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Post by stephen on Oct 30, 2019 14:00:18 GMT
My god that finale was such treacle. There was a lot of treacle in the season as a whole to be fair, but my god that ending. David Simon transformed into Frank Capra. Not that I'm saying it didn't work Yeah, I got all misty-eyed, but I am still fuming because I think Simon could've had this Capra-esque ending but still focus on the real protagonist of the series: Eileen. Have her film get a 2019 retrospective by Criterion, have her in a theater introducing it, and as it's screening, she looks around the audience and sees the familiar faces of days gone by watching her movie. She goes into the concessions area because it's getting overwhelming to her, and who's tending bar? Vince.
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Post by cheesecake on Nov 2, 2019 1:15:25 GMT
I'm seeing massive praise for the finale online but I'm still having to marinate. It was way too cheesy for my liking and I've just never given a shit for either of Franco's characters so I wish there was more time spent with everyone else (the aging makeup was also nuts for everyone involved). Still, there's a lot to praise for the show over all, especially Gyllenhaal and Meade's work. Season two reigns supreme.
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jakob
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Post by jakob on Nov 4, 2019 18:49:09 GMT
Love this show, LOVE it, but I finally got caught up to finishing it and... I hated that epilogue. That was Harry Potter epilogue type of bad. Old age makeup problems aside, which was a big issue, this story should never ever have ended with Vincent. It should have ended with Candy. We can catch up with Vincent (who should have been recast older) in the future but we should have ended it with Candy’s perspective as she’s the reason the show worked so well and held up as it did. Her story is dominant and why she’s left as an afterthought in the end is beyond me.
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Post by Allenism on Nov 15, 2019 2:45:55 GMT
That final sequence felt like the one that wrapped up Six Feet Under, but reversed. Not really sure if worked with the rest of the show, but consider my heart strings gently pulled.
I think this season was definitely the most bleak and hard-hitting one out of the three, even if you could tell that the editors were furiously trying to give all the characters enough arc-completing screen time (the season could've easily filled up 10 episodes instead of just 8). I wasn't entirely satisfied with how certain storylines concluded, but generally I think the writers did a pretty admirable job illustrating the larger political and cultural shifts happening in NYC during that time and how it percolated into these peoples’ lives.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jan 20, 2020 13:51:31 GMT
So, I'm finally catching Season 3, and I'm halfway through.
It has been pretty good so far, but at the same time a little directionless, which is the one issue I've always had with this show. The Lawrence Gilliard Jr. story still drags the rest of the show down, and I wonder if this was something that was meant as a better plot for a show that was intended to run a lot longer than 25 episodes, but they ended up stuck with it. I figured from episode one that a certain person who just bit the dust, was going to bite the dust; but I was still disappointed when it happened. He had grown on me, while others have gone the opposite way.
Gonna finish it off this week, and I'm hoping the last four episodes are better than the first four.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jan 22, 2020 13:31:09 GMT
So I'm finished with Season 3 now.
It actually picked up steam right from the get go in episode five, and for better or worse, so much was happening that it was hard to keep up. I definitely don't agree with a lot of the choices that some of the characters made, Eileen and Vincent in particular; but then when a show jumps two huge time periods like this one did, one could justify them by saying a lot of their character development took place in the unseen years.
The highlight of the third season was undoubtedly Lori, and she is arguably the highlight of the whole show; both in terms of the written character and the performance from Emily Meade. She was a heartbreakingly necessary character, to juxtapose with Melissa and others who managed to pull through in the end.
Little about how the redevelopment storyline played out, really changed my mind about it in the end. It was patchy and rushed throughout, and almost always ruined the pacing; cutting into the flow of the other far superior threads. The ending was rather sweet and I guess it added to modern tint to the redevelopment angle, but all the same; I think they could have done better with it.
