Spoiler alert: this recap launches after The Deuce airs on Sunday nights in the US on HBO. Do not read unless you have watched season two, episode seven, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 10pm.
Of all the stories in this sprawling drama, the most likely to end in cataclysm was that of CC the pimp. For weeks, it has felt inevitable that this charismatic, violent man, seething with resentment about his power ebbing in changing times, would end up exploding. It just felt as though the victim would be someone else, most likely his “girl” Lori. Instead, CC copped the consequences himself. Bludgeoned twice in the head by Frankie Martino, he bled to death on the floor of a massage parlour.
CC tipped over the edge into implacability after the mob bought him out of Lori. She had wanted out herself for a long time, of course, perhaps always. But since she became the hottest pornographic star in Manhattan, other forces began to work. This week, CC was presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse – one he couldn’t even negotiate, in fact. In total, $15,000 is what CC gets for giving up control of Lori, not just in her new movies, but for good. (He tries for $20K and tells his friends he got $50K.)
Stymied even in making a deal, CC is steaming, looking for something on which to take out his frustration. First, there is Lori herself. He gets a hotel room and insists she joins him for one last night together. He will “fuck her like you’ve never been fucked in your life”. After a violent, painful encounter, Lori is left lying on the bed, wincing, waiting for the moment of relief when he finally walks out of the door.
CC eventually leaves her for good, but one moment of humiliation isn’t enough. He wants more and decides Frankie is the man to give it to him. CC confronts Frankie for his cut from the Red Hot profits, which is tricky, seeing as they haven’t been earned yet. CC also wants Frankie and Bobby to know that he is a bigger man than them. As he berates the pair, he keeps playing with his lighter. It annoys Bobby – all the better. CC then suggests he may blackmail Bobby, threatening to tell his wife about various liaisons with his employees. That is enough for Bobby, who charges over and shoves CC into the wall. The pimp gets up and wraps his hands around Bobby’s neck. The fight spills out into the dead, depressing passageway that comprised the final shot of season one; there, Frankie intervenes, cracking CC’s skull with a hammer.
Perhaps because all the emphasis put on the main plot thread, the rest of this week’s episode was a bit piecemeal.Frankie doesn’t just murder someone; he also turns gigolo. He meets a lonely, moneyed housewife in the 366, gets her number and is having sex with her over the sink by the next morning. But while Vince chortles at yet another example of his brother’s skills as a player, the truth is she played him. Sitting on her bar stool, she gets his attention, then sets up an assignation in a manner so efficient as to suggests it has happened before. That is a feeling reinforced by the look the concierge gives Frankie on his way up to her plush apartment on Riverside Drive. After the sex, she pulls the rug out from under her lover’s feet. Frankie is scoffing at the suits walking to work outside, when she observes that he can’t keep getting his kicks like this for ever. “What happens when you get old?” she asks. “Frankie Martino getting old? Can’t picture it,” he replies. By the look on his face, he just has, though, and it is not a pretty image.
Frankie’s life may now go another way, after what he did to CC, and there is a counterpoint with his brother, Vinnie. After last week’s driveby, the mob round up the pornography producer Marty as a prime suspect. Vince is invited to “pop his cherry” and fill Marty full of lead. He refuses. Vince is a more sensitive soul than his brother, as we know; rather than gangland retribution, he is more concerned with his very modern relationship. He and Abby have been together for years, but are yet to settle down. This perturbs Vince, who would be happier playing with kids than reading Kant of an evening (even when it is upside down). He takes a trip to his parents’ house to get some advice, but it isn’t the kind he wants to hear. Remember you already have a family, his father says. Abbie is your mistress. I had mistresses, but they weren’t my wife. You should return home, too.
Also returning home, or at least to the Deuce, is Barbara. We last saw her in season one, where she felt the consequences of Larry’s failed efforts at drug dealing. Barbara got arrested in a sting by narcotics police and has been upstate ever since (wearing what is quite a fashion-forward uniform, it has to be said). Now she is back, walking into the diner and staring down Larry who is, of course, no longer a dealer, but an erotic artist. Larry does his best to pretend that Barbara doesn’t exist, then makes up some rubbish about how, really, he had been supporting her throughout her time in prison by not making any contact with her. Barbara doesn’t buy that and demands his money roll. As with CC, there is no room for negotiation. Larry ends up handing it all over.
Sitting on the other side of the booth is Darlene. She watches it all happen with a roll of her eyes. Darlene knows better than to say anything about Larry’s behaviour, but, as with Lori, we know she wants to get out. We see her at school, keen to put a CV together and look for work. She tells her eager African classmate that she is looking to leave home, move away from her “father and sisters”. She even suggests her friend may yet get what he wants – a date – if he is patient. Larry is not as violent a man as CC; some of his girls even think he is soft. But Darlene looks likely to come into conflict with him soon.
Finally, we have Rodney. Flopping around the place, up to the eyeballs in junk, Rodney is good for nothing. He is holed up with Shea, who has introduced him to medical opiates. This seems to Rodney to be a cheap way to get another fix and soon he is casing a pharmacy for the product in the most unsubtle manner you can imagine. There is probably a botched robbery attempt to come. If anyone symbolises the decline of the pimps, it is him.
Finally, a quick quote from Gene Goldman, after being told he is homosexual by a “friend of Dorothy”. “No, I’m sexual,” he says. “I’m a husband and a father and I like to be with men.”
Discothèque bibliothèque
Frankie has been watching Gigot, a bizarre pet project of the US comedian Jackie Gleason, directed by Singin’ in the Rain’s Gene Kelly and released in 1962. Gleason plays a French mute who takes a sex worker and her daughter under his wing in 1920s Paris. He falls in love with the mother, but his attempts to woo her end in tragedy, before he is chased to his apparent death by mistrustful locals. Gigot doesn’t actually die, however – he returns to watch his own funeral, only for the citizenry to spot him in the crowd and chase after him again. There is probably a metaphor in there somewhere.
This week’s background music includes The Slider by T Rex. The title track from the 1972 album, recorded in France for tax purposes at the suggestion of Elton John, it provides the soundtrack to Abbie and Vince’s discussion of western philosophy.
Questions for next week
It is the finale next week, after which the show takes another jump forward in time, so which characters will have their final scenes?
Will Abbie and Vince stick together?
Will Ashley be as reckless as CC this week and end up in trouble with the remaining pimps?
Will Alston finally come round to gentrification?
Can Rodney get through a whole episode without slouching?
