Manhattan (2014) s01e01 Episode Script

On the eve of another Independence Day, let us all remember the price of the freedom we enjoy.
Along with those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, 113 local boys are unaccounted for in the Pacific theater.
They include Private James Daryl of Bloomfield.
Private Stuart Danforth Of Bloomfield.
Lance Corporal Francis R.
Peabody.
Private Hugo Bunker.
Corporal George Higgins.
Private First Class Son of a bitch.
That's got to be north.
Right? They said it would be just like Cambridge.
- Harvard with sand.
-You know, Daddy's offer still stands.
-It's a good job, Charles.
-It's a sales job.
God forbid.
You'd think a PhD was a vow of poverty.
You know, business is a science.
The recruiter said I could be the next Enrico Fermi.
He's like the Betty Grable of physics.
Well, no one ever heard of him.
Think of anyone heard of Galileo in 1590? I bet Galileo knew how to read a road map.
Oh.
Yeah, that's north.
Joey, come on.
Stay in the car.
- Next car, move up.
- Honey, stay in the car, okay? Excuse me.
Hi.
The circus in town? Just where is everybody going? P.
O.
box 1663.
- What's the place called? -It ain't.
No name, no street signs.
Welcome to nowhere.
All right.
Charlie, this doesn't look like Cambridge.
You can't work in your office like everybody else? Our group's on the chopping block and you're out till dawn playing putt-putt in the desert.
What makes a golf ball fly? Compression.
The club hits the ball, the rubber core compresses, the ball sails.
We're not talking about rubber.
We're talking about solid metal.
TNT yields pressures of 100,000 atmospheres.
We can super-compress the core of the bomb.
Higher density, less plutonium.
Oh, you son of a bitch.
Someone invented pie crust in a box? How is that not on the cover of The New York Times? The computers will need to stay all night.
And we'll need some equipment.
Some IBM machines for the hydrodynamics.
I'll be right back.
So is this all you got for corn? Yeah, we're cleared out for the Fourth of July.
Shipment's due from El Paso next Tuesday.
We can't grow our own corn on the Hill? You know the Indians have been planting maize out here for 5,000 years.
Army policy.
The ground's no good.
Oh, for heaven's sake.
Rangeland soil is full of potassium.
Ma'am, I'm sure your husband's got a brain the size of Kansas, but that ring on your finger doesn't make you a scientist.
No, four years at Barnard and a PhD in botany do.
I missed dinner.
And breakfast.
You know, most women would kill for a night off from their husbands.
Most women know what their husbands do at the office.
I'm not most women.
You certainly are not.
You've had a good night.
I'll be home later.
I promise.
This line gets longer every day.
Got your pass? Colonel's clamping down on security.
Probably got the MPs going through our trash at night.
Here we go.
Thank you.
- All right, thank you.
- Okay.
Would it kill you to say thank you? We need to start from scratch.
We'll rebuild the math from the ground up.
And we'll need a bigger staff, Glen, like 15, 20 guys.
- Where the hell are you going? - I'm gonna run it upstairs.
No, whoa.
Hey, whoa.
You can't just waltz into Oppenheimer's office with some chicken scratches on a cocktail napkin.
- Morning, gentlemen.
-Hey, good morning.
Akley, he wipes his ass and calls it a design.
Army writes him a check with six zeros.
Reed Akley shaves every day.
The only thing cleaner than his face is his math.
Well, it's too clean.
There's something wrong with Akley's bomb.
Forget Thin Man, okay? Forget Akley.
Hundred American kids have been buried since the last time we walked through that gate.
By tomorrow morning, there'll be 100 more.
And you want me to slow down? Of course not.
We've spent six months in the woodshed living off table scraps.
We both know our design is better than Akley's.
But if you go in there to persuade Oppenheimer half-cocked, it's finished.
Was that Frank Winter? Yeah.
I submitted my thesis to the Princeton physics journal when he was the editor.
Six peer reviewers backed it for publication.
- He rejected it.
-Well, don't take it personally.
He probably didn't even read it.
He work for Dr.
Akley, too? No.
No, he's got a band of misfits working on an alternate design.
Design for what? Forget Winter's group.
They're the farm league, Charlie.
You're joining the New York Yankees.
The white badge is your key to the castle.
Only scientists and Army brass get them.
Steno girls are allowed in the building, but they don't know squat.
GIs barely know what state they're in.
They all read your paper.
Passed it around like a Tijuana Bible.
You're looking at the best equipped lab in the country.
