VHS Rules 1985 in Final Trailer for HBO Porn Drama ‘The Deuce’

The HBO drama about the origins and history of the New York adult entertainment industry, The Deuce, released the final trailer for the show’s third and final season Friday, 10 days ahead of Season 3 premiere date of September 9, and judging by the trailer and the accompanying information offered by HBO, the season appears to take the story of porn in Times Square full circle. The first season started in 1971, as the adult industry was jsut beginning to take over “The Deuce,” that is, 42nd Street in Manhattan’s Times Square. But according to HBO’s info, Season 3 opens on New Year’s Eve as 1984 becomes 1985, and New York City is just beginning its push to “clean up” Times Square, pushing the adult industry out, and big-time real estate developers in. At the same time, the industry is facing pressure from another new development, the rapid rise of VHS, the home video format that took porn out of the Times Square theaters and into the homes of ordinary Americans not only in New York, but anywhere in the country. Watch the final trailer for The Deuce Season 3, below. The show’s main characters including Frankie and Vincent Martino—portrayed by James Franco in a dual role—and sex worker turned porn performer turned successful adult film director Candy, played by Maggie Gyllenhall, struggling to figure out where their lives will go from here after the sweeping changes of the mid-1980s. At the same time, the entire sexual free-for-all of the 1970s is coming to a crashing and tragic halt in the era depicted in the final season of The Deuce, as an unprecedented wave of violent crime and the AIDS epidemic devastated the once pulsating culture. The Deuce received wide critical acclaim—the show garners an impressive 96 percent positive rating from critics, as compiled by Rotten Tomatoes—but never caught on in the ratings. Season 2 pulled an average of only 621,000 viewers per episode in the core 18- to 49-year-old demographic, a drop of about 250,000 from the debut season, according to TV By The Numbers. Photo by HBO YouTube Screen Capture