If you thought The Wire was genius (which I do) then you may scratch your head watching this.
NYC in the 70s was dangerous. Money was tight. Hard to believe anyone would be stupid enough to try to rob someone they were staking out AFTER the money was deposited in the night box--they'd at least take his wallet. Showing two pimps hanging out together at the Port Authority is completely unbelievable. Did competing drug dealers hang out in The Wire? Of course not.
Every scene is off.
The characters are stereotypes and weak ones at that. Baffling from this writing team. The story is written to setup porn scenes with women who don't have boob jobs-- maybe that's what the creators are most proud of. That and having James Franco play two characters. PLEASE! Do your experimental theater on your own nickle. I pay for HBO! ;)
Romanticizing street prostitutes in any way during that time is something David Simon should be embarrassed by. Having the first show end with a black pimp cutting up a white prostitute is beyond the pale. Gratuitous violence.
The show leads one to believe there are many blacks in the police in the 70s; that they would tell a white officer to calm down. That the police would do a stake-out involving a bunch of cars and THEN let someone go free. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. The cop probably did want to make the girl, but he leaves. The black pimp on the other hand has no such grace apparently.
As a former reporter I'm surprised David Simon didn't red-line reams and reams of this script for inaccuracies.
This show could have used the 70s to shed light on our current situation, but it didn't. If you're over the age of 55, and want to get your dander up, watch it. If you're younger, know, it's completely phony. In real life, all those people led the Hobbes' life, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
In NYC, in 1971, women and blacks were not as free as the show implies. According to this show women are going to bars while their kids sleep at home, blacks have good jobs in the police department, women are making good money as prostitutes and enjoying breakfast with their pimps.
The creators of this show should know better. It really does disgust me how they have whitewashed the 70s. The problems in the cities in the 70s is the problem TODAY in middle America. David Simon must have had a stroke or he just doesn't care...I'm mystified. How could someone do the best TV of the past 100 years and then lay this "Deuce"?
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