Two Van de Graaff accelerators, our own cyclotron, and the finest computers money can buy.
Computers, this is the youngest buck who ever won the Forbes prize.
Say hello to Charlie Isaacs.
Hi, Charlie.
No lying down on the job, girls.
We'll need you to answer some questions.
Everybody on the project's got to have security clearance.
What is the project? They still haven't told me.
I'll leave that to Dr.
Akley once we have your commitment.
How do I know what I'm committing to? Charlie, this is Shangri-La.
We've got the highest combined IQ of any town in America and more Jews than Babylon.
You'll be wined and dined by the US Army until Hitler and the Japs say uncle.
Who knows how long that'll be? Well, that all depends on us.
Say Oppenheimer picks Akley's design over ours, it's still possible they'll keep us around, right, as a backup plan? If a career falls in the desert and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Frank will figure something out.
Oh, come on.
We're wasting our time.
Akley's got a staff of 600 on Thin Man.
We've got six chaps.
One of them's a girl.
You're late! This was yesterday.
This is tomorrow.
Now, the math here is simple.
Only one variable matters.
Time.
It's gonna take a year to produce enough plutonium to make Akley's bomb.
But with a super-compressed core, I think we can shave a week off that timeline, maybe longer.
Now, the Army still hasn't decided which design they're gonna back yet, but they're going to any day now, and before they do, we need to prove how much time our model is gonna save them.
And Oppenheimer is leaving for D.
C.
tomorrow.
Yeah, so if we want to keep this group intact, we're gonna have to get some hard numbers in his hands before he gets on that plane.
Yeah, we're gonna miss dinner again, aren't we? - Fritz.
- So we're gonna scrap three months of work for the chance that we can save the Army one week? Somewhere in Germany, Hitler's got a town just like this one, full of scientists hungrier than you.
That week we save could be the week that matters.
- Yoo-hoo! Hello.
We're not snooping.
Hello.
- We're the welcome wagon.
- Oh.
This is Fay and Dot, and I'm Rose Akley.
- Abby.
-Her husband is your husband's boss.
Oh.
Oh.
Um Technically Reed is your husband's boss' boss.
But we don't stand on ceremony, do we, ladies? Thin walls.
She's built like a sparrow.
You think she's packed enough shoes? What church are you? Lutheran? Methodist? Physicist.
Charlie's god is Albert Einstein.
You're lucky with a toddler.
They ration the Indians.
You'll jump straight to the front of the line.
Just watch out the help doesn't smoke your husband's peace pipe.
Don't tell my Walter.
If the men can keep secrets, we're entitled to a few of our own.
What do you mean? Oh, you know, what they do behind their fences.
What are the men building? I hear they're building submarines and floating them down the Rio Grande.
Fay! They look like little convicts.
Head lice.
- What was that? -You're gonna love it here, really.
Super-compression.
Why didn't I think of that? 'Cause Frank's smarter than you by a factor of 14.
Not that it matters.
Akley's gonna win the war.
He'll probably win the Nobel Prize.
We'll still be crunching numbers.
Here, look at this.
Crosley, Fedowitz, Liao, Meeks, Prins, you need to come with us.
If this is about the colonel's horse, I had nothing to do with it.
Recognize this? Came out of your file cabinet.
There's pages missing.
Ooh, somebody better call Interpol.
You familiar with the Espionage Act? Whoever lawfully or unlawfully having access to or being entrusted with any document Whoa! Whoa! Espionage? No more wisecracks? You hear the one about the Chink in the electric chair? - What the hell's going on? - That's what we'd like to find out, sir.
We believe a member of your group is stealing secrets.
Get out.
Dr.
Winter, G-2 has credible intelligence that one All I've seen from the G-2 is an incredible lack of intelligence.
They haven't even told you what you're doing here, have they? Do you have any idea what you are looking at? - Sir, we're not here to debate science.
- That's not science.
That's the property of the government of the United States of America.
Our work is so classified, the Vice President doesn't know we exist.
As far as he's concerned, the Manhattan Project is a leaky tunnel on the IRT.
And yet you're gonna stand there, Sergeant First Class, with your J-3 security clearance, and you're gonna talk to me about protocol? You could be court-martialed for just opening that file.
This isn't finished.
I don't have time for this shit.
And neither do you, not today.
- You're crooked.
-Oh.
Thank you.
Dr.
Akley.
"A New Approach to Nuclear Cosmology.
" I Wish I'd written it.
I have not seen real bourbon since Pearl Harbor.
Well, I got friends in high places.
It's called a signing bonus.