As a now complete series I loved this show overall. It had an ongoing issue of being a little too directionless, but it's a small(ish) thing in the bigger picture. It was easily one of the five or so main highlights of 2010s television.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jan 22, 2020 13:34:19 GMT
My god that finale was such treacle. There was a lot of treacle in the season as a whole to be fair, but my god that ending. David Simon transformed into Frank Capra. Not that I'm saying it didn't work Yeah, I got all misty-eyed, but I am still fuming because I think Simon could've had this Capra-esque ending but still focus on the real protagonist of the series: Eileen. Have her film get a 2019 retrospective by Criterion, have her in a theater introducing it, and as it's screening, she looks around the audience and sees the familiar faces of days gone by watching her movie. She goes into the concessions area because it's getting overwhelming to her, and who's tending bar? Vince. I would have preferred that for sure. It's still a little sweet, but at least it's substantive and Eileen might have had some interesting words to say, before and while she sees her familiar faces.
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Post by Viced on Feb 15, 2020 17:15:20 GMT
Finally watched season 3... First, some nitpicks: - First two episodes were kind of rough... a lot of set-up and juggling too many characters. Actually I think the whole series suffered (very lightly) from too many characters. I liked the stuff with Melissa in season 3, but at the same time I would've rather had more scenes with Eileen or Lori in her place. - Vincent/Abby seemed like they were done with each other by season 2... so to still have to suffer through their relationship 7 years later was rough. - After he became the best character on the show in season 2, it was pretty devastating for Larry Brown to be MIA this season. I know Akinnagbe was busy with To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway... but I wish they could've squeezed him into one episode (like the very nice Darlene catch-up). Outside of that, another great season of one of the best shows of the 2010s. I agree with all the Lori praise... I liked her the first two seasons, but what they did with the character this season was remarkable. Also another great arc for Eileen (Corey Stoll was a great addition too) and that rehearsal scene has to be Gyllenhaal's finest moment. And pretty much every big death this season hit hard... The finale -- I get the complaints, and it's definitely unbelievably goofy... but it somehow works. I like Stephen's idea for it to end with the screening of Eileen's film, but I think her not getting real recognition until after her death makes more sense with the series' general worldview. And one final shout-out to both Chris Bauer and Bobby as a character. I feel like this character easily could've gotten stale over three seasons, but Bauer made every line delivery worth it.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Feb 15, 2020 21:53:24 GMT
I watched this whole show last fall and I don't have a single regret! I've been dancing around discussing it for a while and never got there, so here at long last are my rambly thoughts on this really strong show.
FINAL SEASON THOUGHTS:
1) Gyllenhaal's monologue about her childhood... give this woman a fucking emmy please. At least a nomination. She fought for it, she earned it, she wiped the floor with it. She was great in all three seasons but that was her best moment. Stunning.
2) God bless Emily Meade. Her character crushed my soul. Lori is the embodiment of all the dreams (and careers) crushed by that scene and that industry, especially at that time when it was new and where the actresses had no agency. The show did a great job contrasting the pros and cons of the porn industry with Eileen and Lori representing both sides of that coin--where Eileen's adult films are artsy, experimental and freeing, Lori is dehumanized by the capitalist realities of a business predicated on commodifying women for male gratification. Agency being the thing that separates them, and notably the camera lens.
I loved Lori's arc through the show. She somewhat disappeared into the huge cast of Season 1 but established a much stronger presence in Season 2 (my favorite season) with her conflicted relationship with C.C. and her involvement in Eileen's film which was rife with excitement and opportunity and where she evolved as a performer and started coming into her own power. If Season 2 was my favorite overall, Season 3 gave us Meade's best work on the show to date.
3. Can we talk about those amazing opening titles. I LOVE how they changed up the opening sequences of each season to reflect the changing times. I always skipped season 2's because "This Year's Girl" just really annoyed me for some reason (don't know why but I couldn't stand it), but the first and third seasons...never skipped a single intro. Not a single one. I adored the grit and menace of the first season opening featuring Curtis Mayfield's "If There's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go," but for some reason season 3, featuring Blondie's "Dreaming" really struck me the hardest because the upbeat tone offers such a sharp contrast between the tragedy of the season (Lori's arc, the onset of the AIDS epidemic) while also capturing the excitement of those changing times. What gets me is the final line of the song caught between hopefulness and cynicism: "dreaming is free." The show is full of dreaming and full of hope, but as we've come to know over the course of three seasons, on the Deuce, dreaming is the only thing that's free.
