As has become typical of a David Simon series, The Deuce manages to bring myriad characters and perspectives into one setting, but somehow without resulting in information overload or stale drama. Simon’s work (most famously, The Wire) has always been arguably more ethnographic than traditionally dramatic, and here it’s no different: the portrait he and co-creator George Pelecanos paint of ’70s New York feels so real that watching this is almost educational. The Deuce is a series all about change and freedom and the contradictions that come with ideas of sexual liberation and commodification, and it’s endlessly fascinating to watch how these characters continue to dream big and redefine themselves in their own seedy little corner of the world.
"The Deuce is certainly a feminist series-and half its directors are female-but its smartest move is to resist turning sex into a thesis, exploiting the contradictions instead."
— Emily Nussbaum
"After watching the first few episodes, I had no desire to watch it again. I caught up with it later and was glad that I did, though there were many moments -- intentional, I'm certain -- where watching it was an endurance test."
— Matt Zoller Seitz
The story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early ’70s through the mid ’80s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and the renewed real estate market ended the bawdy turbulence of the area.
On 42nd Street in 1970s New York, the lives of gangsters, prostitutes, and local business owners intersect as pornography becomes a viable new industry.
She's definitely more a product of creative license than a perfectly accurate portrayal of the kind of women creatives who were DIY-ing their way out of their difficult circumstances at the time, but Maggie Gyllenhaal's character Eileen—a prostitute turned entrepreneur turned film aspiring director—is truly the star of the show here. It's mainly though her that the show challenges its own ideas and asks the toughest questions about where emancipation ends and exploitation simply continues. And it's also through her that so many other characters get to see the lives they could be leading, whether as respectable businesspeople or as artists with something to say with all their pain.
As long as you can learn to ignore that there are not one but two James Francos here, this is an incredible series.
Golden Globes
1 nomination
WGA
1 nomination
