Just finished season 2 last night and it really resonated, The Deuce became a great show. The season provided a lot of reckonings both gradual and sudden for the 42nd street world and its various characters. It does so in a very non-judgmental way which is really interesting. This deprives you of some introspection with characters all caught up in their worlds/lives that rarely act with perspective, like Candy who is so blunt, smart, real & honest about every single thing but her son/family. But then it takes you inside of a few characters so Vince wonders if 'we are the balloon knots' and we get Darlene's great goodbye scene that contains the title of the episode of seeing 'inside the pretend'. This is where the audience has been the whole time so its nice to have a couple characters that see the forest thru the trees.
I'm fascinated by where every single one of these characters will be in __ years when the show returns and I think re-watching season 1 now it'll be a lot better than on first view.
