Let’s begin with the ending.
For a show—and for a final season—so haunted by decline, decay and death, The Deuce finale is surprisingly sedate. Most of the major character deaths happen off-screen, prior to the lyrical closing sequence, which sees a retired Vincent Martino, circa May 2019, revisiting his old stomping grounds in Manhattan. Everywhere he turns in Times Square, he’s haunted by ghosts of the departed—many of whom we didn’t actually see die during the series.
This is a striking coda. It’s also somewhat unsatisfying… but only because David Simon, George Pelecanos, and their remarkable team of writers, directors and actors have done such a fine job of bringing this world to life. It stings a bit, not to know what all of these characters did between 1985 and 2019.
There are hints, of course. This episode (titled “Finish It”) effectively brings multiple storylines to a close. Big Mike dies, in his remote cabin. Melissa and Reg get married, so that when he inevitably succumbs to AIDS-related complications, she can legally manage his dying wishes and carry on living in his apartment with minimal hassle. Bobby’s son Joey gets busted for insider trading, just as the stock he and his father are shorting rises rather than falls.
Bobby has perhaps the most pathetic closing arc—but not exactly tragic, because Bobby’s no hero. The episode begins with him partnering with Russian monsters to repopulate his massage parlor with surly Eastern European immigrant prostitutes, who won’t even have sex with him. In the coda, Bobby’s dead… but not before we see him get run out of business by the Koch administration, which uses the AIDS crisis as an excuse to close not just the bathhouses but the parlors, so the mayor won’t be accused of being a self-hating closeted homosexual. (“I thought it was gonna last,” the ever-shortsighted Bobby sighs to Black Frankie, just before the latter leaves town to move to David Simon’s beloved Baltimore… while in the background, the sound of new construction haunts them both.)
The big shutdown affects Paul, too—but not too much, because he’s been trying to ease his way to respectability since the ‘70s, and has been mostly successful. Paul still has his Village bar (despite the health department padlocking the back rooms); and in a moving final speech, right before the coda, he talks about how the changing seasons used to remind of all the trouble he had in school as a boy—but how now he kind of looks forward to change.
It helps too that Vincent finally (or, I should say, “again”) gets Paul out from under the mob’s thumb. As the episode begins, Tommy Longo is talking about big plans to build off the mini-empire he inherited from mafia smutlord Rudy Pipilo. Tommy boasts about bringing Vincent along with him. But then, mere days later, the peeps and the parlors are closed; and Vince is asking to buy out the mob’s stake in both the Hi-Hat and Paul’s, so his friends can be free. (Tommy, it should be noted, appears in the coda alongside the ghost of Rudy, which suggests what happened to him. Paul too walks by, in full ‘70s regalia.)
We also find out about all we need to know about Chris Alston, who tells Gene Goldman that he plans to retire early, now that he’s killed the white whale that was the Deuce. But while Gene’s making big promises to get Alston promoted to Captain before he hands in his badge, the detective first wants to show him something important: It’s a block in the Bronx, just as crime-ridden as Times Square used to be. They accomplished a goal, but not the goal. Mostly they just made rich folks richer, made some poor folks’ lives harder, and (in perhaps the one net good) made it harder for crooked cops to get their pad.
Given how much attention The Deuce has lavished on its women across these three seasons, it’s disappointing that Abby’s story gets a little shortchanged in the finale. Vincent gives her the Hi-Hat, free and clear, and she immediately passes it along to Loretta. And then Abby walks by in the last shot in Times Square in 2019, now a successful businesswoman… and not dead, since Vincent doesn’t see her.
It’s also somewhat disappointing that Vincent is the focus of coda, while Eileen’s fate is consigned to a newspaper obituary Vince reads (plus one final appearance as part of the parade of ghosts in Times Square). There is a possible thematic purpose to this though, which I’ll get to momentarily.
Plus, to be fair, a lot of “Finish It” is about Eileen—including the episode’s title, which refers to what Harvey says to her after he views the footage for her magnum opus, A Pawn In Their Game. At the time, she’s getting ready to abandon the project, which isn’t coming together the way she imagined. As much as she enjoyed the process of working with real actors, watching them bring colors to scenes that she couldn’t have imagined, the truthfulness and tragedy she’s aiming for doesn’t fit with explicit sex she feels compelled to insert (so to speak). Running out of money and patience, she’s ready to scrap the whole deal and get back to work on regular porn. But then Harvey tells her to cut out the sex scenes and finish A Pawn In Their Game as a straight drama. This suggestion infuriates Eileen, who’d rather embrace her identity as a pornographer.
Her defensive posture has multiple explanations. For one thing, she feels a little icky after talking her non-porn actors into screwing on-camera, in scenes that are, by design, sad and rough. Perhaps as penance—and to pay for her movie—“Candy” flies out to Los Angeles to honor her commitment to appear on camera in a purportedly “classy” porno. When she arrives, she discovers the producers have misled her, and that she’s expected to do the same gauntlet of unsexy, dehumanizing sex scenes that drove Lori Madison to suicide. Unlike Lori, when faced with some fairly unreasonable demands, Candy negotiates a few concessions and then gets on with the action, doing her best as always to compartmentalize—to treat “the work” as just work. (Later, when Harvey asks her how L.A. was, she aptly answers, “Buncha dicks.”)
So that’s all running through Eileen’s head as she snaps at Harvey about scrapping her movie’s sex scenes. She’s also thinking about the sacrifices she’s made in her relationship with Hank, who as the 1985 scenes come to an end has become an aspiring Lehman Brothers vice president, and has more or less given her an ultimatum: If she acts in another X-rated picture, they’re through. Not wanting anyone to tell her what she can and can’t do, she chooses porn. And now Harvey is also telling her to ditch all that?
The irony—such as it is—is that by May 2019, Lehman Brothers will no longer exist, while Eileen Merrell will be getting a lengthy Daily News obit, which mentions her work in the adult film industry as well as her Criterion Collection-approved indie classic A Pawn In Their Game. That’s about as much of a twist ending as we should expect from Simon and Pelecanos, who prefer more of a realistic “life goes on” approach. They’re more about examining underlying social structures than about making sure every character gets a proper sendoff.
That said, there’s something telling in the way Vincent sees his world in the 2019 sequence. Vince never knew anything about A Pawn In Their Game; and when he sees Eileen’s ghost later on the street, she’s back in her “Candy” clothes, working the corner. He also sees Dorothy as “Ashley.” Over three seasons, we watched these women enjoy triumphs, suffer tragedies, and dare great things. But while Vincent’s remembering the good ol’ days on the Deuce—when a bartender was free to give “an honest pour”—he’s also, in a way, romanticizing their exploitation.
