The Deuce 2.3: The Price

I've been saying how glad I am that The Deuce is focusing much more on the porn business this season, and commensurately less on the prostitution and pimp business - what can I say, I'm a media historian - and episode 2.3 seemed to be doing the same tonight, until it turned it all around.

Lori and Harvey won awards in California - I cheered - and Candy gets an appointment with a money-man who can finance her "Little Red Riding Hood" movies - actually, two movies, one X-rated, one not, to maximize its appeal.  And the guy seems interested.  He offers to write a $10, 000 check.  Good news!  But ... only if she performs fellatio on him, as he's writing the check, to use the courteous term for that.  Candy considers, and agrees.  We can see that she's disgusted.  The price she has to pay for leaving her life of prostitution in the past is to be a prostitute, albeit briefly, again.  In her final scene of the evening, we see her thinking, unhappily, about what she had to do.  But she takes out the check and props it up on her table.  She's determined to make it as a director, whatever it takes.  She thinks, ultimately, that she made the right decision.

Lori has a different crash with reality.  She comes home to New York, elated about her win, and tells CC that she's finished "tricking".  He throws her trophy against the wall, and partially breaks it.   CC has no intention of letting her go.  Lori is not likely to put up with that, in the long run.  But, for now, her award has no impact on her status as prostitute.

So the story of the emergence of the porn profession from the prostitute profession, at this point in The Deuce, is that the emergence is no easy path.   The advance from prostitute to porn director or star either requires more prostitution, or can be blocked by the prostitute's pimp.

I'll see you back here next week with another report on how this story progresses.

See also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..