General thoughts on the show:
1) Franco's duel performances were an acquired taste. It felt like he was just showing off and the Frankie half felt especially hammy. I did acquire that taste though neither of those characters were ever the main draw for me. I did appreciate Franco's Season 3 arc and as cheesy as that finale was, I did feel the weight of it through his POV. I had come to care about those characters and Vincent is the conduit for that.
2) The show's relationship with nostalgia: I think if Eileen and Lori's characters represent the two sides of the porn industry, the Franco characters (especially Vincent) represent a general vague nostalgia for those times, the way you hear showbiz men in their 50s and 60s wax nostalgic about the seediness and grit of "the scene," and the show examines the vast complexity of that emotion. As horrible as the women are treated throughout the show (especially in the first season) you can't deny that that hardship engendered community and something close to resilience. The show is deeply feminist and it revels in that nostalgia without quite romanticizing it, because the Lori arc represents the antithesis to that sentimental finale, allowing the show to thrive in a gray area limbo.
3) You know that feeling where there's something holding you back from loving a show but you're just in love with the characters and want to see what happens next? That was me with The Deuce. I never loved it fully, but I loved most of these characters and I had to see what was going to happen to them. Same thing happened with Sneaky Pete (although this show is much better). I did love what the show was aboutbut I probably wouldn't rank the individual seasons any higher than 8/10 (except for maybe season 2). But despite any apprehensions I might have had, I couldn't put it down and that has to count for something. I binged the fuck out of this show.
4) I didn't like the Chris Coy character, so I lied when I said I loved all the characters (and there are other exceptions but Coy stands out the most). I was always bored during his scenes. Coy doesn't have much charisma and it often just felt like he was the stand-in gay character. He almost always felt like an outsider in the narrative and the writing struggled to justify his existence. Like, over here we have the main stories about the pimps and prostitutes and the porn industry and then over here we have Chris Coy trying to own a bar. *sigh* It felt superfluous and tokenish to me, and much too cursory to examine the gay scene with much depth.
His writing did take a turn for the better in Season 3 with the AIDS backdrop, and he did get one of the best scenes of the season in ep. 5 ("You Only Get One") where he's forced to inform his lover's conservative parents that their son is dying of AIDS. His scenes with the mother wrecked me. When the father storms off it's the mother who's able to stay and connect with Coy's character over their mutual love for this dying man. Yeah, it was an emotional wallop and I cried like a baby.
5) The lack of continuity between seasons: I was mixed on the way each of the seasons exist several years apart and the writers don't always acknowledge the events that happened between them. It occasionally made for strained viewing, especially in the season premiers. Ultimately I was fine with it because I think the show remains exceptionally consistent in its themes over the course of social and environmental shift. The show is much larger than the minutiae of its characters' lives, and the show does a pretty solid job balancing those intimate arcs with the bigger picture. I think where the lack of continuity hurts the show is that each of its seasons feel maybe too contained, though I guess you could argue that's one of the show's strengths. It was weird how some characters just disappeared though. I loved Larry's season 2 story with his acting in Eileen's film, but then he was just gone in Season 3 and goes totally unmentioned. Maybe he's dead or simply left the scene but it doesn't matter and the world just keeps moving without him. On paper I like that a show can just leave those kinds of threads dangling, but it did feel off to me. We're conditioned to expect plot threads to come to fruition and sometimes The Deuce just leaves them dangling.
Overall though, I kind of loved this. Well, I did and I didn't. I don't know. I loved these characters and I loved the show's themes and performances. I felt very close to The Deuce, and you better believe that finale made me misty-eyed. I really felt the weight of this show. That closeness and resilience engendered by hardship, how society grows and changes around you, how people can be swept away in that wave of consumerism, how dreams are made and crushed by an industry caught between sexual emancipation and enslavement to a bottom line generated by male gaze. It's an extremely thought-provoking show, and for whatever issues I had with it, I cannot recommend it enough. Do yourself a favor and watch The Deuce.
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