A review of tonight’s The Deuce coming up just as soon as I’m traded like a ballplayer…
“Someone gonna sell the pussy, someone gonna buy the pussy. We just layin’ in the cut, man.” –Black Frankie
“What Kind of Bad?” opens in unfamiliar territory. We’re at a diner this time, but somewhere out in the country, as we see Darlene in civilian clothes, going by her real name (Donna), telling her old friends about her glamorous, wholly fabricated life as a model in the big city. She has literally been given a ticket(*) out of the life, and she is using it not to escape, but to recruit a new girl for Larry to run — only Bernice (quickly renamed Ginger) doesn’t even wind up staying in Larry’s stable, as she’s quickly traded to Rodney for $2500 (rather than Rodney’s initial offer of two grand and “a player to be named later”).
(*) I missed this on first viewing of last week’s episode, but Abby slipped a bus ticket inside the paperback copy of Travels With My Aunt she gave Darlene.
Darlene, like Lori, has always been presented as being far more comfortable with her trade than Candy is, or than Vinnie is to be asked to get more directly involved in it. But “What Kind of Bad?” — in addition to kicking off the season’s second half, and thus the familiar Simon/Pelecanos gradual acceleration of the plot — begins making the divisions starker between those who are okay with being prostitutes, or pimps, and those who would rather be doing almost anything else.
Abby’s ongoing puzzlement with the world of sex work only grows when she sees Darlene has used the bus ticket for a purpose for which it wasn’t intended, but we also see in Ginger that there’s a draw to this world even for those who didn’t expect to be a part of it. She was not happy being Bernice in the country. She’s not being pressed into slavery here — Larry even orders Darlene to put her back on the bus once he sees how young and frightened the girl is — but just has no interest in going home to however small and/or abusive her life there was. There are warning signs everywhere in her early days in the big city — not only does she get her own name taken away, but learns that Rodney has long since forgotten that Thunder Thighs is really Ruby, and she and Darlene sit near a very old and worn out prostitute (a sort of Hooker of Christmas Future) while eating at Leon’s — and yet somehow this is preferable for her, and for Darlene. As an irritated Ashley puts it to Abby after the latest question about why Darlene came back, “Maybe she likes her life the way it is. You ever think of that?”
The questions are flying everywhere, even if answers aren’t forthcoming. Sandra can’t get her editor at the Amsterdam News to show interest in her investigation because he fears it will just reinforce stereotypes about black people. Still, she keeps pressing, going on a ridealong with Alston and Flanagan to get a firsthand look at the absurd, Sisyphusian nature of the vice rousts, and even shells out money to interview Reggie Love on the subject. Abby’s still asking her questions, and even Rodney tries getting Candy — shortly after she suffers a beating from a john that’s even more of a rock bottom than last week’s death by blowjob — to explain what someone like her is doing out on the Deuce. His thoughts immediately go to the idea that she was molested by her father, and while she shuts down that line of questioning, she doesn’t offer any insight into what actually put her out here, risking her body night after night.
Even her civilian guise as Eileen is only so much of an escape. Sex with Jack proves no more satisfying than what she does with many of her clients, so she has to take care of herself after he’s done, right in front of him. Worse, when their night together is over, he slips her money for cab fare. On a date with almost anyone else, this would go unnoticed, but to Eileen, it turns the evening into just one more transaction. Between the date and the beating, it’s no surprise that she winds up going back to Harvey Wasserman, desperate for any work he might have, and gets the best news she’s heard in a while: it’s now legal for him to put film in the camera again. (“Something about community standards,” he explains to her. “Apparently, New York has none.”) The opportunity she wanted to get off the street finally seems to be there.
For that matter, getting off the street is the core idea behind Rudy Pipilo’s plan to build massage parlors all over the city, the first one to be managed by Vinnie and Bobby. It’s theoretically a win-win-win: prostitutes are spared the danger of being out on the street, the city is spared the spectacle of women like Candy and Thunder Thighs parading their wares in front of the tourists, and men like Vinnie and Bobby get a cut out of a business they’d otherwise have nothing to do with. Bobby, aware that his health makes a return to the union impossible and in need of cash, has no problem offering his services — “I’ve been a good supervisor,” he says, as if construction workers and sex workers have the same professional needs — where this seems a bridge too far for Vinnie. He has nothing against the prostitutes and pimps themselves, and is happy to serve both at The Hi-Hat, but it’s not for him — at least not until he realizes how much his brother-in-law needs to do it. And just as he got into bed with the Gambinos to protect Frankie, he’ll do the same here to make sure Bobby doesn’t get hurt.
But as we’ve seen with both prostitutes who don’t mind walking the streets and those who would rather be doing anything else, this work always comes with an extra helping of pain, no matter your intentions.
Some other thoughts:
* Paul’s story at times feels like it’s taking place at a remove from everything else, and at others like it couldn’t be more connected. Here, he gets busted by Officer Haddix and his partner at a movie theater where there was much consensual, albeit public, sexual activity happening, and has to be bailed out by Vinnie and Big Mike. His time at the theater, at the club — where he’s high and the camerawork becomes much more subjective than usual to show his mental state — and back at his apartment, where he has a threeway with his date and his roommate, all feel like more natural ways to show the state of the gay scene in 1971 New York than some of his conversations with Vinnie have been, and Chris Coy’s charismatic and likeable enough to carry these segments of the story that, for now, are running more in parallel to the action back on the Deuce itself.
* Last week, we had the pimps being baffled and disgusted by menstruation. Here, it’s Frankie speculating that lesbians have much less sex than straight people and, especially, gay men, because there’s no penis involved. The men on this show — many of the men in this world, in fact — know much less about sex than they think they do.
* Note that Frankie is now pretty much always wearing that black hat when we see him, to make it easier to deduce which brother we’re watching. It’s usually obvious anyway after a line or two, but it’s nice that we can orient ourselves immediately rather than having to wait to figure it out each time.
* Sandra asks Alston about the Knapp Commission, which was the citywide investigation into police corruption launched in part due to the very public anti-corruption efforts of cop Frank Serpico, famously played by Al Pacino in a movie that’s still two years in the future for these characters.
* Sandra’s editor was played by James McDaniel, who will always be Lt. Fancy from NYPD Blue in my heart.
What did everybody else think?
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@uproxx.com. He discusses television weekly on the TV Avalanche podcast. His next book, Breaking Bad 101, is out 10/10 and available for preoder now.