Photo: Kyle Kaplan / Sony Pictures
The Deuce wrapped up a couple weeks ago with one of the all-time weirdest final episodes. Part of me loves it: the show jumped decades into the future to show just how much New York has changed, which has really been the story of the show all along. It also felt like fan service, letting people see how these characters and events turned out down the road.
Jumping from a very stylized 1970s / 80s to a sort of stylized 2019 is extremely weird, though. It’s like seeing a character from a Western pop up on a space ship — just completely and utterly out of place.
I’m sure that was part of the point, but combined with James Franco in old man makeup, the whole thing felt uproariously goofy. The Deuce has always tried to be so much bigger than…