October 2, 2017

The Deuce “I See Money” Review: The BJ of Death

We’re halfway through Season 1 of HBO’s The Deuce and I’m honestly surprised that it’s taken this long for Maggie Gyllenhaal to kill someone with one of her world-famous blow jobs. I joke, but that actually happens to Candy in Episode 4, “I See Money”. To Candy’s credit, this dude was out of shape and had just walked up several flights of stairs and believe it or not, it’s not her only misfortune with clients this week. She also accidentally punches a guy while giving him head in a seedy porno theater when a rat climbs onto her shoulder at the beginning of the episode. Hey, at least she got a standing ovation for the BJ thing; A reputation for providing lethal oral sex could be good for business…or bad, you know, depending on where you’re standing.

Poor Candy. Not everything—as her faux name would suggest—is sweet, except maybe Jack (Will Chase), a single father who flirts with her in a record store. For him, Candy is a chance to take another shot at love, to connect with another human being. For Candy, it seems like he is an escape from the soul-sucking bilge that is her own existence, evidenced when she lies about not having a son and refuses to tell Jack what she does for a living. Moreover, Candy gives him a more-than-friendly kiss at the end of the date, but doesn’t invite him upstairs and yet, she’s downstairs several minutes later with her blonde wig, ready to punch the clock at Times Square. Jack is an island of normalcy in otherwise sea of meaningless sex and shame and she’s going to keep it that way for as long as she can until the ruse is up.

Speaking of new romances, Vinnie and Abby finally stopped tip-toeing around all that sexual tension and ended up doing it on a pool table in the Hi Hat, Vince’s new bar, which is hopping, by the way. This episode really ramps up the eclectic clientele that would often frequent such an establishment at the time: Cops, pimps, whores, gays, and drag queens named Dora. In other words, a thriving microcosm of America’s famous melting pot. And with this success comes unexpected obstacles.

Now Vince has to put the boys in blue on his payroll for their “protection” and buy a firearm to prevent further destruction to his bar due to drunken brawls. The latter leads to a funny little scene of him as a wrong-footed gun-shopper in the back of a Vietnam vet’s van. In the end, he gets something better, the vet himself—a friend of Big Mike—whom Vince dubs “Black Frankie” so as to avoid confusion with his twin brother. On top of all his entrepreneurial worries, Vinnie’s little construction scheme with Rudy hits a snag in the form of Bill Schmidt, an obstinate worker who’d rather to wait put his paycheck into the bank, causing his colleagues to all follow suit. Blustering Billy learns all too quick that you don’t just say “No” to the mob. Now Vinnie’s on the outs with his brother-in-law and Rudy’s offering him yet another business venture, which, according to the sneak peak of Episode 5, seems to be a brothel of some kind.

With all this exciting stuff in his life, Vince has neglected to care for the most important things in his life: his children. Zoe Kazan is back as his wife Andrea in a tight seventies jumpsuit, begging him to come back home, but as Vince points out, she’s set his clothing on fire just one too many times. All the same, abandoning your good-for-nothing wife is one thing, but a dad needs to be there for his kids, especially when they’re young. Alas, Vinnie has been seduced by the siren song echoing hauntingly from across the Hudson. That siren is The Deuce itself, a black hole of degenerate hedonism where many a man’s ship has met its wreck-filled doom.

Need proof? Consider the sequence of a group of hookers sitting around a diner discussing vaginal sponges and their pimps comparing the menstrual cycle to becoming a werewolf. It doesn’t get more uncouth than that, folks.

The cops have their own headaches to worry about too with the announcement of no-arrest zones in and around The Deuce. Not to mention Officer Alston (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) finds himself smitten with Sandra Washington (Natalie Paul), an investigative journalist researching a story on pimps and prostitution. She’s been around since Episode 2, but only began to become a major player this week when she wormed her way into the police station with the rest of the women who couldn’t show and prove. Sandra wants to know why women would choose this as a line of work and Alston, familiar with these women and their nightly duties, asks her to tell him when she finds out. Will she ever find out and blow the lid off the whole sex trade thing? Maybe she should ask Mr. Owl how many licks it takes to get to the gooey-center of the prostitute in order to find out what makes her tick. A pretty timely reference since that ad first aired in 1970, a year before the show takes place.

Abby’s on a similar crusade with Darlene, attempting to go home and revisit her past and an aunt she double-crossed one too many times, giving Darlene a copy of Graham Greene’s 1969 novel, Travels With My Aunt where an eccentric aunt frees her nephew of his humdrum suburban life.

The question then becomes: Once you sell your body and willingly give up ownership over yourself, are you able to go back? Are you still you or are you a husk of your former self, a cheap knock-off like a golden watch that says Rolek? Everyone’s seeing money. Everyone’s got dollar signs in their eyes where their pupils should be. Thing is, when you put the pursuit of the almighty Benjamin above everything else, you lose the essence of who you are.

SONG PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Well, this is embarrassing…I didn’t recognize any of the songs played this week and they haven’t released the track listing for Episode 4 yet so there are no song picks at the moment. I will update this section when the songs included in this week’s episode are made public.

-Josh