‘The Deuce’ Series Premiere Recap: No Such Thing as a Free Breakfast

Thought I commnted last week but guess not, so will continue watching as it's just been renewed, and it is Simon, but do wish the sets showed the true grittiness of the streets back in the 1970s: no pooper scooper laws in 1971. Just simple wildlife stuff. Dogs, pigeons. The sex I find tedious. I loathe anything that in any fashion glamorizes pimps so...how to do this and not do that and not be racist and not be clichė...good luck with that.

Sex always sells. Even sleazy sex.

Really enjoyed this pilot, which I was looking forward to. Unlike other commenters here I like the look and feel of 1970's NY, and it looks gritty and dirty. Although it does look like Mean Streets, that is fine with me. I noticed a lot of attention to detail and there was obviously a lot of time and money invested in the sets. I was a little taken aback by the identical twins, they look a little too much alike. But overall, a great pilot I will enjoy watching.

Very gritty and realistic, but the characters are being developed right away. I'm a big fan of "The Wire" so I won't miss this. Gyllenhaal is great.

If there's a hearing aid manufacturer perusing this comment section, we should be seeing some clever placement advertising in an upcoming episode.

I loved "The Wire" and think "Ray Donovan" is well done, but I've stopped watching the latter and will not tune into "The Deuce." I've gotten to the point where I'm asking myself if I really want to know these people. I used to shake my head when others blamed everything on Obama, but now I'm doing the same thing with Trump. My hesitancy to emotionally invest in the lives of fictional characters living in the underbelly of society has got to have something to do with my inability to deal with the reality of the Trump presidency. I'm not yet ready for reruns of "The Waltons," but neither am I ready for "The Deuce." Luckily we now have "This Is Us."

The streets were too clean, the cars were all the latest models, buffed and polished for a floor show, the costumes were perfectly pressed and fitted (even on the supposedly poor kids) and the sets looked like, well, sets. The dialogue was all cleaned up without any feel for the street nor any convincing NYC accents (MG's was particularly affected), all politically correct and safe. For someone like David Simon, whose grittiness and realism are second to none (The Wire especially) this has to rank as a major disappointment. I didn't believe it was 1971 for a second, I believed it was a bunch of actors dressed up as 1970s characters spouting non-period dialogue on a bunch of sets dressed up with 1970s props and store signs. In order for this show to work, I have to feel like I have been time- warped...I did, but not to NYC 1971...to Hollywood 2017 P.S. Tug McGraw was a relief pitcher he rarely started a Mets Game. Symbolic of the necessary details this show badly lacks.

No! Wait! Please! I have another truckload of cliches and complete lack of humor outside! Yes! In a truck! On the street! Yeah! How much? Wholesale? Yes, ok, wholesale.

Where are the drugs? Why do these women need a pimp? I see no benefit. I always believed that the pimps got these girls addicted in order to control them. This series hasn't shown that. Too sanitized, maybe??

"Early on, Vinnie has a gash on the right side of his forehead, after getting pistol-whipped for his brother’s debts. "
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Vinnie wasn't pistol-whipped for his brother's debts. He had just deposited the night's take from the bar when two would-be robbers held him up. Although he had no cash, they made him beg for his life and knocked him to the ground.

To the producers' credit, the premiere managed to set the right tone and to introduce multiple, three-dimensional characters without marginalizing any of them -- unveiling personal and compelling details about 1971 Times Square and starting to flesh out each of the players. They captured the zeitgeist for sure. Looking forward to future episodes.

The "Greyhound bus station" is the Port Authority Bus Terminal

You can tell from the comments who is a member of David Simon's cult and who isn't. David takes his time building up the plot and developing characters so patience is a must. If the Wire is any indication, we are in for some excellent storytelling!

I worked Times Square in 68 & 69. A little too early for this series but almost everything was already in place. There was an upstairs place on the street with girls dancing in the window to never ending loud rock music. The drinks were watered and the girls went on "breaks" with customers under the watchful eyes of muscle bound goons. The top floor was a flat out casino with a small private elevator. The show has everything right except for conveying how dirty everything was and the horrible day and night stench. Most of the cops I saw then were also very involved in "looking out" for the establishment and it's "customers".

I was very disappointed with the pilot. The themes and the visuals were outrageous cliches,right out of Taxi Driver and Mean Streets. I've seen those films, numerous times, thank you, and I was hoping for something fresher. There is only one Martin Scorsese and we don't need a less talented one.

Absolutely compelling! O' if it could only be streamed! I was 30 & hip again. Soul music had recently evolved from it's roots, R&B of the '50's & '60's. Sound track to die for. CC, I knew you back then and never understood how you could attract those fine women. But a key line in the 1st episode explained it. "I need a pimp bc I'm lazy.". HBO, Treme was great, but this series shows it real & unvarnished. The trash bags on the sidewalk, the drizzling, dirty rain, the cheap wigs, the Wops, the Bros, the not so naive White naifs, I'm hooked. The Deuce. Let it ride.

it was as compelling as watching someone torture an animal.