It’d be easy to read the shots of the flashy, sanitized Times Square at the end of “Finish It” as a critique, bordering on a lament. It’s like a visualization of what Paul says in response to Gene’s vision of “a new New York”—“Who lives in that one?” But note the song this series ends on: a Blondie cover of “The Sidewalks Of New York,” originally written in 1894 by Charles B. Lawlor and James W. Blake, while in a nostalgic mood for the vanished city of their youth. Talk to any New Yorker at any time, and things are never quite as great as they once were.
And that’s because change is constant in New York. It’s the only thing that never changes.
Stray observations
- So I guess my prediction/assumption that Bobby and Joey were stupidly betting against the drug that would become Viagra wasn’t really what Simon and Pelecanos had in mind. That subplot was just about insider trading, not anything necessarily ironic. Ah well.
- I know David Simon doesn’t do rounded-off kinds of TV endings, where everybody hugs and cries. Still, it would’ve been nice if the characters had taken a moment to mourn Lori’s death—or at least do so more than Vincent does, when he sees her ghost alongside C.C.’s, and immediately looks back down at the sidewalk.
- A literal sign of the times. The movies playing in Times Square in 1985 aren’t X-rated or grindhouse fare, but rather Hollywood-style pulp like Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Silver Bullet. Meanwhile, in 2019, Vincent can choose between watching the nudity and violence-filled Game Of Thrones on HBO, or actual porn on his hotel’s Pay-Per-View. And so the spirit of the Deuce lives on.
165 Comments
I don’t know how a show can be so great for like 30 episodes and then destroy the goodwill in 10 minutes. The point of the Deuce isn’t supposed to be how NY has changed — it’s supposed to show how it was always full of life and vibrance and dreams. Vince waxing nostalgic isn’t the point. I feel let down and quite frankly bamboozled.End with the patented Simon montage showing us these characters in their element. Have Paul’s last line about the seasons changing — as he’s hobbling out of his soon to be gone bar — serve as the exclamation point. Things change. It is neither good nor bad. But life is beautiful where you live it.
I was taken aback by the absence of Lori’s death and its effect on the other characters, except for the brief cameo at the end. It was as if she never existed.
Maybe that was intentional.
None of the characters on the show really cared for Lori. They were only interested in her for what they could get from her. Once she was gone that was it.
I agree. Not to mention, no one really knew her name, where she was from or anything. There wasn’t a bond.
It’s sort of reflective of how they treated her while she was alive. In that ending sequence, nobody looks more haunted than she does. Pretty damning stuff.
There was a slightly rueful and accusatory head shake at Vincent. I liked that.
And Vin looks ashamed, embarrassed and guilty of that when he sees her, unable to even maintain eye contact. He knew they all used her up, even the ones that “cared” about her and did so unintentionally.
In retrospect, it’s all contained in that scene with Eileen and the actress at the beginning where she talks about how some people aren’t cut out to be in front of the camera and lie about it. You expect a big show from the entire cast, but all you get is a moment of Gyllenhaal gravitas – which, to be fair, is extremely powerful.
It worked, though. Same as with Vince not knowing about Eileen’s movie. You remember that a lot of these people didn’t really know each other. They were, for the most part just people banging around the same neighborhood who knew one another as regulars at bars, diners, on corners, etc. In some cases, there was some overlap in their respective lines of work. But that was about it. I thought about the Lori thing, too. But then realized, why would they even hear about it? They didn’t know her name. The cops would have found a body, presumably with an ID bearing Lori’s actual name, and it’s not like this would have made it into the papers anyway.
I saw it as a statement on what Lori’s life had truly become before she ended it. Not addressing the immediate aftermath essentially confirmed that she had nothing and no one. Terribly sad.
I think that was intentional. It served to reinforce the emptiness, lack of connection and sense of futility that drove her to suicide.I imagine there was no one to claim her body and she was buried in an anonymous pauper grave. In a show rife with tragedy Lori’s arc was the most tragic and haunting of all.
Because, maybe, that’s how it was.
As others have noted, I think the absence of acknowledgment (outside of Eileen’s interactions with her actors, which was pretty directly shaped by the event) was pretty intentional. The epilogue scene where Vince can’t even look her in the eye, and Lori just shakes her head, pretty much confirms that as well. The feeling that she never existed is the exact feeling they want you to have in my mind, which is sad as hell.
That’s the point. Even the “heroine” of our story, Candy/Eileen, just moves on.
Wasn’t it so strongly implied that Eileen also realized something was deeply wrong and that’s why she shut down the shoot when Lori didn’t show up? (And she probably felt there was more she could have done…) I doubt she thought that Lori just took the 40 bucks and flew back to LA…
Lori’s ghost reminded me of one of the best shots of Carnivale, in which a character is also left to ghosts.
Thanks for the reminder, a show that started off slow, but then became great, I wish they had continued..
Honestly, weeks ago I figured the ending of this series would likely borrow from Scorsese’s CASINO, and his lament that Vegas lost its glamour to tour buses of (ahem) sweat suit wearing mid-westerners, carnival, gimmick and an utter disregard of a class that once defined Las Vegas, or at least the Las Vegas romanticized in film and book. But I thought the ending upped that because I think it did both: The Deuce called back the fairly pervasive seediness of 70’s -80’s Manhattan (the time period I first was introduced to the City) and the lament Vincent feels (like many a New Yorker) that it lost its soul, an “honest pour.” But at the same time seeing most of the principal characters of the series as ghosts reminds one the brutal combine of drugs and vice that was Manhattan, decades past that cost thousands of people their lives to eek out a living by getting caught in an undertow that was toxic if not deadly.What were the creators saying? I agree Noel, New York is constantly changing, and the undertow is simply changing with it likely spitting out as many victims trying to survive a Big Apple they can never reach due to gross economic disparity, housing, regulations and quality of life.This last season was outstanding in my book.
Agreed entirely, except that: 1) it’s “eke”; and 2) the “lost lament for old seedy self in light of garish tourist-trap” wasn’t really something to ‘predict’ or ‘figure’ – Simon said as much very plainly in the run-up through the production of the series. (Again – as you recognize – he did so much more with it.)
