THE DEUCE with David Simon, George Pelecanos, James Franco AND James Franco

yeah that particular kind of um fictional license really leaps out I mean wtf

Yeah that was my least favorite scene in the show so far. Very Treme-era Simon.

I saw five minutes of this show. Might have been the first episode, or the fifth, who knows. Seemed ... nothing special, but it did at least look right.

God I’m sorry they played a band inaccurately on the radio how did you not shut off the show then and there.

I never even turned it on, problem solved

I'm agnostic on The Wire but this is decent. Paradoxically, its leisurely pace makes me think there needs to be more of it to be effective.

started watching the first ep and am reserving judgment til I'm through w it but my first thought was what's up with all the blaxploitation tropes and zero mafia guys.

also lol @ Method Man in a wig

the mafia guys are present

I liked the pilot of this but have yet to watch more. tbh I really liked Treme, esp the 2nd and 3rd seasons

This is better than Vinyl

low bar

maybe the lowest bar

This is better than Vinyl

So is putting out a lit match in your eye.

It's kinda refreshing that having two Francos basically serves no purpose, I'm glad that after the first episode there haven't been any plot mechanics that hinge on mistaken twin identity etc.

another great episode, i thought. i was a bit confused with the conversation between Alston (the cop) and the new captain. the captain acknowledges that NYPD discriminates against black cops, and brings it up in a way that suggests that he's sympathetic to changing things. but then he makes a distinction between "meateaters" and "grasseaters" - meateaters being people who cause problems for the department and grasseaters being people who keep their head down. and then he presses Alston on that, to make sure that he's a grasseater. maybe there's no confusion there, i guess it's just laying bare the weird motivations of the captain, in that he recognizes the prejudices of the police and his own privilege but he's still dedicated to maintaining the status quo?

I thought he was saying that they were going to be rooting out corruption in the police force -- the meateaters who were seriously on the take and connected to the politicians/mafia, and that the grasseaters were benign but would still "have to change their ways".

see, i thought i picked up on that too but then this vulture recap made me think maybe i was misunderstanding everything?

He also gives the new captain, McDonagh (Ed Moran), a tour of the Deuce, and his uneasiness at the new assignment only compounds when McDonagh pointedly asks him if he’s a “meat eater” or a “grass eater,” i.e. someone who stirs up shit or someone who grazes and does what he needs to do to get by. Alston has always been caught between a rock and a hard place, between trying to atone for his part in corruption and playing a part in it. Now, it’s going to get worse.

it was sort of ambiguous. it's like, was the captain testing alston's resolve to root out corruption or pressuring him to not say anything about it?

I think Jordan is right and the Vulture recap has it wrong.

I really think it's the former!

xp

I've not seen beyond ep 1 of this, but am shocked that there is any ambiguity at all in a David Simon series.

that's just silly

If I couldn't finish Treme or Show Me A Hero, would I get much out of this?

I think it's much more engaging and more Wire-like than Treme (which I only stuck with out of familiarity with the subject matter). Didn't see SMAH.

SMAH did nothing for me tbh

so, this is actually really good

I esp appreciate that for a show about fucking/prostitution/pornography, the nudity and sex is never titillating. Everything is grimy and kinda gross, occasionally scary.

mostly enjoying the cast, Franco is serviceable (getting serious Matt Dillon vibes from Bad Franco), Gyllenhaal is great, the guy who runs the porn store is *perfect*, Jackie Aprile redux is good.

and I haven't gotten to the terrible-sounding scene referenced upthread yet, but in general I am really enjoying how music is used in this - I am blanking on the film term for when all the music heard is what characters are listening to, but I dig that a lot. Cutting between two scenes where two different sets of characters are listening to the same thing on the radio, but not in an obtrusive or showy way. Or Franco laughing at himself dancing to "Mr. Big Stuff" on the jukebox. This show is a slow burn, and grim and committed to the visual and unrelenting ugliness of the area, but I am into it so far.

diagetic

ah! yes ty

this is my new favorite show

(Starcade is my new old favorite show)

The "Pale Blue Eyes" on the radio scene turned out to be an oddly a rare misstep. the cast in this is so good, and Franco delivers the lolz at least once an episode, like when the guy is sketching out the porno-booths and Rudy the Gangster takes one look and says "oh yeah, I get it" and then Franco adds "so they can jerk off!" classic. Method Man also surprisingly good, his extended dialogue trying to pickup Gyllenhaal on the street was so good.

