The Deuce

It’s the kind of storytelling--ebullient, moving, brutal and informed with human mystery--whose every chapter only whets the appetite for more. ... A smashing work all around.

The look of The Deuce is thoroughly transporting, and that’s just the start. ... As with “The Wire” and “Treme,” we meet a large, multicultural ensemble of characters in The Deuce, most of them written with remarkable specificity and distinguished by shrewd acting choices. And as with “The Wire” and “Treme,” their stories piece together slowly but surely into a single broad canvas of Americans on the fringes of our economic system.

The subject matter, the nature of most of the characters, may not seem appealing, but there is a resilient humanity at the base of The Deuce. Most of all, there is a great story and even greater storytelling.

The Deuce is an absorbing, resonant chronicle about the evolution of dehumanizing skin trades and the mainstreaming of adult entertainment.

A mastery behind the camera that subtly elevates the compelling story in front of it makes The Deuce an utterly captivating experience. You’ll have watched the whole series before you stop to look at the clock.

The show’s creators get just as caught up in this sordid albeit entertaining world as viewers, but Simon and Pelecanos take care not to forget what’s underneath it all.

David Simon and his frequent collaborator, the novelist George Pelecanos, together with writers such as Megan Abbott, have made a show that is quietly transformative. ... In many ways, The Deuce is a classic David Simon.

Vividly teeming with tragicomic life and reeking of desperation, danger and moral decay, the series takes a while to build an actual story--a common trait nowadays in high-minded long-form TV Narratives--but by the end of the first eight hours, an decriminalized porn becomes big business, you'll surely want to know what happens next. [18 Sep - 1 Oct 2017, p.27]

When I say that watching the eight episode season of The Deuce left me in awe of its performances, nauseated by the scuzziness of 1971 Times Square and grateful for the efficacy of antibiotics, that is a high compliment.

The manner in which Simon and Pelecanos unfurl their semi-fictitious creations is wondrously restrictive, regarding pace and exposition. Handled by any other showrunner(s), this content would’ve crash and burned.

The Deuce is probably the best new show of the 2017 fall TV season, with superb acting, punchy writing, expert production design, great music, and a storytelling flair that keeps you watching. That said, The Deuce may also make you feel a bit queasy.

It’s impeccably acted, written, and directed, and no matter how ridiculous “a series about the 1970s porn industry with two James Francos” might sound to you, this is somehow not just the best possible execution of that idea, but the most thoughtful one, too. It’s the best show of the fall, by a wide, wide margin.

Each of Mr. Simon’s works is ultimately about systems: people of different classes, races and levels of power, whose choices (or lack thereof) define an economy and a society. That macro idea makes The Deuce smart. Its micro detail--a Studs Terkelesque catalog of the million ways to chase a hustle--makes it art. ... But man, is there a lot of setup.

For all the drama of its plot, it consistently and gratifyingly goes small, letting us learn about its characters gradually and in relation to one another. With the same granular dedication to detail that they brought to The Wire, Simon and Pelecanos show us an entire gray-market economy through the eyes of its participants. It's a triumph, and, better yet, a pleasure.

The world and its citizens are so rich that it’s a pleasure to spend time in it at all, as written by this team, as directed by the great Michelle MacLaren and others (including Franco for a couple of episodes), and as performed by this superb cast.

HBO's The Deuce is the spellbinding story of how flesh became flash, how the sex trade went from back alleys to boardrooms.

In The Deuce, producer David Simon tries to do for the sex trade and 1970s evolution of pornography what "The Wire" did for drugs. After a slow start, this engrossing, characteristically nuanced HBO drama mostly serves up aces.

The key to The Deuce‘s success is the writing. Some familiar tropes and clichés are scattered throughout, but Simon and his Wire co-writer George Pelecanos find a way to look deeper and uncover the vital truth underneath.

It’s the intricate storytelling based in areas most people would rather avoid, a stellar cast and context, context, context that makes The Deuce so much more than its naked body parts. ... There are a lot of characters here, and subplots, and stories that have yet to converge. Season 1 is just the setup.

The show (like the recent Hulu drama Harlots) navigates a complicated path between showing the reality of sex work and somehow keeping the action from being impossibly depressing. It’s as often funny as it’s brutal, and yet the two modes don’t undermine each other.

A serious and provocative new drama from co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos.

Pleasure’s often found in dialogue that has nothing to do with the business at hand.

The Deuce isn’t an easy watch, but it is a telling one. By the time the hairstyles and polyester settle down, it’s ready to explain how the industry took hold, what elements were at play and, essentially, who is teaching syllogisms and who’s crafting them.

A lot of storytelling is crammed into The Deuce--the regular and recurring cast fields nearly 40 characters, and it takes a minute to match rhythm with the cadence of each of their lives. But once you do, it’s a fascinating world: period but not nostalgic, lived in but not superficial. Maybe it has too many moving parts, but all the moving parts are a joy to look at.

What really makes The Deuce so good, though, are its conversations, the cadence and truth of its dialogue, and its both bold and vulnerable performances. It captures its setting in an extraordinary way, from the cigarettes and diners and honking horns on the street to the early morning papers rustling through the gutters. Also important for a period piece: nothing feels forced, or educational, or winking.

Simon and Pelecanos are just beginning to put the machinery of The Deuce into motion in these eight episodes. As an opening act, the show's first season is substantive, provocative and entertaining. It's a journey through a certain kind of hell, but I'm already eager to return.

Overall, The Deuce is the kind of smart, well-written and character-driven series that won’t be overwhelmed by its sex-heavy concept, nor too reliant on it to sustain interest. What’s more important than the titillation its characters are peddling is who they are and why they’re doing it.

The huge cast is excellent. ... There’s no driving narrative until at least the fifth episode. That’s an awfully long time to wait for something big to happen in an eight-episode season. At least The Deuce makes a case that it’s worth the wait.

No one is arguing that The Deuce isn’t entertaining, if slightly cliched. But we shouldn’t pretend The Deuce is the truth. It would be easy to praise the series for being unjudgmental and focusing on the human elements. However, there was a lot of pain involved in that world, and the series is too carefully constructed for you to feel it.

That it took eight episodes to get there [Gyllenhaal’s character finally throws off her Candy image to become Eileen, the director of porn scenes from a woman’s point of view] suggests two things: that The Deuce is rather muddled in its sense of purpose, and that this show really deserves a second season, to show us whether the series can take Eileen and her sisterhood into a more complex realm.

It takes a little too long for the show’s eight-episode first season to bring its focus to the porn industry, and the middle episodes in particular are dominated by less compelling, more conventional storylines. But even the more thinly sketched characters are engaging to watch, and Simon and his collaborators effectively re-create the NYC of the past, closely enough that you can feel the grit.

Despite the best efforts of the writing staff and Gyllenhaal (who became a producer on the series partly to make sure that her character was well served), there are moments when The Deuce seems to lose its grip on the leash of its worldview and the situations take on a hypnotic power that is presumably not meant to be exploitative but comes across that way anyhow. ... Its most salient virtue is its stubborn refusal to serve up any character who represents a supposedly enlightened, 21st-century-liberal point of view.

A dark character drama, it’s a show for viewers who enjoy a deep dive into a culture, one that, in this instance, happens to be ugly and exploitative.