Apart from everything else in this really wonderful finale, I loved that Eileen’s film is an homage to Barbara Loden’s Wanda.
Me too. I watched that at a public screening without a clue what it was about. It was fantastic.
– Fuck yeah Remo Williams!- I didn’t expect a time jump or how sentimental it was. I don’t think it was a bad thing. I don’t disagree about romanticizing the past though. I think Lori shaking her head and the mafia son he killed is supposed to get him to cut through that.- We don’t see Black Frankie, or now Frankie, so maybe he lives.
Not to be a bummer but he went off into David Simons “The Wire” universe. Nathan barksdale was the person that Avon was based on and Lexington terrace was the apartment complex at the centre of the show. Black Frankie went off to help his cousin Nathan at Lexington terrace in baltimore. He didn’t necessarily die but it’s not looking good either. As far as I can remember all the other ghosts died in nyc/manhattan so maybe that’s why they’re there? Nice little Easter egg from David Simon though.
As soon as Frankie said “Baltimore” I was like “Oh, no, Frankie went on to be one of those street-level guys I cheered Omar wasting without a second thought.”
They renamed it Franklin Terrace for the show.
You’re wrong. In a Rolling Stone interview, Simon said that if they weren’t seen in the ending, they are still alive. That include Black Frankie, Loretta, and Larry.
I think the “romanticizing” is part of the point, and a critique. People like Vince (and many like him in NYC) look back on the Deuce with some sort of notion that it was a magical place and time. Maybe for the exploiters (which Vince always was, with more heart than most), but it wasn’t for the exploited. The Lori head shake is devastating on that point.
That ending was shockingly, hatefully awful. I need to have a drink it was so goddamn bad. I guess we should have known this series would end with twenty minutes of James Franco jerking off in front of the camera, doing the worst old-man acting in the worst old-man makeup I’ve ever seen. And what the fuck was with him just happening to find Eileen’s obit in the paper at the bar so the bartender can tell us that she actually finished her film and took out the fucking? That’s some first year film school shit. That ending was the television equivalent of Dewey Cox’s cover of .
The wrong kid died.
the wrong TWIN died
This critique is aces. Simon was always the master of show don’t tell. But having that final scene in Sanitized and Soulless Times Square with Very Important Ghosts imparting meaning and importance to everything that has happened… it was as subtle as a fucking hemorrhoid.
Subtlety’s overrated. It was a great ending sequence
two and 1/2 seasons of TWO francos and then a half season of just one all for gyllenhall’s character’s send-off to be in a newspaper obit?i wanted to throw my tv out the window and YES i was screaming that some 1st year film student who gave franco a handjob wrote the final sequence.woke up still made about it.
Your life must be really free of problems if you could get that angry over a TV series ending that didn’t live up to your expectations.
Ditto. I think the actual true story (altered of course for tv) is from the real Vincent’s perspective. So as we’re forced to suffer through the whole “Vincent at the bar” scene, I found myself wondering if the real Vincent was one of those guys you’d run into that would start talking and never shut up, unless maybe you walked away lol.
I didn’t hate it as much as you did but I find it hard to argue against any of the points you’ve made. I’ve had problems with this show pandering to Franco’s marginal talents from the beginning. Was it ever essential for Franco to play twins? A lot of that stuff was as confusing and distracting as the old man stuff (I literally groaned when I saw the make up). Every single performance and story line was more interesting and compelling than Vincent and Frankie’s yet they sucked up so much of the oxygen in the show and that is the most apparent in this finale. It was weird to see Simon succumb to star power.
For real. It was beyond Titanic-level cheesiness, because at least no one in Titanic had to say, “Cause you know….I’M DEAD.” in a scene filled only with ghosts.
about what felt like 20 minutes of his walk around nyc i paused our DVR recording to see how much torture we were going to have to endure. its like they said “hey, remember that good montage we did at the end of the wire? lets do the exact opposite and expect it to have the same emotional impact!”
The whole time jump should’ve been cut. Simon (and Pelecanos) have this jaundiced eye and an incredible ability to convey humanity at its best and worst without flinching, but there’s this tiny sentimental streak that seems like it always gets the last 10 minutes of every project. And since it seems like every NYC based filmmaker ends up writing “a love letter to city,” it’s not even particularly original or well-deployed here. The audience knows what happens to the city; just trust them.
This was a great series. I feel like, as a whole, it’s a needed rebuttal to the 21st century sentimentality about the past. (“Oh, New York in the ‘70s? The pimps, the hookers, the drugs? It was WONDERFUL!!”) These stories feel like tributes to the ones who didn’t survive to wear the rose-colored glasses, also a reminder that there was a lot of pain and struggle behind the Bohemian fun. Is the sanitation of Midtown the ultimate tradegy in the end? I wonder what Lori Madison would say.
Not that much to this finale. Honestly, they could have ended with last week’s episode and I would have been fine with that.I guess I didn’t find it all that interesting mostly because it’s very Vince heavy and I never found him very interesting as a character.
Like another Simon project I could mention, the ending feels very on the nose. Did we really need Alston to drive Goldman to the place where the sex trade moved and give him the whole speech about how they didn’t fix anything? Come on, now.Anyway, I enjoyed the show as a whole and I’ll miss it. Yet another show I liked ending this year. 2019 just seems like a year of endings.
Though the ending was hoary, I thought they played it off well. It’s a lot of characters to nod to over the three seasons, but it was alright in my book.
As a (suddenly aging) New Yorker, Kang definitely gets the thing where Vince is walking down the antiseptic streets and wondering about all the old vital personalities that used to populate the place. But still, this finale was a bit weak. We get Eileen telling Harvey to fuck off, and then fast forward she made a cult masterpiece. Meh. Should have just ended with the wedding, which was the most imperfectly sweet moment of the season. The Deuce was a good show, but it definitely peaked with Season 2. Far higher stakes, and far better structured. Also, it’s hard to square Tommy Longo, Mellow Mafioso from the first 2 seasons with the Tommy Longo of season 3. But I guess, cocaine.
It’s a helluva drug. But seems like he got his in the end anyway.
Yeah it seemed like Tommy really wanted Vincent to be his friend. But in reality a guy like Tommy as soon as he got Vince to admit he had a huge pile of cash somewhere wouldn’t be happy with $200k. He’d be scheming how to get the rest of it even if it involved torturing and murdering Vince.
