 Now a little nerdish speculation: As to the paper itself, the French author might have been a fictionalized Georges Lemaître, who was by no means obscure. He did foundational work on the Big Bang, but did not get into the nucleosynthesis portion of it. That work was done after the war by Ralph Alpher. And even though this paper made Charlie's career, Alpher never got the recognition he deserved, in part because of a "prank." His adviser and co-author Gamow added the very  famous Hans Bethe to the author list as a joke so it could be known the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow ("alpha beta gamma") paper.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpher%E2%80%93Bethe%E2%80%93Gamow_paper

 

Alpher also co-authored a paper that same year, 1948, that (indirectly) predicted the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, but sadly did not share the 1978 Nobel that Penzias and Wilson received for detecting it. The guy just couldn't catch a break.

[shapeshifter]

Upset that Frank is knocking boots with the housemaid.

More so because Mrs. Dr. Winter might teach her English, and Frank likes to talk to the maid about the project because he assumes she does not understand English.

...Like everyone else, I didn't understand why Charlie's wife reacted so violently to his possible plagiarism. Does she come from a family of academics? Because I know in academia, plagiarism is the unpardonable sin. If not, then her "not being able to look at him" was a little over the top.

She knows that plagiarism would be the kiss of death to his career, and thereby the end to her own happiness. It would be like having a husband who was a professional trader on Wall Street, and finding out he was dealing in insider trading.

...I'm liking this show but I don't like Frank and/or Charlie so I'm not sure who I'm supposed to root for on the bomb front....

Given what we know about the huge civilian death toll from the bombing of Japan, I appreciate that they don't paint them with the brush of altruism.

mjc570, The guy with the hat was the old man who was following Frank at the beginning of the episode. He was heading for Richard Schiff's office (sorry don't know his character's name). He tells Richard something like, "He's with her again" and it cuts to Richard's face. He's got Frank in his sights....

It's kind of amusing that the guy in the hat (actor Bruce McIntosh) is credited as "Samaritan" because he pretended to be one by offering to help with the car. He even identified him self as "Andrew Carnegie," well-known philanthropist--a not-so veiled hint to Winter that he was trying to do him a favor by letting him know that he was watching him and that Winter would be wise to end the affair.

Interesting contrast between Charles being able to publish a paper with a plagiarized paragraph but Liza has her original research redacted/censored.

Edited August 27, 2014 by shapeshifter

[dubbel zout]

Interesting contrast between Charles being able to publish a paper with a plagiarized paragraph but Liza has her original research redacted/censored.

 

I don't think Charlie's paper was actually published, was it? Isn't that the bone of contention between him and Frank? And anyway, he wrote it before the war, whereas Liza tried to submit her paper while at Los Alamos.

 

I understand her frustration with the censorship, but I also think she's being a little naive. Her research is based on studying the plants at Los Alamos. Her results could easily, inadvertently give away what's going on there if the right people read the paper. And if she's as well-known as we've been led to believe, that could be possible. Not to mention, she publishes under her married name, and Frank is well-known in the scientific community.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Liza's stubbornness starts to cause some major headaches for Frank.

Edited August 27, 2014 by dubbel zout

[seamusk]

It's kind of amusing that the guy in the hat (actor Bruce McIntosh) is credited as "Samaritan" because he pretended to be one by offering to help with the car. He even identified him self as "Andrew Carnegie," well-known philanthropist--a not-so veiled hint to Winter that he was trying to do him a favor by letting him know that he was watching him and that Winter would be wise to end the affair.

I don't think he introduced himself as Andrew Carnegie.  He just joked, "My wife wants an electric blender for Christmas.  What am I, Andrew Carnegie?"  I watched it twice because the Carnegie mention caught my attention and I sort of missed what he was saying the first time.

[shapeshifter]

I don't think he introduced himself as Andrew Carnegie.  He just joked, "My wife wants an electric blender for Christmas.  What am I, Andrew Carnegie?"  I watched it twice because the Carnegie mention caught my attention and I sort of missed what he was saying the first time.

That does make more sense, but it could still be a hint that he's doing Frank a favor.