Meh. Not sure it's lived up to the critical hype just yet. I'll probably keep watching it as long as I maintain my HBO subscription, but I find I'm not eagerly awaiting the next episode as I do with many other shows.

The acting was generally good, especially Franco's performance, but the characters were frankly not that compelling. The same old small-time hustlers and hookers, two-faced pimps and down-to-earth cops, working-class dads and backstabbing wives... I've seen these stories a million times before. Why should I care about this particular take on them? Where is the plot going? What was the inciting incident here?

Of course the recreation of 1970s New York was exceedingly well done, though I can't help wondering if this show was greenlit just so HBO could repurpose the sets and costumes from the disappointing "Vinyl." And it always bugs me when period pieces fail to capture the way people from a different era actually talked. The writers and actors seemingly put little effort into trying to emulate the idioms, accents, and speech patterns of the 1970s -- all the dialogue was peppered with excessive swearing and modern-day slang. Not convincing.

Had trouble hearing all the back and forth dialog. Glad its not just my hearing. WTH! What's going on with the sound recording.

It was sooooo slooooooow. I thought they could have made all the same points about the same characters in half the time. A show about the 70s does not require horrible 70s movie pacing. And I think they need a whole lot more female writers to get involved, because all of the prostitutes came off as movie cliches, not real women - right down to the wise prostitute (A Tale of Two Cities? Really?) and the prostitute just trying to make some money for her kid the only way she can (what, she couldn't live with her mom and get a waitressing job?). Not to mention the college student story arc was totally unbelievable. If she's so smart and didn't want the drugs for herself, she never would have gotten out of the car.

I really wanted to love it because I adore The Wire and Treme, but I was not a fan of the first episode. I hope it gets better.

The opening episode is a reminder of just how much character development "Game of Thrones" had to sacrifice this past season to speed the plot along and to provide for several large CGI set pieces. Just about every scene was a delight in its own right, and I appreciated the depth and complexity provided to characters, large and small. In terms of influences, I found the delightful initial introduction of Frankie as he goes about his business walking the street to be highly reminiscent of the scene in Ralph Bakshi's "American Pop" of Tony (or is it his son Pete?) dealing drugs on the streets of New York, set to the tune of the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant." And having gone to school in NYC in the late 1970s, the portrayal of the griminess and sleaze was sufficiently accurate to make anyone yearning for the "old Times Square" before it became a Disney-fied (well, ok, I don't think there are any "desnudas" in Disney World) tourist attraction. I also remember, from those same college days, the early cable "Ugly George" show ("goils, goils, goils") seemingly on almost every night on the floor television set of my freshman dorm. Presumably, that is the type of sleazy porn world that "The Deuce" will be exploring.

The collector character has an easy resemblance to Harvey Keitel.

Shallow waters here. No texture whatsoever. Obvious sets, not locations. All the actors look as if they came straight from wardrobe. I was in NYC at that time and it was scary. This 42 is like high school.

Not to sound like an old guy awed by digital technology, but The Deuce visually depicts that time in New York so convincingly that you can almost feel the grit under your feet and smell the gasoline-leaded air.

I caught the first episode, via a reviewers copy, aggregated by www.mycouchtuner.ag about two weeks ago, and the audio was just as horrid as the official release.
I only made it through the first 20-minutes or so before giving up.
Looks like a show I'll wait on to binge watch the complete this winter during a weekend blizzard.

The reviewer makes an incisive connection between Vinnie and Frankie and Charlie and Johnny Boy. Same time, different hoods, but both filled with the rituals of their streets. If Be My Baby or the Stones's' "Tell Me" show up, I'll appreciate the creator's homage.

Brilliant. I'm hooked already. So so glad to have another david Simon show to savor. Thank you HBO

Regarding the dialogue, I wound up turning on the closed captioning.

Slower start than I would like but I think back to Episode 1, Season 1 of The Wire and I thought it started similarly. We shall see how it progresses.

Sound track is excellent!

I am willing to give this series time to develop, out of respect for the writers who gave us the complex characters and gritty realism of The Wire. I caught most of the dialogue, and I'm intrigued by the way things are being set up. I'm interested in how the women and James Franco will be tested and show their vulnerability and strength as the various players did in The Wire. As a child of the 70's, I love how the soundtrack comments on the show's themes. Haven't heard Treat Her Like a Lady in years, and I loved the irony of it in this context.

I thought this was an unusally slow start to a series. While it's great to see what will probably be all our main players intersect and the lives of quiet desperation they all lead, I kept waiting for someone to allude to the solution.

I enjoyed it and found it well-acted and engrossing. I also had a problem with hearing some of the dialog and feel that sometimes the audio wasn't quite high enough. I mentioned this to my boyfriend after the show. I really was impressed with the trashy look of Times Square and the characters with their juxtaposition to each other, making the story come together and lead me into it. I was amazed at how great an acting job James Franco did, especially when he played two parts in the same scene, and it was incredibly realistic filmmaking. I think it's going to be a good series...it's got good bones!

Enjoyed the premiere episode, but I'd like to know if anyone else had trouble hearing a lot of the dialogue. I'm noticing this in several shows lately. Thoughts?