The Deuce was a good show, but it definitely peaked with Season 2.My thoughts exactly, which isn’t necessarily a knock on S3. S2 was just one of the most well-written, tightest, “every scene feels vital” seasons of any show I’ve ever seen. It should be studied in any film making or screen writing class, IMO. Ultimately, I think S3 left too many irons in the fire with its characters, but I wasn’t wholly unsatisfied with last night’s episode. I’d still put the series as a whole as far better than above average compared to most of what HBO has done recently and pretty underrated in the medium.
Respect your opinion, but I have to disagree. Season 2 may have been well written, but I found the sum of all of its parts to be uninteresting, depressing, and too predictable. The only reason I continued watching was due to how well it was done and the lack of quality alternatives.
I think part of why I liked season 2 so much was because it felt like one long payoff that season 1 had been working towards. Candy is out of hooking and making a name for herself directing, Lori is off the streets for movies, CC is taken care of, Larry Brown shows a lot of growth and transitions out of solely smut films, etc. Obviously season 3 showed us not all of those storylines are “finalized” and certainly not happy endings but I loved what S2 did for so many of my favorites. Probably because I am admittedly disgusted by a lot of currently airing programs and how they dawdle on and on with very little change happening to their characters or plots, sometimes for multiple seasons. That being said I can see your point about it being uninteresting or depressing. I didn’t like what they did with Abby, Vincent, or Paul in that season and thought there was potential for a hell of a lot more for them in season 3, too. The Deuce often felt a bit imbalanced with its characters and often ones I considered quite minor would eat up huge chunks of an episode.
watching the show I had no idea that this ends up being time square. It’s really heartbroking to see it becomes this soulless version of the city. I’ve never set foot in the US myself but I’d assume it just became a tourist attraction and no real new yorker enjoys deliberately going there?
Ding ding ding, you are 100% correct, no New York resident goes there anymore unless they’re hocking umbrellas and snowglobes to tourists. It was definitely a shit hole in the past, but most old timers i know are a little nostalgic.
I grew up in New York city and regularly visit my family there. Native New Yorkers who attend Broadway theaters, and many do, routinely go to Times Square because that’s where the Broadway theaters are located.
Not a New Yorker, but my Dad worked there in the 60s & 70s and I went there quite often, used to like the Times Square area, don’t think I’d like it much now. I remember the family went to Times Square for New Year’s Eve (us and a few hundred others and my Dad telling us “Watch out for pick pockets”, pretty funny looking back at that now!
I’ve never been to New York City but yes, my understanding Times Square is now mostly a tourist attraction, with family friendly stuff to do and see. Bear in mind, the whole neighborhood was considered to be one of the worst in the city for two or three decades. From the late postwar years till the building boom depicted in the show during the 80’s, the neighborhood surrounding the square was in decline, genuinely seedy and fairly dangerous to boot. By the 90’s the area was cleaned up and the theaters were operating again. So while it’s a bit of a theme park it’s also generating a ton of money for the city – a city that just a few decades back was facing bankruptcy.
All that said, every city has it’s faction of “real (New Yorkers, Parisians, Londoners, etc.) who bemoan anything that changes the city and makes it either 1.) nicer, 2.) more welcoming to out of towners, or 3.) expensive (I do kind of agree with this last one). For instance, Navy Pier here in Chicago was underutilized for decades, with virtually no shipping done from it after the war, and no tenants at all after the University of Illinois at Chicago stopped using it for classes and moved to a permanent campus. It was run down and dirty, though a few buildings were renovated in the 70’s the whole place was just an eyesore and underused. By the mid 90’s it was completely redone as a public space, and is a world class attraction for the city. And I know people who hate it and won’t set foot there, because it’s “too Disneyfied” and clean and you can’t just wander out to the end and throw cigarette butts into the lake while you watch ships unload and eat fried shrimp from the shack at the base of the pier. It’s been decades since you could do that and people still hate the fact you can’t anymore.
As they say, nostalgia’s a hell of a drug.
It was run down and dirty, though a few buildings were renovated in the 70’s the whole place was just an eyesore and underused. By the mid 90’s it was completely redone as a public space, and is a world class attraction for the city.
Gentrification will not only “satinize” a neighbourhood and make it lifeless; like many other identical places; it will also gradually drive away original inhabitants who can’t afford the rent there anymore. It’s a difficult to avoid process, but a painful one. working classes are pushed further and further away from the center (in my european context at least); all the neighboorhood is being tranformed one by one. First you have student and artists; that can’t afford a high rent, but have very different needs than the rest of the population. Then the street food places get replaced by organic markets; breweries and so on. Then the real estate promoters and politicians get on it; and it’s done. That’s what’s happening in my neighbourhood. I’ve been living here for a while but couldn’t afford the rent if I moved in today. And I’m not sure my building will stay up for much longer. In the end, lower income people are pushed outside of the city into the suburbs. and in the case of Paris; the suburb itself is getting gentrified; it’s never ending.
Bang on. If you live in any part of NYC, Times Square is the one place you almost never go and make every effort to avoid.
we don’t really have this where I live; not to this degree (I live in Lyon, France; not really comparable I guess). The old town is the most tourist-y but it’s still largely tolerable, and it’s actually nice. I tend to avoid the main center though not because of tourists but mainly because it’s mostly designer shops; mac donalds; movie theaters and teenagers. When I go to Paris I know better not to get near Notre-Dame or the Eiffel tower though.
To be fair, most NYers avoided going there in the bad old days too.
Season 3 Longo I didn’t have a problem with, it was clear at the end of S2 that there was a change in the wind, and everything was about to get a lot more cut-throat. He either made his play or would’ve ended up dead with the old mob.
In fact, despite all the little wrinkles that made us side with Vince and see Longo as a proper slimeball, his explanations in the car last episode about Rudy’s death kinda made sense. Rudy was bloody-minded and went ahead with something he knew would put him at massive risk. Likewise, Frankie’s impulsive behaviour was always going to get him killed at some point, especially when he burnt his bridges with the mob.
The Tommy of Season 3 compared to the Tommy of seasons 1 and 2 is, I think at least, a personification of how the Italian mafia in New York really flipped its script once players like Gotti started getting ambitious. They were much more vicious and the “old school” guys like Rudy were quickly and routinely killed off to make room for the new guys who were way more greedy and short sighted…much like the wall street traders and banks who started acting much more reckless and immoral just to get even more cash TODAY, regardless if it meant the long-term health of the market or the company or society at large were to go down the shitter. Cocaine being a huge money maker and what it does to people’s personality is one thing, but there was a sea change for sure during this time when it came to how organized crime operated…and frankly, it too was short sighted as the old Italian families are much less powerful today than they were then.