Charlie Isaacs, tell me why you're here.
Sir? You drove 2,000 miles.
You uprooted your family to a state with more cattle than people.
- What do you want? -To serve my country.
I tried to enlist.
Flat feet.
Yeah, well, I think we can put your skills to better use.
We're waging a war of ideas.
Now, this war will be fought on the battlefield, but make no mistake that peace will be won with brains, not brawn.
Now, forget about code breaking, forget about meteorology, optics You're building an atomic bomb.
We prefer to call it a gadget.
I walk most of the new boys through the math, they still don't see it.
I was told I'd be working in a radar lab.
Well, I'm sorry for the smoke and mirrors.
We can't exactly advertise.
Dean Everett at Harvard says you're the quickest study he's seen in years.
He also says you want to help your people.
I understand you have family in Poland.
A bomb like that Um, gadget The burn radius would be miles wide.
The gamma rays alone would be impossible to Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
You can grow old and die writing white papers on field quantization.
A hundred savants will read your work, maybe 10 will understand it.
Or you can join my team and you can watch the apple fall with Newton.
Go home.
Go have dinner with your wife.
We need to finish running these numbers.
Leave that to the peanut gallery.
I mean it.
If this job kills you, Liza is gonna kill me.
You're not gonna believe this.
The water went out again.
They better fix it before tomorrow.
July 4th.
Frank, half the Hill is gonna be in our backyard and you know how they like to drink.
This is not the best week.
Well, I didn't set the date.
Take it up with Thomas Jefferson.
Frank.
Did you know people like to socialize on Independence Day? They like to stand around in the backyard and eat grilled meats and listen to John Philip Sousa.
Gracias.
And tomorrow, for one night, we're going to pretend we have a normal life.
You in the kitchen is the definition of abnormal.
But in the spirit of independence - No.
-No what? No, you can't go to school in New York.
But New York is the center of the world.
Yes, it is.
The world of cigarettes and premarital sex.
Apparently, Callie has sent in an application to the Chapin School.
Dad, Anna Roosevelt went there.
They have state-of-the-art science labs, it's right next door to the Metropolitan Museum.
Seven million people live in New York.
It's the most densely populated city in America.
Right on the Eastern Seaboard.
And? And the Army would never let you go.
So I'm just supposed to stay here in this prison camp? - Get knocked up by one of the guards? -Oh, don't be vulgar.
Why are we even here? Everything is a secret! It's Kafkaesque! Well, at least she's reading.
We've been working forever.
Barely made a dent.
These are for you.
Hey, what's the over-under on how much time we'll shave off Thin Man? I got a Mars bar that says 10 days.
You honestly think we're gonna outflank Reed Akley and a staff of 600 by 10 days? No, honestly, I think we're gonna beat them by 20, but I'm spineless, so my money's on 10.
Honestly, my money's on it doesn't matter 'cause we're never gonna finish by morning.
Here.
Whoa.
- Nylons? Yeah, he steals them from the storage annex.
What the hell do you want with ladies' nylons? - They're rationed.
- And? Girls love them.
Girls can't get them.
I spread the wealth, they spread their legs.
We need reinforcements.
We've got to have the calculations by tomorrow.
- You are our only hope.
-We're punched out for the night.
We can pay you.
Crosley.
- Great.
- All right.
Oh, great.
Fantastic.
Thank you.
Hi, my name's Fritz.
That's for you.
Hi.
Fritz.
Hi, you can call me Fritz.
I give up.
This chrysanthemum, it's supposed to be white.
So it's a hybrid.
Did you know that we're not allowed to grow produce on the Hill? Must be something to do with the soil.
Well, sometimes a flower is just a flower.
Don't go and work.
Well, I have to finish some things.
What things? When it's over, we will go anywhere you want.
We'll find a desert island, play Adam and Eve.
Good night.
Watch it, buddy.
- Get out of the way! Abby? Charlie, what on earth? It's this one.
This one.
Come inside.
I was about to call the police.
You know, there's no telephone in this place.
Shh! This is Daddy's brand.
You can't get this anymore.
You can if your work's got triple-A priority.
Are you drunk? - Oh, shit.
- Charlie? It's the whole street.
You know how many people live in Berlin? Men, women, kids? I wrote a letter to my father.
I said you'd think about his offer.
Oh, Jesus, Abby.
This is what I am.
You are a loving father to our son.
And you are my handsome husband.
Take off your nightgown.
Charlie.
Joey's out cold.
He won't hear us.
It's not Joey I'm worried about.
Oh, give them something to put in our FBI file.