Franco-as-Vinnie reminds me of Daniel Desario at times (his character on Freaks and Geeks eighteen years ago, for any of you lucky enough to have your first viewing of that wonderful show still in your future).

Wait, sorry, I meant Franco as Frankie, the irresponsible one.

speaking of Freaks and Geeks alum I was just marveling at Neil's older brother's transformation into porno-director-schlub, he is so good in this

he looks like he's had a rough 18 years lol

Krumholtz is an undervalued (or poorly served) actor

he is great in this, yeah

Christ u r right, he's been in a lot of crap

really thought this was great

man even the season finale was comparatively low-key. I'm starting to realize which plotlines I find engaging (Candy's, primarily, and the gangster racket) and the ones I don't care about at all (the pimps). Franco's storylines aren't all that engaging but he is v fun to watch so he makes up for it. The cop/journalist story is okay but it seems kind of obvious where it's going.

I definitely do not ever need to see another season-ending montage of all the characters set to an iconic piece of music, that shit is so lazy at this point.

old man yelling at the clouds: wtf is curtis cranked so fucking LOUD in the theme song? it's like 3x the volume of the rest of the show! i'm already watching it, so i don't know understand why it's trying to grab my attention so hard

haha yeah I noticed that too. Great song and all but...

the pimp storylines are so weird in tone - like, am I really supposed to care about the existential struggles of some of the worst people alive? like, oh no suddenly they feel unnecessary, what are they going to do?! and, why, this other pimp, he has *feelings*! How ever will they grow and evolve? Method Man at least knows to keep it alternately funny or scary... but idgaf about any of them, they could all be murdered like Reggie Love and my reaction would be "huh, well that was well-deserved".

fwiw the second season is meant to be set five years later

so we might not see any direct resolution to a lot of the stories set up this season

whoah waht?!

I liked that this season all basically led up to the release of Deep Throat, skipping ahead to '76 is an interesting decision

David Simon has a three-season plan for this series. Is that something you’re game for?

FRANCO: Of course! I had to be, signing on. One of the interesting things about this show is that it’s a hybrid between a limited series and a regular series. There are only eight episodes a season, and if we go, which it looks like we will, there will only be three seasons. It gives it this perfectly encapsulated, very concise, economical power punch feeling to it. From the beginning, the plan was to cover 14 years. The first season is ‘71-‘72, and the dawn of pornography. The second season is ‘77, ‘78 and ‘79, or somewhere in there. And then, the third season will be ‘84-‘85 when everything imploded and the old 42nd Street was shut down by Mayor Koch. I think if we pull it off, it will be a really nice encapsulation of a time and a place.

late 70s is kind of the "golden era" of pretentious feature-length porn films. (No idea what that means in terms of 42nd St in particular)

Wow, I had no idea about the three season plan! Fantastic. I love this idea.

This was great! I'm wondering if Simon needs a good collaborator to make a good (mini-)series (Ed Burns, Richard Wright).

I had a omg moment when I saw that B'Elanna Torres directed an episode!

minor takeaway from this series : Black Frankie = style icon

otm about Abby

as someone who is a contemporary, I thought this reminiscence of '70s Times Square by Tim Sommer was p accurate

https://observer.com/2017/11/more-than-the-deuce-a-recollection-of-times-square-in-1979/

just remembered I never bothered to watch the last episode of this lol

sleazy is not what I’d call it.

Followed immediately by:

Yes, the sheer density of porn culture and commerce was extraordinary (even the most lurid panoramas don’t do it justice), but that’s not my strongest memory of the area. What I remember most is the noise: the constant babble of the drug peddlers, hookers and three-card monte dealers, the rhythmic hollers of people selling shoe shines and salvation and hot dogs, the constant click and clack and cough of the barkers trying to get you into their strip bars and massage parlors.

Sounds pretty ... sleazy? I mean, if he's going to cite big boobed clickbait on the internet as sleazy, then, yeah, what he describes is at least that.

nostalgia = sleaze + time

heh

the last episode is really good

I was hoping this thread would remind me whether I watched S2 or not--I think I did, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll check a couple of episode summaries. Took S2/S3 out of the library; will finish up one way or the other.

this series was really underappreciated