[OnceSane]

 

Frank seeks medical answers; Charlie and Helen travel to survey an off-site reactor.

 

[some1105]

I took it as him saying "She wants a radio.  What does she think I am, rich?"  Crediting him as the Samaritan, to me, makes more sense as a reference to him, supposedly, stopping to help a possibly stranded motorist.  Crediting him as "Richard Schiff's henchman" would be a plot spoiler.

 

Charlie's paper was published.  It was rejected first by the journal Frank worked with, but it was published.  That's part of the dialogue between Charlie and Frank--Charlie insisted that he hadn't realized that he had used another scientist's work word-for-word until after the paper was published, by which time it was too late to fix the problem (which would have been as easy as providing a citation) without torpedoing himself publicly.

[anniebird]

I thought it was jarring when Frank said he "crashed" at a friend's house - I don't think the word took on that meaning until the sixties when a "crash pad" became a thing.

[dubbel zout]

Charlie's paper was published.  It was rejected first by the journal Frank worked with, but it was published.  That's part of the dialogue between Charlie and Frank--Charlie insisted that he hadn't realized that he had used another scientist's work word-for-word until after the paper was published, by which time it was too late to fix the problem (which would have been as easy as providing a citation) without torpedoing himself publicly.

 

Thanks for this clarification, some1105.

[ganesh]

I don't understand the math and science involved, so I like the occasional asides from characters letting me know this is complicated stuff I'm looking at.

 

I do understand, and it seems right to me. I'm not parsing every technical detail, but Charlie was talking to Bohrs about the gun-style bomb and I got it right away. 

 

I'm rooting for Frank because he's right. I liked the flashbacks to WWI and how it tied with Bohrs war weariness. Is it big enough that no one would use it? That's why Charlie isn't in that same tier with Bohrs and Frank. He's not getting the big picture. 

 

I think it's strange how in history books Oppenheimer gets all the "credit" for the bomb, but he hardly seems to be involved in any of the science behind it.

 

It's not like he doesn't know the science. He's the one making the call on whether to go with the Thin Man or what will be Fat Man. 

[Rhetorica]

Aha!  I connected the bee collapse and the odd colored flower Dr. Winters found to contaminated soil, but thought the soil wouldn't be contaminated yet, but it is! Frank is still an ass. 

[Broderbits]

Frank's sins don't seem so bad after the sight of those children being doused with DDT. The nonchalance with which the "expendables" are treated is scary.

[Rhetorica]

Frank's sins don't seem so bad after the sight of those children being doused with DDT. The nonchalance with which the "expendables" are treated is scary.

I remember in the early 1960′s running behind the DDT trucks. Everyone did; it was a nightly game in urban areas. It was touted as safe even then. 

[shapeshifter]

I remember in the early 1960′s running behind the DDT trucks. Everyone did; it was a nightly game in urban areas. It was touted as safe even then.

I wasn't allowed out after supper, but I remember watching the other neighborhood kids riding their bikes in the cloud of "mosquito spray" being given off by a truck that drove down each street. Maybe that was a cause of cancer deaths among my non-smoking classmates in their 40s.

And maybe that's why I found this entire episode riveting.

How about you young whippersnappers? Was this a snoozer or a thriller for you too?

Is there going to be a meltdown wherever Charlie and ...is it Helen? are? This is a two parter.

Interesting that the character of Helen doesn't have a last name on IMDb. I loved her interaction with the African American scientist. At first I thought she was just interested in jumping his bones--perhaps as a scientific inquiry--but then I figured the point was that to be a woman or a person of color involved in the project meant you had to be light years (pun appropriate) ahead of most of the other white men.

In the cold open we see the Nazi facility--also chilling to someone of my age...others too?--and then later we (and Frank) are shown the progress report of their work. Were their advanced equations really being applied? It was a pristine facility in comparison to the Manhattan project, but we didn't see much actual work being performed.

IIRC, in the real Manhattan project, they did switch and go with the bomb design that could be completed before the Germans'.

Was Liza Winter just being catty when she told Abby that Charles was taking the trip with a woman, or did she think she was doing her a favor?