Hmm? --Hmm? Come on.
No! No! Whatever it is, Frank, you can tell me.
I can't.
Does the ringing in your ears increase with stress? No.
Some of the men find it helpful to speak with the chaplain.
And they're not all religious.
We give chloral hydrate for sleep disorders.
I can write you a script.
- But if you'll take a word of advice -I'll take the pills.
Nothing to worry about.
This Wind's gonna blow us all the way to Kansas.
There's no place like home.
How many drunken physicists do you reckon we can cram into that shack? Lo siento.
Let's take it inside.
There we go, right there.
Look at the line.
Another one.
Whoa! Mommy, my head itches.
I'm tired.
We need copies for Oppenheimer so he can sell it in D.
C.
Where are we on the numbers? Still at it, and we're running out of nylons.
All right, let's go.
Outside, right now.
Leave everything where it is.
Touch nothing.
I'll get it.
What the hell is going on? They're arresting Bill Timchak.
Some files turned up in his dorm room.
- They can do that? -All right, let's move.
They've got tanks.
They can do whatever they like.
Colonel's collecting scalps.
Word is he's just getting started.
Don't tell me.
They arrested the computers.
Frank, I, uh, made a mistake.
I, uh Oh, I screwed up.
I swear to God I am not a spy.
You know me.
It's the X-ray studies.
You said it was my best work.
What the hell did you do? I've got a kid back in Oakland.
Gracie.
She's sick and her meds cost a fortune.
I just thought when we all go back home, I could sell the patents.
They're gonna figure that out.
You got to help me out, Frank.
Talk to the colonel.
Explain why I took them.
You stole secrets from the United States Army.
You really think the colonel's gonna stick around for a chitchat? So what are you gonna do? I'm gonna burn them.
They can't touch you if they don't have proof.
You got to get me transferred.
Send me to Chicago.
Or Site X.
Christ, Frank, I've got a family.
Then act like it! You want to protect them? You go out there and do your goddamn job like the rest of us.
Two, one Colonel Cox wants to see you.
- I'm not holding office hours today.
-Now.
This can't be right.
Did you remember to check the It's right.
One of your boys stole classified files.
I'd like a name.
So you can stick him in a hole till the end of the war? I have a brother in the 4th Marine Raiders in the Solomon Islands who wants to come home to his family.
I knew nine men on the USS Arizona who won't get that chance.
Our enemy crawled out of a cave on the other side of this Earth and attacked us on our own soil, and they'll do it again.
We will not hand them the tools.
There's a leak in this lab.
Someone's been smuggling tactical schematics off the Hill.
There is no spy in my group.
You think Bill Timchak was a spy? He's an example.
We live in a world of consequences.
Must be lonely out there in the boondocks.
No resources, no recognition for your group.
I'm not here for the recognition.
I got a shipment in this morning.
Ten state-of-the-art IBM machines.
You think I'd horse-trade a member of my own team? We sacrifice the few to save the many.
- Twelve days? -Twelve weeks! Hey, Dolores.
I just need two minutes of his time.
Dr.
Oppenheimer doesn't have an opening until the 18th.
-It'll just take -It'll have to wait till he's back from D.
C.
He's already down in the car.
- I'll ride with him.
That'll do.
- No, Frank.
- Thanks, Dolores.
-Frank, there's We can cut I thought we were going to the airport.
Lamy train depot.
General's seen fit to ground me.
It's too dangerous to fly.
Isn't that right, Tommy? It's very touching, their concern for my health.
It's been road-tested and triple-checked, Robert.
If you'll just give me some IBM machines and 30 more men, I can have the hydrodynamics worked out in the next month.
This country, the Valles Caldera, we call it a desert, but it's a crematorium.
The mesas, all of it, fallout from a volcano that exploded a million and a half years ago.
Someday it'll detonate again, and everything you see will be buried.
Just a question of time.
There are forces beyond our control.
The United States Army is one of them.
Your group's going to be dissolved, Frank.
- What? -We're building Akley's bomb.
- The ship has sailed.
-Well, turn it around.
This war chews up four American kids every hour.
I just handed you 8,000 lives.
Man is made by his belief.
As he believes, so he is.
- The Army believes in the Thin Man.
-I don't give a shit about the Army.
That's your mistake.
Tommy.
What about you, Robert? What do you believe? I believe the world is on fire and the Thin Man's our chance to put it out.
You'll report directly to Akley.
Hey! Hey, wait! That's my equipment.
Glen, what the hell is this? Got my dishonorable discharge.
