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 six, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday at 10pm.
The mode of the Deuce is one of permanent anxiety. It’s not quite dread and, unlike David Simon’s other show, horrible consequences are not always just around the corner. But the feeling that something could happen is persistent. And this week it did.
As we know already, when things go wrong in the Deuce it’s women who bear the brunt. That’s once again the case here as deadbeat cop Danny brings an end to a row with his girlfriend, Anita, by thumping her head against the frame of a car and killing her. By the end of the episode Danny is dead, too, having blown his brains out in the same car.
Danny couldn’t face the consequences of being judged for his actions and this was consistent with his character. He had some moral fibre – he didn’t rat out Chris Alston after his partner’s relationship with an investigative journalist, for example – but, at the same time, he didn’t have much. He was on the take and abused his power to get the attention of Anita, who worked in Bobby’s parlour, in the first place.
At the beginning of the episode, in what turns out to be morose moment of foreshadowing, we join Alston as he watches his Danny get drunk and humiliate his wife at a bowling alley. Alston knows full well Danny has a girlfriend and when he is first on the scene at the riverside, he knows who the Jane Doe is.
It is Alston who confirms Danny as the main suspect in the death after he hands McDonagh the wristwatch he found in Anita’s hand. It’s also Alston who tries to persuade Danny to turn himself in, the best to limit the punishment he would face. But then, when Danny chooses the other way out, Alston steps in once more. This time he pedals a line about Anita’s death that exculpates Danny and therefore allows his wife still to access his pension. As a consequence, Anita’s name is forgotten by everyone.
If he hadn’t nearly been killed in a drive-by shooting at the end, Vince’s story would have served as a nice counterpoint to the tragedy elsewhere.
Having had his request to stop working the massage parlours roundly rejected by mobsters Rudy and Tommy, Vince leaves the 366 club in a huff. Not only that, he plans to huff a lot of coke. He takes a big bag of the stuff, hires a car and sets off for the north. As the journey proceeds we see Vince slowly calm down. At one point he stares contemplatively into a starry night and later he chuck the dregs of his drugs out of the passenger window. By the time he reaches the state of Vermont, Vince is positively placid and ripe for an awakening.
He duly finds it in the small town in which he parks his car. Before the end of his first night in the place he has not only made friends at the bar, but worked behind it and acted as a matchmaker to the clientele to boot. The landlord invites him to stay over at his place and Vincent happily agrees, drinking orange juice in front of the guy’s apple pie family like he had never tasted the stuff before.
By the time he makes it back to Manhattan, Vince is even more convinced that the time is right to hotfoot it from the den of sin that is the Deuce and regenerate in a bucolic idyll. Abbie, having experienced such a life growing up in Connecticut, is not having any of it. This immediate puncturing of Vince’s balloon sort of brings the two halves of this unusual couple together. His humbling gives licence for Vince to reveal he knows Abbie has slept with someone else and, as a New Yorker, born and bred, he can share his own expertise, about the dangers of consorting with worthy lawyer Dave (the object of Abbie’s amour). They end the scene in an embrace.
But, as I say, Vince is being shot at not long after. It comes after a journey which, for anyone familiar with mob movie tropes, looked set to end in some kind of disaster (another of those moments of anxiety the Deuce trades in). No one ever gets invited into a car with a gangster and comes out smiling. Yet while it seems Rudy and Tommy did want to take Vince to dinner, they end up in a hail of bullets on a street corner. It’s unclear who the shooter wanted to take out, but the last line of the episode goes to Tommy: “They were throwing those shots at you Vince, who’d you piss off?”
There was drama and there were shocks, but one strand of this week’s plot was a lot more predictable: Shay’s return to the streets. We see her at the beginning of the hour still shacked up with Irene and still safe from the pimp Rodney. But her first line of dialogue is telling, suggesting that she feels “a little antsy” and would like to go for a walk.
Irene has been persuaded that the love of a good woman is all Shay needs to get her away from prostitution and keep her off heroin. But this has always seemed like wishful thinking, the romance included. The kiss Irene and Shay share in their opening scene does not radiate mutual affection. By the time Irene has returned home from her work at the peep store, Shay has gone.
Soon we find Shay not hiding from Rodney but actively seeking him out. The man with the conked hair is a long way from the preening alley cat of last season. He, too, has lost himself to junk. That means Shay finds him sprawled on a stoop talking rubbish about what he’s up to. But it also means he’s carrying dope and he immediately deals Shay in.
By the third time we see her, it’s through Irene’s eyes as she tries to hunt down Shay on the street. She finds her quickly enough, but Shay is getting into a car with a john and doesn’t even turn her head as Irene calls after her.
Finally for this week the ever ticking timebomb that is CC. He’s pissed at the legal guys, setting fire to Dave’s leaflet in front of him. He’s pissed at restaurant staff who offer him the wine to taste (he wants his glass full, thank you very much). He’s certainly going to be pissed if Red Hot porn star Lori signs an exclusive contract with a Hollywood agent, which looks kind of likely. The pimp can surely tell something is coming, as he takes Lori tout for dinner purely to remind her that the pair will continue to work together as her fame grows. “Ain’t gonna be nobody who loves you like I love you,” he says. And he is of course correct.
Discotheque Bibliotheque
A week that was light on culture, at least by my reckoning. And that’s including Larry’s newly imagined project In the Heat of the Meat.
On the music front, I’m not able to name the track that’s playing as Vince settles down in his charming hippy cafe, but I do note that the Grateful Dead played their first concert in Vermont in 1978 and I wonder if any Deadheads out there might be able to name that tune.
Questions for next week
Will Lori make big bucks or will CC stop her first?
Will we see Candy’s (or even Eileen’s) name up in lights?
Is there a sting in the tail for Paul? Never mind Vince …