Edited September 1, 2014 by shapeshifter

[meisje]

I found the blind circle leading back to Dr. Gyno as the foremost expert on radiation quite fascinating. As with the themes of the general population as lab rats, it certainly all still applies today, only then, there was nowhere near as great a presence of chemical and pharmaceutical corporations, or lobbyists. It's interesting that everyone is fiercely looking to grab power at any level (and ultimately, to be responsible for) dangerous, unknown and disastrous things. 

 

 

Was Liza Winter just being catty when she told Abby that Charles was taking the trip with a woman, or did she think she was doing her a favor?

 

I'm tempted to say both, though Olivia WIlliams runs circles around Rachel Brosnahan (for me, Abby is one of the less effective actors in the cast), so I'm not sure if the complexity I get is from the Liza character or Olivia's characterization.  

 

 

In the cold open we see the Nazi facility--also chilling to someone of my age...others too?--and then later we (and Frank) are shown the progress report of their work.

 

This managed to actually pull me right out of the show and history itself and reminded me completely of the Madrigal reveal in Breaking Bad. 

[Latverian Diplomat]

In the cold open we see the Nazi facility--also chilling to someone of my age...others too?--and then later we (and Frank) are shown the progress report of their work. Were their advanced equations really being applied? It was a pristine facility in comparison to the Manhattan project, but we didn't see much actual work being performed.

IIRC, in the real Manhattan project, they did switch and go with the bomb design that could be completed before the Germans'.

 The Nazi program was never close to testing a weapon. And it was never funded at anywhere near the levels of the Manhattan project. The Nazis felt that the time required to develop a bomb wouldn't lead to a weapon in time. They put more resources into their V2 and jet aircraft research, and even those came too late to have any impact on the course of the war. 

 

I don't know if the Nazis leaked any misleading intelligence about their progress to the Allies. But the Allies were quite understandably fearful of it. There was an active program with the Norwegian underground to prevent the Germans from obtaining heavy water produced with Norway's abundant hydropower, including the sinking of a ferry that had some civilian passengers.That last story is one of those tragedies of war where it was unquestionably the right thing to do, given the information the Allies had, but in retrospect it was unnecessary.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Hydro#Sinking

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hydro/

Edited September 1, 2014 by Latverian Diplomat

[dubbel zout]

Is there going to be a meltdown wherever Charlie and ...is it Helen? are?

 

They're in Oak Ridge, where the "product," as uranium was called, was processed. IRL there was no accident then.

 

I wish we got more information about Helen. She supposedly has more degrees than the rest of the team combined, but besides that, all we know is that she's single and has a healthy sexual appetite. I loved Charlie telling the Oak Ridge douche to listen to "his wife." Hee.

 

I found the blind circle leading back to Dr. Gyno as the foremost expert on radiation quite fascinating.

I really liked that, too. The government knows the elements are dangerous enough that it doesn't want to take proper responsibility. It's rather chilling.

[merylinkid]

HOW were they in Oak Ridge with a black scientist?   Although a Federal reservation, they decided to allow segretation on base.   White folks could have their families, but black folks couldn't.   White folks lived in houses or dorms, black folks in shacks.   Black folks were the maintenance and cleaning staff.   One RL black scientist went to Chicago instead of Oak Ridge just to avoid the racism there.

[NorthstarATL]

I find that watching "historical" dramas tends to feel like watching a documentary about less advanced civilizations before the advent of multiculturalism: you have to make allowances for the superiority felt by the filmmakers. It's fascinating that the Government is shown to be both rights-be-damned intrusive AND negligent toward those under their auspices at the same time. And to realize that we've still not struck a decent balance these many decades later. In the interest of National Security, we once again have Government collecting data on us, but we have totally turned around the neglect to the point that it takes years to get approval for life saving drugs, but the Government is concerned with our basic diet.

   I wonder also about the choice to show uniformed service people having sex with the scientific staff (pun not intended), but only the females being depicted as whores.

Edited September 1, 2014 by NorthstarATL

[Ripley68]

Would radioactive man really have no clue that he was in serious danger from inhaling and swallowing the plutonium?  I would think a nuclear physicist would know he was SOL.