Colonel's shipping me off-site.
No.
We'll go over his head.
It's not just me.
It's the whole group.
I'll call the Secretary of War.
I'll tell him our work is vital to the success of this project.
Frank.
Frank.
You were the best student I ever had.
And you know that I would back you to the edge of the Earth.
But I think We just fell Off it.
Abby, what the hell did you do to Joey's hair? They are reading our mail.
- What? -All the children have head lice, and they are reading our mail.
He's three years old.
He can barely read his name.
I mailed this yesterday.
A private letter from me to my father and they made notes in the margin.
- Who did? -I don't know who.
- Spies, the Army, I don't know.
- Abigail.
This place, these people, they are all crazy.
- We cannot I will not stay.
-You're hysterical.
I can't even tell him where we live.
I can't even tell him that our house is painted green.
It'll take some adjustment, that's all.
No, we are going back to Brookline and we can stay with my parents.
No, we are not going anywhere! Listen to me.
This is our home.
I made a commitment.
It is done.
We're here till the end of the war.
Shit.
It's the altitude.
Charlie, please, why in God's name would we stay here? Okay.
What I'm about to tell you is highly classified.
Hey, how are we doing? Nice to see you.
Coming through.
Sorry.
I knew you wouldn't let a little wind spoil your party.
We'll make a housewife out of you yet, Liza Winter.
I look forward to that, Rose.
Where's your husband? I'm afraid that's above my security clearance.
Excuse me.
Take it through there.
I finally get used to the desert air, then they send me off to Site W to study the effects of alpha particles on salmon reproduction.
Fish sex.
Well, it beats the Chickasaw Ordnance Works.
They're shipping my ass off to Tennessee.
I told my mother I got a promotion.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Pace yourself there, Seabiscuit.
Jesus, it's a 15-year-old scotch.
The man of the hour.
Hello, ladies.
How are you? Where have you been? I have half the PhDs in America eating canapés in our front room.
Get rid of them.
What? Cancel the party.
Did something happen at work? Work is fine.
We made a deal when we came here.
I would never ask you questions unless I absolutely needed answers and you would never lie to me.
And I haven't.
Frank.
Do you remember when I presented that paper on the purple orchid? Orchis mascula.
It lives on three continents.
Sun or shade, from Spain to Siberia, it can survive almost anywhere.
But it can't survive alone.
It's got a partner.
It attaches itself to the roots of the orchid.
It's called a mycorrhiza.
And they make up their own little ecosystem.
If you cut off that communication, the orchid just shuts down.
We had our own ecosystem.
The two of us.
You're not a flower.
We're not talking about me, Frank.
I'm protecting our family.
From what? I hear you all had fun last night.
Your husband must be important to rate a place on Snob Hollow.
I'd live in a Wigwam if it would help them build it any faster.
Build what? Your husband told you something.
Well, don't hold out.
They call it the Gadget.
It's a very complicated radar system that can spot one of Hitler's warplanes from the other side of the world.
There's no telling how many lives they're going to save.
Conclusive proof, Orientals cannot hold their drink.
All right, why don't you sit this one out, buddy? You people, you got your heads in the sand.
You send your kids to school right next to it.
- Lie to your wives about it.
You don't like fireworks? Bombs bursting in air? No, not much.
You read a paper of mine.
"New Approach to Nuclear Cosmology.
" - Right.
-Your approach wasn't New.
The judges of the Forbes prize didn't see a problem.
They wouldn't.
You know, um After you rejected my paper, I read everything you ever published.
You'll do fine.
You're Akley's new toy, right? Can I ask you something? What about the next war? What happens when Stalin's got one? China? The Shah of Iran.
You know the story of the golem? A rabbi wanted to protect the Jews of Prague, so he built an automaton out of mud, brought it to life.
First the golem kills the enemies of the Jews.
Then it turns on Jews the themselves.
See, he couldn't control it.
He'd built Frankenstein's monster.
You been to Prague lately? There aren't any Jews left.
There's something I need to tell you.
We're building a weapon.
It's not like any weapon the world's ever seen.
It draws its energy from a fast-neutron chain reaction.
It releases the power of an ancient star.
If it works, and it's going to work, it'll be more destructive than all the bombs dropped in all the wars in history put together.
It'll bring armies to their knees.
Cities will disappear in the blink of an eye.
The world will be united in peace by the most just and noble country in the history of mankind.
Or it will burn to the ground.
Whoever builds it first, that's the endgame.
So it has to be us.
Whatever it costs.
No inglés.