The Deuce was a decent show. But like you said, very on the nose. And far too much James Franco.
Yeah but you have to remember, the entire series was based off the stories of the guy in real life Vincent and his brother are based off. He’s not the narrator, but his bar is kinda the epicenter of their social universe in a way. They kind of deviated from that angle in the last season though. It made sense to me because he’s the one they wrote to be still alive, and he knew all the characters featured in the ghost walk.
Loved the subtle reference to the wire. Black Frankie going off to Baltimore to help his cousin Nathan in the Lexington terrace projects. Nathan barksdale was the real person that Avon was supposedly based on.
Right?!? Loved that Easter egg. That was worth all the Vincent in the ending to me. And the game doesn’t end, it just changes.
Also I know Bobby actually did have a union job on the Deuce, but I enjoyed his line about getting his union job back and took it as a shout out to Frank Sobotka.
I immediately googled “‘The Wire’ nathan” to see if that meant anything. Did not disappoint!
Wow, good catch!
When he mentioned Baltimore I was half expecting him to say that he had a cousin named Omar or something. haha.
I liked the finale up until the flash forward to 2019 Times Square. I understand that Vince was our entry point into the world of the show, and James Franco is the big name of the cast, but to finish the show with him just felt so short-changed. To me, he was never the main character of the show despite the writers trying to prove that he was.
42nd street was the main character
Mind blown!
No, Eileen and the other sex workers.
Yes yes yes yes and again yes, you got it on the nose
for 3 seasons, franco’s whole arc was two-bit wiseguy who gets tired.the final sequence MADE ME SO MAD.
This was the least interesting of the three seasons perhaps because it was the end-game and we all already kind of knew the outcome. Season 1 was the best of them, by far. I’m ambivalent about the “walk through the ghosts” at the end. I kind of feel like they should have just figured a way to have ended it in 1985 without the time jump to 2019.
I’d say it was a B/B- episode that capped with an A+ final sequence. The drama hit its crescendo last week with Lori’s death. Simon & Co deserve credit for making the complicated issue of Koch-politics New York easier to digest than, say, newspapers going under in The Wire season 5. The show was ostensibly this take on A Tale of Two Cities, so it kind of had to end on Vincent. And that was fine. All involved should be proud. Maggie Gyllenhaal, amazingly, moved into her Annette Bening career phase before our eyes. Looking forward for more from Chris Coy, Gary Carr, Dominique Fishback, Gbenga Akinnagbe, and Roberta Colindrez. And that preternaturally young looking Ralph Macchio, what is he, 38? Dude’s got a haunted, aging portrait socked away in some back room somewhere.
he’s 57!
he’s 57?!?!?!
Very well put. I agree with it ending on Vincent being the only way to really do it. He ran the bars they frequented, i always saw much of the show as being seen through his eyes, and the writers confirmed it when they said the original idea was to have him narrating the stories in present time but it was an unsustainable plan for the long term. I think they pulled off that intent without being too obvious or ham-fisted about it. Plus hes really the only one that could be truly nostalgic about the time and place; most others got chewed up by it, either by porn, prostitution, drugs or AIDS. He peaked during it and left for Florida when the best it had to offer dried up.
Amen. That there is an argument of sorts as to wether The Deuce muffed it in the last episode, I think is mostly due to how you view Vincent’s pov in that last sequence. Yes, Alston’s speech was a little speechy, so were the final thoughts of two or three other characters. But here’s Vincent’s nostalgia at the end, and I think the showrunners let you know he’s not a perfectly reliable narrator.
Yeah, as much as people might hate him, Vincent is to The Deuce what Piper was to Orange Is The New Black… Not the best character, but the glue that held it all together. Like Piper, he was the one character who moved in everyone else’s circles. There wasn’t a character on the show that didn’t interact with him.
Exactly…Eileen wouldn’t have seen a number of those dead characters in the end. And a lot of times the main character who is the glue isn’t the best one…you need that rock, and the rock can never be as flashy as the supporting characters.
He was also based on a real person who told them all these stories of working there back in the 70s and 80s. So for them, it was always this story told from this guy who had a twin brother. So I get why they’d cap it off with him. He’s the one who lived to tell the tale as it were.
Absolutely. The only one is COULD have worked with was Eileen, but I think Vincent was the right call. Loved the end.
Have you seen Chris Coy as a Nazi in Banshee? That guy has range!
“…it’s disappointing that Abby’s story gets a little shortchanged in the finale.”Eesh No! If anything it bugged me that she got to be the last person we see, some big shot lawyer walking by, letting us know she fulfilled that HUGE potential we were always supposed to think she had.I never liked Abby – way too cool and hip, smarter than everyone else but full of annoying humanity. And there she is in the last scene. Curses!I wish we had gotten to know more of the other working girls and seen where they went when the doors closed. Maybe that’s what Simon wanted us to see – they never mattered to anyone.
Apart from Vince, I’m guessing that Abbie was the only one not a ‘ghost’. Should I be reading anything into the brief pause when the camera lingered on two street sketches at 1:02.02? Anyone recognised the portrait?
What was it?
uh…Eminem?That’s some deep symbolism(of something)
I saw the eminem one I was hoping they were referring to some easter egg I missed that the other portrait alluded to.
There’s an M & M store in Times Square so it’s like there are two M&M’s just like there were two Martino brothers. I don’t know. It was weird how they lingered on that.
The only time I liked Abby was last week when she was telling the people who wanted to renovate the Deuce how full of shit they were.
The phrase “paper trail” hints that Abby may be following one to fight for another of a long line of causes, this time with legal skills.
when he sees her ghost alongside C.C.’s, and immediately looks back down at the sidewalk.Yes, but the look on Lori’s face in that moment fucking destroyed me. That actress was unbelievably great.
This was a terrible ending, I felt cheated. We got to know all these wonderful women,and then spend the last 15 minutes watching Vince in a bad makeup seeing them as whores? And not seeing the rest of the chracters at all! What’s the point they were trying to make, that whoring is what their lives amounted to?
I wish they hadn’t wasted all that time on the Eileen/Hank storyline this season. I was hoping there would be some sort of twist to it, but it was, predictably, doomed, so we had to sit through hours of courtship that could have been devoted to other characters.
I loved the flash forward. It was well done.
