The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True

The evolution of porn continues to take center stage in The Deuce 2.2, with Candy realizing that a good way to go forward, get more sophisticated, in her movies is to base at least one on a fairytale - or maybe it's a nursery rhyme - Little Red Riding Hood.   Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' "Little Red Riding Hood" plays in the background - also a raunchy version of that nursery rhyme and always good to hear.

In other movie-related developments on The Deuce, Larry Brown - played by Gbenga Akinnagbe from The Wire and lots of other memorable performances - asks Candy why there are not any "brothers" in her movies.  He aptly points out that acting is the essence of being a pimp, and he would be up to cast in her movies, and you can see the wheels in her head beginning to turn.

And ... at very least, Lori will be heading out to Hollywood, because you can't have a story about the movie business without some significant kind of Hollywood involvement.  What these movies are of course doing is lifting our characters way beyond New York to the world at large.

Indeed, the local non-movie threads in this episode are just two brief scenes.   One concerns the windowless peepholes and their complications.  The other concerns an alternate mob move on Vincent's bar, and will likely lead to some sort of bloodshed before the season is over.

As a media theorist, I'm enjoying the emphasis on porn over in-person pimping and prostitution, meaning, so far, I'm liking this season more than season 1.

See also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing 

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" ..

Ray Donovan 1.7 and Whitey Bulger

Just as Showtime's Ray Donovan is really picking up steam, the Whitey Bulger trial in Boston comes to a head with a verdict.   Showtime must be delighted with the coincidence - it almost makes up for the Showtime (Viacom-CBS) dispute with Time Warner which has deprived New York City viewers of Ray Donovan, Dexter, and much more.  On that issue, I say a pox on both your houses - Viacom and Time Warner, you both are worth billions, give the viewers a break, one or both of you accept a little less, and get on with it.  (See my comments on this in The Christian Science Monitor.)  But I digress--

The oldsters on Ray Donovan have been stealing the show from the beginning, even though Liev Schreiber as Ray has been superb, and the rest of the cast has been outstanding, too.  But Elliot Gould as Ezra dominates every scene he's in with his old Jewish delivery, and Jon Voight as Mickey lights up the series with one of the best performances of his long career.

I've long been a James Woods fan, and have not been disappointed with his characteristically quirky, powerful performance as Sully.  Usually Woods plays a somewhat good guy with a big edge of evil - think of his riveting performance in The Specialist (1994 movie) or his Roy Cohn role Citizen Cohn (1992 movie) - but as Sully he reverses that with a dollop of good amidst a fundamentally evil man.

Just as dogs played a role in Bulger and his girlfriend's relationship, so does a dog figure in Sully and his wife's daily life - as she points out, only Sully can get their pooch to go.  But this same Sully who has a way with animals is Ray's go-to man for the murder of Mickey.  Bulger is said to have been the template for the Frank Costello character (played by Jack Nicholson) in The Departed, but he surely was the inspiration for Sully, too, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Woods play that out.

And where does this leave us regarding Ray?  Abby says for the first time that Ray hates Mickey because Mickey killed Ray's girlfriend - that would be why Ray was happy to have Mickey take the fall for the killing that Sean Stevens did - but it's hard to believe that Ray didn't kill Mickey immediately after Mickey killed Ray's girlfriend (if indeed Mickey did).  This leaves Ray's ultimate motivation and hated of Mickey still in question, and we may well not find out much more about that this season.

But that's ok.  Ray Donovan, whatever exactly that show is, is clearly a series that bears many years of viewing.

See also Ray Donovan Debuts with Originality and Flair ... Ray Donovan 1.2: His Assistants and his Family ... Ray Donovan 1.3: Mickey

 


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