[shapeshifter]

HOW were they in Oak Ridge with a black scientist?   Although a Federal reservation, they decided to allow segretation on base.   White folks could have their families, but black folks couldn't.   White folks lived in houses or dorms, black folks in shacks.   Black folks were the maintenance and cleaning staff.   One RL black scientist went to Chicago instead of Oak Ridge just to avoid the racism there.

Didn't the large white guy send him off to do a menial task? Maybe he is officially in a custodial position, but took the job to be where the science was taking place.

Would radioactive man really have no clue that he was in serious danger from inhaling and swallowing the plutonium?  I would think a nuclear physicist would know he was SOL.

I don't know, but one would expect in the next episode to see him looking like the radiation victims from the 1980s film, The Day After.

[MiamiGuy]

Would Radioactive Man's illness happen that quickly though or would it be more the case of developing some horrible, aggressive form of cancer months or years later?

 

Are any of the characters beyond Oppenheimer based on any real person? I know little about the Manhattan Project so, for me, it makes for good drama without having to worry about historical accuracy. But I wonder if perhaps the African-American character is based on the experiences of someone who was there. I'm sure in doing research for the show, the show runners came across interesting tidbits that may not have been previously widely known. It may seem anachronistic but, as there are always unsung pioneers in every era pushing boundaries in every walk of life, there could be some truth there.

[shapeshifter]

From http://atomicinsights.com/how-deadly-plutonium/

Accidental Ingestion Studied

During the Manhattan Project in 1944 and 1945, 26 men accidentally ingested plutonium in quantities that far exceeded what is now considered to be a lethal dose. Since there has been a consistent interest in the health effects of this brand new substance (first discovered by Glenn Seaborg’s team at the University of California in 1940), these men were closely tracked for medical studies.

Forty Years Later

As of 1987, more than four decades later, only four of the workers had died and only one death was caused by cancer. The expected number of deaths in a random sample of men the age of those in the group is 10. The expected number of deaths from cancer in a similar group is between two and three.

[merylinkid]

 

Maybe he is officially in a custodial position, but took the job to be where the science was taking place.

Except everything was incredibly comparmentalized.    If you were official a custodian, you knew NOTHING.   You never got near the science.   If you were near the science, they stopped talking until you left.   The cleaners just cleaned and didn't know they what they were cleaning.   The girls working the calutrons just knew to watch the dials but didn't know what was happening.   The number crunchers crunched numbers.   Most of the people didn't even know they were working on the Bomb until after it was dropped.   There was none of this "let's just give you a job to get your here, then work around the regs to have you involved" crap.  Not unless you wanted a visit from the men in suits.   A black scientist would have been in Chicago or Hanford, maybe Los Alamos, but definitely not Oak Ridge Tennessee in the 1940s.   

[Latverian Diplomat]

Would radioactive man really have no clue that he was in serious danger from inhaling and swallowing the plutonium?  I would think a nuclear physicist would know he was SOL.

Well, at that time, they just didn't know, which is part of the point of the whole exercise with Frank and the phone circle.

 

But experiments after the war established the lethal dose is measured in tens of miligrams. They are working with micrograms, which are a thousand times smaller. Also, the body doesn't readily absorb Pu from the digestive tract. Inhalation is a lot more dangerous than ingestions, but given how much they were recovering from his stomach contents, he appears to have inhaled only a small fraction of their already tiny amount.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Medical_experimentation

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity

Edited September 1, 2014 by Latverian Diplomat

[buckboard]

The black scientist at Oak Ridge appears to be creative license.  The few black scientists and technicians who worked on the Manhattan Project were mostly in Chicago and at Columbia University, according to the article below:

 

http://www.blackpast.org/aah/black-history-month-special-feature-2012-scientists-and-technicians-manhattan-project
 

Edited September 2, 2014 by buckboard

[mjc570]

My favorite part of the episode was the dinner party of Frank, Liza and Glenn. You could tell they were old friends with a lot of history. I was surprised to see that Frank was such a good cook.

[OnceSane]

 

Helen and Charlie deal with a crisis; Abby embarks on a journey of self-discovery.