Yeah, I get the criticism of it being Franco-centric (and I agree that the old man makeup and acting weren’t great), but even though he wasn’t the most interesting character, it had to be Vincent in the final montage, since he was the hub of the show. I found myself getting a little choked up, even though I have no real connection to NYC, just having visited there a couple times. Just seeing the changes in Times Square and all the ghosts from his past was a moving general portrayal of aging and dealing with change.
I honestly can’t decide how I feel about the whole ending sequence. I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I might, but I have also had more than enough of James Franco in this show. At the same time, it was interesting to see the “clean up” succeed and then flash to the fruits of that clean up decades later. I also thought it was interesting that the ghosts he sees are the way character were going back almost to the first episode, so that Vince is predisposed to seeing basically everything as being in decline. To him, things were the best when they were the worst for everyone else.
ThIS! It had to be Vince because he’s the only one around to romanticize those time because everyone else is dead and he ALWAYS had it better than any of the other characters. Yes I know I’m late to the party but yes I think it worked.
Does Paul’s absence in the final few scenes imply that he didn’t have AIDS and was still alive in 2019?
Paul was there with Todd.
He was sporting his Ringo Starr look
OK. That makes sense. I must have just missed him.
Also I’m pretty sure his use of a cane at the end of the scene just before we jumped forward made it pretty clear he *did* have AIDS by then. (He was also limping when he was rushing to get objects from his sauna before they locked it)
Loved this show but I can’t believe that no talent, sexual assaulting ass-clown Franco got the last word, in a truly abysmal old man performance. The real ending was in that newspaper article. It should’ve been about Eileen’s work being rediscovered. Should’ve been HER walking through Time Square reminiscing. Such a hamfisted way to end such a terrific series.
It went on so long, my watching companion and I were yelling at the TV for it to stop. It was maddening.
And then that last tracking show through Time Square. I was literally shouting at my TV: “Okay cut. Cut. CUT!!!”
I was thinking that too, as Vince left the hotel bar that this ep is running too long. The ghost sightings brought back bad memories of the Present Day coda of Battlestar Galactica. Too pat, too much.
Then Vince finally comes to Frankie. Watching those two walk off together made me cry a little for everyone lost and everything forgotton.
The real life analogue to Eileens movie was deemed a classic only after the writer/producers death. When you think about it, out of all the characters in the show the only one that could have had a headline obituary was Eileen. I do agree though that the old man performance was ham-fisted and bad. Does emotionally wrecked really have to be physically manifested as a lumbering gait?
I mean, the character is supposed to be in his 70s or older at that point right?
Something about Franco’s makeup and performance in the epilogue came off to me as “middle-aged guy who has just totally given up on taking care of himself.” It felt off for a character who’d have to be in his 70s.That said, I did like the epilogue. I didn’t really take it as a chance to identify with Vincent’s nostalgia or feelings of regret. I suspect that’s a big part of what the writers were trying to get across, but it worked a lot better for me as a way of hitting home how much had happened to the characters and the city over the course of the show and in the time between the mid-80s and the present. Seeing the characters in their Season 1 looks, surrounded by a version of Times Square which they wouldn’t recognize and in which they would now be completely out of place, worked for me.
Maybe it was supposed to be ‘old man’ knees…
You’d luber too if you were old and just spent the better part of a day fucking around the airport for travel and sitting in an uncomfortable plane seat.
Must annoy you he got the FIRST word too! Remember the show started on him.
Very broadly The Deuce ended like I imagined it would, a high body count, no feel good ending for any of the characters, and a shot of Times Square in 2019. Earlier in the season I suspected that Eileen’s art house film wouldn’t be a smash success that would be a launch pad to long career in straight films. I was hoping it would but I knew how out of character that would’ve been for the show. It was great the Eileen did finish her film and that it eventually went on to be considered an art house classic but how sad was it that it’s the only straight film she made? What did she do for the next 35 years? Ostensibly more porn films? That’s a bummer.Overall I liked the finale but I was always more interested in Eileen’s character than Vincent so Eileen’s arc ending in an obit and the show focusing on Vincent in the last twenty minutes of the show was a bit unsatisfying.Also it seems like the only person that got a happy ending in the finale was Abby, the white woman who came from privilege. Yes that’s realistic but is it satisfying? I was never worried about Abby’s future. It always seemed like she could leave the life any time she wanted to.
I wanna see the Deuce spin-off/Wire prequel, where Black Frankie mentors young Avon and Stringer as they rise to prominence in the West Baltimore housing projects.Also – when Harvey said “take the fucking out” to Eileen I initially misunderstood his meaning. I thought he meant take the “out” as in, an out from the lewd trappings of porno and into “real cinema.” I guess it can read both ways?
Frankie going off to Baltimore ties into The Wire, by ways of mentioning “cousin Nathan” who lives in Lexington Terrace. That is, Nathan Barksdale.
So was that supposed to be Leon from the diner that Vincent spots in the hotel?
Yep. Season one long haired Leon. His look changed by the last sequence in the (never changing) diner.
Now that I think of it, all of the ghosts are in their season one looks (except Bobby, who is bald again but has a mustache). Eileen is in the Candy clothes, Paul has long hair, Lori is brunette, etc. And part of me thinks that Vince is supposed to be wearing the same (or very similar) leather jacket to the one he sports through this episode.
No. It’s Slim Charles.Duh.
I wasn’t really happy that the ending focused on Vincent, but his walk through a world of ghosts made me very sad. I never expected to reach my forties, and neither did so many of my friends. We were all in our twenties in the mid-90’s and just as the Deuce chronicled one New York that isn’t there anymore, it made me think of another one, with its own set of ghosts. How many people I knew who died before ever reaching the age of 30. From the very same types of things you’d see on the show. Friends who overdosed. Sex workers who were murdered. Gay friend who was beaten to death by skinheads. Many suicides. And just like how Koch took away the world of the characters on this show, Bloomberg (and to a lesser extent, Guiliani) took away the world we inhabited. It hit me way harder than I am sure it hit people who didn’t grow up in a grittier New York did. I was a little kid when most of the stuff on the Deuce happened, but I still remembered that world (especially because my dad was involved in the porn industry). And then I remembered the next phase. That was my adventures and craziness. And now we’re in yet another. And there will be another and another and one day, I’ll be one of the ghosts here. That’s what the finale spoke to me.
Damn. Now I’m crying again. That was beautiful.
Thank you.
