Series creators screen season finale “My Name Is Ruby.”
David Simon and George Pelecanos are no strangers to the world of HBO drama, having written and created such work as The Wire and Treme. With The Deuce they continue making gritty, humanistic portrayals of city life and the people therein.
This time around, the scene moves to New York City in the early seventies, ostensibly tracking the birth of the modern pornography industry. In order to get there, the story must weave through hookers and pimps, mobsters and made men, as well as the cops who keep order if not necessarily the law.
This multifaceted approach is no surprise to fans of these other shows, and in a conversation following the screening of the season finale, “My Name Is Ruby” at this year’s Austin Film Festival, Pelecanos said there’s an art to managing such a large ensemble cast.
The basic trick is to pick a set of characters who have “point of view,” who get to be the audience conduit to the action. Every scene must have one of these present, so secondary and tertiary players ride their narrative coattails.
This final episode of the first of what looks to be three seasons (depending on renewal, with season two already committed to) always had a very specific historical destination: the premier of possibly the most famous porn film of all time, Deep Throat.
The Deuce stars Maggie Gyllenhaal (who also produced the series) as Candy, the aspirational prostitute making her way into the world of making these blue movies, and James Franco as twin brothers Vince and Frankie, the yin and yang of responsibility and frivolity.
The entire first season has been a slow burn, setting up a network of interconnected people and endeavors without ever pushing the action over the red line. The season finale was no different, though we did lose a very likable character.
By the final curtain, the audience sees who among the main characters is ready for the changes coming to their world and who is trying to hold on to the past. Season two will surely further this divide, and there’s every reason to believe the results will be explosive.
