From December 22, 2017
Season One:
THE DEUCE' SEASON FINALE RECAP: PORN TO DIE
Overall, there is as artificial "cinema grit" to this show which seems more "real" than the norm in film. By no means a reality show. Most movies make NYC look better than it is in reality. This series does not do this. The sets and landscape seems real and grimy enough for 70's New York as I remember it as a younger man. The only thing missing is the smell of the streets. That and constantly looking over your shoulder to avoid getting mugged anywhere in NYC, not just 42nd Street west of Times Square.
More so than a human slice of life, this show teaches history as a business model where porn and the paradigm of the times, morals, technology, mob financing and urban R/E all come together into a unique American dynamism.
On the human level I don't see what I feel is the exploitation of female sex workers. I can see that those trapped in this world are affected by it. It is depressing and is it hard to identify with any characters let alone want to see a second season with these regular characters becoming soap characters not in The Deuce II but The Deuce Deux?
I know that splitting James Franco into twins is strictly a "James Franco". It adds little to the story line or depth to the stage experience.
Eileen's guilt visit to her brother Patrick recalls an America that still had public mental hospitals full of confused and undirected lives before those poor bastards and their institutions got outsourced out of the public budget, got dumped onto the streets into homelessness and or welfare and medicated by the new rising Pharma godhead.
I did not know that they used electric shock on homosexuality. I thought it only used on depression. But I guess if you are Gay and alienated from society you needed electric shock because you "are depressed" among a dozen other unknown things to the witch doctors and shamans of modern mid 20th century medicine and psychology. This scene was touching and real - sad - insightful and real. Gyllenthaal carries the scene and shares it beautifully with actor Dennis Flanagan.
I know I am prejudice to only see the reality of this drama experience through a middle class American white experience in seeing Gyllenthaal and Franco's parts as the main portal to the show.
The first season is great work of modern art that will be more admired in time. A second season I will skip. I am more than satisfied with the "first season's" overall writing, directing and performing in this diamond in the rough.
.