Yuck, that ending. That makeup was SO BAD, and I never notice that kind of shit.
How did Simon/Pelecanos not see that the central character, the one we should have finished with, was Eileen.
In the behind the scenes thing at the end, Simon says that the Vince at the bar scene was originally the beginning of the pilot, but they figured that gives away the fact that Vinnie lives, so they took it out.
Should’ve ended with Maggie Gyllenhal. This show was about women.
Totally agree. I didn’t dislike Vince but I was more emotionally invested in Eileen’s story and I thought of her as more of the star of the show then Vince.
Simon and Pelecanos keep saying it’s about the women, too, in the episode’s behind-the-episode featurette and post-finale interviews. Tbh leaves a sour taste in my mouth given that the show concluded with an extended sequence devoted to telling us in no uncertain terms that this was really Vince/Franco’s story all along. Sorry, but I just find nothing compelling about yet another boomer who literally never had skin in the (skin) game reminiscing about his glory days. Vince was at best narratively peripheral to a show about those on the actual periphery. I could take him as part of the ensemble/tapestry of the neighborhood, but as the centerpiece that all this *motions wildly at a bunch of dead women, gays and/or Black folks* revolved around? Nah, b. I’m a sex worker who rarely consumes art about sex work for just this reason.p.s. FUCK James Franco.
I didn’t even think Franco was very good in this (I think he’s been good in the past)- his “fugettaboudit” accent seemed a little overdone.
I generally don’t care for Franco’s acting…The Deuce was one of the things I think he’s been really good in.
Read my response to Vic above. See…you actually get it. You just don’t like it. Vince WAS a peripheral view into the characters around him, which made up this world in 70-80’s NYC. It wasn’t Vince’s story, he’s remembering all of their stories. He’s as dead as they are for all we know that he did with his life, besides moving to Fl. The scene is simply a nostalgic look back at he Duece, and its departed inhabitants in the midst of what Times Square is now.
Oh please with the boomer shit. Boring.
Her arch was making a film masterpiece, and the real life movie it was based on was only appreciated after the directors death. I mean, what makes a more compelling ending, lonely old man Vince visiting the neon hellscape of his old stomping grounds, surrounded by the ghosts of it all (he knew or at least interacted with all the main characters through the shows run), or Eileen stroking an Oscar in palm springs? It was a show about the changing of NYC through the lens of subcultures, how they shaped it, and how they were left behind by it. Who better to drive that home than someone who didn’t really adapt, peaked during it, and is left alone with the ghosts of it, and the only person that could have been was Vince.
I’d have preferred Eileen on her deathbed, doing the same thing. Who said anything about her stroking an Oscar?
Yes, while I too was irritated (and can’t stand James Franco), it makes perfect sense that the only one romanticizing the good old days is the one who didn’t really live/get it.I also got the sense that they were so charmed by the real life Vincent and his stories that they stayed beholden. Which was interesting after Eileen’s speech a couple episodes back about how a film never turns out how you planned it and you have to listen to what the story becomes — yet Simon/Pelecanos still ended with the bookend they’d always intended.
Not to mention, the real Vince was alive up until they started producing the show.
Agree, but saw your post after replies to 2 above lol. Glad someone else got it.
Yes, but Simon had written that scene long before it became apparent Candy was the heart and soul of The Deuce, along with the other sex workers.
He wrote it, what, 3-4 years ago? Change it. It would have been so easy to rewrite as Eileen/Candy doing the same thing as she was dying or whatever. It’s not like that “old guy at a bar” thing wasn’t something we’ve seen a thousand times.
Too many people crying about this, either don’t understand Simon’s work or think they are better writers. It wouldn’t have worked to end it with her. Eileen represented many things, but nothing inherently about her was NYC other than her ties to porn.Vince wasn’t the most interesting character all the time, but he was the normal everyday guy, around characters. He embodied what NYC was for that time in that sense, and his ‘honest pour’ quote alone drives home the same message of Simon’s other works. You wanted it to end with her because her story was important to you. In Simon’s world, it was only the most worthy to get a newspaper blurb, after the city had been transformed.
She’s the better actor for sure though. But Franco gets much more crap than he deserves.
I don’t know that I agree, and granted I’m biased because I think Eileen gradually became one of the most tiresome, least well drawn characters. But she simply doesn’t have a connection, at all, to far too many characters on the show and wouldn’t work as a conduit to see the roll call at the end in the way Vincent was able to. I don’t think Vincent had a terribly compelling character, but for better or worse he’s the character that is some semblance of glue to the rest of the cast and the block. That said, they could have just done an entirely different ending so they didn’t paint themselves into this corner. I like the *idea* of the ending but the execution itself felt incredibly cheese-ball to me so I would have been more than fine with this. Eileen simply isn’t representative to enough of the bigger story, nor is she central or related to the bigger story to truly be the feature at the end. And presuming the ending is about Vincent, himself, simply because he’s the person we’re seeing the ghosts of NYC through is missing the point, I believe.
snore
That’s about as much of a twist ending as we should expect from Simon
and Pelecanos, who prefer more of a realistic “life goes on” approach.So Candy finished her movie; which you kindof expected her to end up doing; and nobody saw it; and then she finished her career shooting mindless porn to make money (that’s what’s suggested anyway). That’s not really what you would call an happy ending.
I don’t know Simon’s real life model for Candy; but in 2019; I know of a great documentary director who had a similar career as Candy; she started as an actress; then moved on to directing porn movies with a feminist twist; and now she’s making great documentaries about the porn industry; about abolitionist laws in sweden and a dramatic murder case (là où les putains n’existent pas; “Everyting better than a hooker”). Her name is Ovidie. look her up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovidiehttps://letterboxd.com/film/everythings-better-than-a-hooker-2018/
https://www.bustle.com/p/is-candy-a-real-person-on-the-deuce-maggie-gyllenhaal-is-channeling-some-seriously-empowering-women-81414
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/deuce-lori-season-3-episode-7-david-simon-emily-meade-interview-900235/
Simon mentions Candida Royalle as a 70s porn figure he found in researching the time period and being a part of the composite for Eileen character. She started as a porn actress in the 70s and then producing her own erotica in the 80s. I think the fact that Royalle passed away in 2015 with an obit in the NY Times served as part of the reason Eileen died in 2019 and had obit in the Daily News.Also if you google her, Eileen’s 1985 look was inspired by Candida.
