Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The Deuce,which aired its series finale this past Monday, concludes similarly to other David Simon projects.
Some things change while some stay the same.
New beginnings are forged as other stories end.
Time keeps on slipping into an uncertain, unknowing future.
Meanwhile, the sex trade continues unabated in the outer boroughs.
Vinces brother-in-law Bobby (Chris Bauer) returns to his union job after his parlor shuts down.
Paul (Chris Coy) retains his Village bar and continues his AIDS activism.
Alongside the individual changes, the larger culture has transformed as well.
AIDS has ravaged the community surrounding the Deuce.
Mob violence and sexual exploitation have taken their human toll.
Some leave the city while others stay to embark on their second acts.
Except that doesnt happen.
He remembers most of them in better health and dressed in 70s garb.
(Gary Carr), whom Bobby and Frankie killed after mouthing off too many times.
The flash-forward sequence engages with nostalgia but mostly reads as a lament in the style ofthe ending ofCasino.
Gone are the days when working-class people, in trades both legal and not, could thrive in Manhattan.
Manhattan might be safer to navigate, but its drained of all character.
The scene also interrogates a certain survivors guilt that pervadesThe Deuce.
The seriess characters lived dangerously in service of vice and pleasure.
Lori was the biggest name in porn and her life ended in addiction and debasement.
Throughout this period, Vincent was a bartender and club owner, an observer who poured drinks for everyone.
People drank what he served and took pleasure in his company.
At the same time, he was also complicit in the casual horrors that subsumed the Deuce.
He willfully took mob money that engendered the rise of exploitation.
His establishments were environments where abuse ran rampant.
He provided space for toxic people to prosper and flourish under a misguided open-door policy.
While other people might be more directly responsible for such wide-ranging malfeasance, theres still blood on Vincents hands.
He escaped and retired from the life.
But hell always be haunted.
But nothing really changes, it just moves to places where the money men havent looked yet.
Thats the only thing that ever happens.
Its easy to see all of these ideas percolating as Vincent slowly walks through his old stomping ground.
Yet, the modern Times Square is the result of a similar ethic.
The city was fine with how the Deuce operated until certain powerful interests werent making enough profit.
Progress only arrives when money pulls it forward.
Its crucial that we only catch glimpses of characters instead of being told their endings.
Simon and Pelecanos attempted a bold gambit here, and it pays off because of whats left unsaid.
