In episode seven of The Deuce, “Au Reservoir,” plenty of situational thickeners stir the plot pot. An especially sinister pimp gets his come-uppance at the end of a bullet from a cheap revolver. Our heroine, Candy (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a long-suffering single mother eking out a living in the oldest profession, shows her worth as an aspiring director at a porn shoot, where she coaxes a young hooker/actress from a stupor to the throes of thespian-ized passion.
It’s just another night on the tube, circa 2017. But the very fact that we can gather by the proverbial American water cooler and discuss, with relative coolness and composure, this series steeped in sex-worker life and the rise of the porn industry in the ’70s attests to the success of a daring adventure on the small screen. By episode seven of this eight-episode series (the finale arrives this Sunday), the initially startling frankness and critical focus on its not-infrequent sexual content — even by HBO’s standards, and including carnality with its high-profile star Gyllenhaal — we’re attuned to the rhythms, the gyrations, and the squalor that is the domain of the slowly unfolding story.
But sex, in this context, is less titillating or provocative than it is an inherent and historic piece of the fabric of life on these mean but also sometimes tender streets, replete with Cheers-like chatter at the Hi-Hat bar or a greasy-spoon diner at the hub of the off-off-Broadway sub-subculture. At its root, The Deuce, another gem in the oeuvre of New TV’s superhero, writer/director/producer David Simon (The Wire), succeeds as a serial drama because of its actual concern for the characters enmeshed in its fascinating ensemble, along with the weirdly seductive mise en scène of N.Y.C.’s prostitution and porn scene of the ’70s, with cops in the wings, with hands out for hush money.