Yeah, Candy was definitely very similar to Candida Royalle (my avatar) right down to the C.R. initials. A very interesting person.
I think I would have really enjoyed the ending if it wasn’t Vince walking through Times Square at the end. If it was just the camera, allowing the audience to be the ones walking through the new New York and seeing all the ghosts of the first season juxtaposed in this new environment. As it was? I love your shows, David Simon, but that was cringe af.
It’s interesting to think who the epilogue tells us – by their *absence* – has survived through 2019:Harvey (was it ever implied that Jocelyn left him during S3?)MelissaLarry BrownDarleneLorettaIreneChris Alston & Jennifer PrestonGene GoldmanFrankie BrownAndreaJoey Dwyer (re-jailed)Jack MapleGentle RichieSondra WashingtonBerniceFat Mooney!And, of course, Eileen’s son Adam’s cheap-ass T-Shirt business is the big winner, symbolically thriving these days in the tourist destination. Way to go, kid!
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/deuce-finale-epilogue-david-simon-interview-903622/In an interview with Sepinwall, Simon tried to find a fit for Larry, but Akinnagbe was unavailable from his To Kill a Mockingbird stage commitments. He wanted to have him on a soap opera so he succeeds in finding work as an actor.Alston and Goldman are also still alive.Jack Maple is a real person actually and died in 2001.
I really enjoyed the series overall as well as the finale, though the closing walk went on a bit long. I agree with the previous poster that the only time I ever really cared for Abby was when she was telling off the city developer guy.
I was glad that, even off-camera, Eileen was able to complete her film. Speaking as someone who’s had to abandon storytelling projects before they were completed, it was satisfying to learn that she eventually listened to Harvey’s advice and was able to finish the story she set out to tell. I wanted to yell at her when she walked away from him the last time.
Technical nitpick: the Sony VO-series U-matic tape machines that she was using to review her footage weren’t equipped with time code (the numbers on the video monitor). It wasn’t until Sony released the more expensive (and capable) BVU-series VTRs that they could record and display time code.
I found the end part a bit unfulfilling really. Vince’s old man makeup was too distracting, and his slurring about the good old days was just jarring. It’s a shame.The Martinos hooked me into this story but by the end they were the least important. I would’ve preferred Eileen’s success to be fleshed out to conclude the season.Nonetheless, this series has been fucking great. I’ll miss it.
As is apparent by the phrase “paper trail,” Abby has become a lawyer, not a “business woman.”And “paper trail” hints that she may be following one to fight for another in a long line of causes.
Yeah, she definitely dropped a few words making it 100% clear she’s an attorney.
Ugh. No. I really came to appreciate Maggie Gyllanhall’s performance over the past few seasons and then show was like, “Here’s more Francooooooo!!!” I’m going to take this out of the memory bank.
I have to agree with many that the extended bad-makeup Vince walk thru the future cast the wrong person. We wanted Eileen!
The best thing this show did for me was to (almost) expunge my hatred of David Krumholtz for stabbing Lucy and Carter.
Oh my god! That was him!?!?? That was one of the most shocking episodes on Network TV, especially for that time.
I mostly was pleased with the ending.
In the little afterwards thing they mentioned how the scene with Vincent at the bar in 2019 was the first thing they wrote and was meant to open the pilot and then we would flashback. Thank fucking god they dropped that idea–say what you will about him being the focus of the end montage, it still worked much better than that concept would have (the reason they gave for changing it was that then we would know Vincent survives…)
A few things. No mention at all that it was finally implied that Paul was sick from AIDS with the use of his cane in his final little scene before the flash forward? Actually either this week or last week I thought that they were going to show Gene being sick too, because when he said goodbye to his wife he looked (to me) like he was sickly and sweaty, but then later he seemed fine (at the time it just bugged me that it seemed like then, all the gay/bi male characters on the show all had HIV which, given we only really had four that I can count and given the place and time when this season was set would be completely realistic but just seemed a bit too cliche for TV). Anyway, I don’t think they were just trying to show that he hurt his foot.
Also, I didn’t count, but it felt like the majority of the ghosts we saw in the montage DID die in the main timeline, and not, as this review says, that most died between 1985 (or whenever we ended up) and 2019. Vincent was at the wedding too, but did we see her ghost (or was she just one of the prostitutes being marched into the paddy wagon?)
Nice write up, well said. I forgot or missed why Paul is limping around with a cane…what happened to cause that? I don’t think they ever established that he had HIV or AIDS.
Black Frankie should have his own spin off. That guy is as cool as Lando.Wasn’t super impressed with the ending, was kinda cute, but think it could have gone in a different direction. Anyways I enjoyed the show, sorry to see it go. I’m sure HBO will release another show that we will all watch to the end and then complain about it.
So, the way I took it, since Vincent is seeing all the dead people, and has no fear of them, and does not see the non-dead (Abby) – the love of his life – then isn’t Vincent also dead? A la The Sixth Sense?(Bruce Willis)
I really liked this episode. I thought the send off at the end, while bringing the various people back to the exploitation days, was a great coda. I do admit, i’d like to know more about what happened to them, like another 10 years later season (or even episode), but i understand why they didn’t.
STICK TO TV!!!!!!!— the Dicks who own this site.
A fine finale of a great series. One of those rare programs that got better with each season and stopping at three was probably the right decision. There are not enough words of praise to give Maggie Gyllenhaal – she was the heart, soul and backbone of this series. Brilliant. Where is her Emmy??
Pretty sure that spot in the Bronx Alston took Gene to was Hunts Point, infamous for its hooker stroll and profiled in the HBO Doc “Hookers at the Point.” Alston’s monologue even reminded me of the directors poetic narration.
All you whiners about ending on Franco…well, who did the show START with? Yeah that’s right.
Just caught up with the last scene, and didn’t follow up with these recaps, but: Everyone has to have hated Vincent and Abby as a couple, right? For one thing, they barely seemed to like each other (she especially), spent as little time together as possible, and then only so she could get upset about something he was doing. Her character, in general, I found to be a drag on the show.For me, it’s not unlike Schuyler in Breaking Bad, where in a real-world context her objections would be reasonable, but within the show, couldn’t they have found better stories for her, than getting angry at Vince and tagging along with more interesting characters on their stuff? The performance didn’t help much, although they didn’t bother aging the character at all over 15 years.
So, at the very end, when Vince sees Frankie, and is led to the train by his brother. Was that saying that he was about to die?
It sure looked like an escorted walk to the underworld to me.