YMMV / Manhattan

Film

• And You Thought It Would Fail: After finishing the film, Woody Allen was very unhappy with it and asked United Artists not to release it. He offered to make a film for no fee instead. He later said, "I just thought to myself, 'At this point in my life, if this is the best I can do, they shouldn't give me money to make movies.'" It was both a critical darling and his most financially successful film. To this day, he's amazed that he "got away with it".
• Award Snub:
  • Only nominated for two Academy Awards, with Woody Allen being snubbed for Best Director and the film somehow not being nominated for Best Picture. However, it was the snub of Gordon Willis for his amazing black and white cinematography that astounds most film historians.
  • The film was also probably Allen's best acting role, but went unnominated.
• Awesome Music: The first 92 seconds of the film, set to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, is one of the greatest film openings in history.
• Genius Bonus: "What are you telling me? That you're gonna leave Emily and run away with the...the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Maturity Award?"
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The film ends with Isaac going back to the 17-year-old high school girl he dated at the start of the film. Many years later, Woody Allen started a relationship with his ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon Yi, whom he had helped raise.
  • Said 17-year-old high school girl is shown attending the Dalton School, an actual private school in Manhattan. Jeffrey Epstein, who was a former teacher at Dalton, would be arrested in 2019 for sexually trafficking minors.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I'm beautiful and I'm bright and I deserve better!"
  • The shot of Isaac and Mary sitting with the Manhattan Bridge in the background. It was even on the poster.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The sympathetic, non-judgemental portrayal of a 42 year-old man sleeping with a 17-year-old high school student was questionable in The '70s (17 is the legal age of consent in New York, but the power imbalance is still apparent). Now, especially after Woody Allen's marriage to his and Mia Farrow's adoptive daughter Soon Yi and accusations of molesting Mia's biological daughter Dylan, it's Lolita levels of slimy. In fact, Mariel Hemingway said in 2021 that the film would never get made today.
  • Also, Isaac asking his ex-wife and her female lover if his son wears dresses. To be fair, Isaac is trying to get under her skin.
• Values Resonance: Isaac, on the other hand, has no issue with Jill's relationship with another woman per se, except for a) he was the one dumped, and b) his wife is doing a tell-all book about it.

Series

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Yes, people who sat and did busywork math all day were called "computers" - they computed.
• Mainstream Obscurity: Critics who watch are enjoying this show, but it continues to be ignored in general.
• Squick:
  • In-verse, as Abby finds out some people will have phone sex even with someone else potentially listening in.
  • The show rather graphically shows the effect of Frank Winter having accidentally stepped on some old shrapnel.
  • They also show the effects of Chlorine gas on Frank's squadmates back at his trench.
  • Frank trying to outmatch the chili record, especially when the previous record holder had been a literal pig.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Sid could have become a double agent reporting back to G-2 about why Frank had been away for a year in the late 1930s, seeing as he knew Frank had betrayed him to the Army to get his group back together.
  • One possible reason for this is because the Manhattan Project really did have a spy in their midst, Klaus Fuchs. If they have plans for his story later in the series Sid spying on Frank might be irrelevant or unwieldy story-wise.
• UST:
  • Between Dunlavey and Frank Winter's daughter.
  • Also between Charile Isaacs and Helen Prins. Resolved as of "The Gun Model", but this is hardly referenced in the finale.

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