'The Deuce' Season 3 Episode 4: Frankie Martino’s irresponsible ways may have spelled his end in 'They Can Never Go Home'
This article contains spoilers for 'The Deuce' Season 3 Episode 4: 'They Can Never Go Home'
'The Deuce' Season 3 Episode 4 threw a big surprise at the audience by choosing to possibly kill Frankie Martino (James Franco). At the end of the episode, we saw Frankie get shot at by one of his associates who he was dealing drugs with.
This happened on the night of his and his twin brother, Vince's, birthday. After celebrating and playing a few hands of poker, Frankie decided to bolt for the night and things did not go as he expected.
Instead, he ended up with a bullet in his gut. As he slowly bleeds on the carpet in Vince's club, we saw the two brothers looking at each other, one trying to keep the other from leaving him. Vince begs Frankie to hold on, but the episode doesn't address if Frankie died.
We just see Vince on his knees near Frankie sobbing in grief. Worth mentioning it was Franco who directed the episode titled 'They Can Never Go Home'.
At the beginning of the episode, we saw Frankie try to set up things with Rudy (Michael Rispoli), who is really mad at Frankie for taking part in the "film" business. Neither is Rudy (the mob boss) getting a cut nor is Frankie hearing out what Rudy has to say about some of the things playing in the back of the room in the porn booth aka peep show establishment (a jukebox of porn which allows personal viewing in a box-like space).
Frankie is also dealing drugs to people and it looks like everything is going just fine, except for some interference from Tommy Longo (Daniel Sauli), who happens to be Rudy's close associate. What Frankie never expected was for his life to come to an end on the anniversary of the day he was born.
He was portrayed to be the more "fun" of the twins, but what he really was, was an irresponsible brat who had no concept of facing consequences for all the troubles that he brought home. The most recent of which might be his tryst with soft porn among other porn movies, but it had started with his gambling problems during the first season.
Who doesn't remember Vince being confused for Frankie and being attacked to cough up the money that was owed to bookies across the Deuce? Characteristically speaking, Frankie is also a culmination of sorts of a man-child who has some of the craziest ideas possible when it comes to beginning his own business.
He was initially protected by Vince, then the two brothers worked side by side with Rudy's support to build their respective businesses. Vince became the owner of a big bar in Times Square. Frankie branched out into a business that suited his irresponsible image.
Frankie has been a witness to a murder himself in the previous season and he even tried his hand at running a laundry business before getting into the pornography industry. After all of this, we saw Frankie end up bleeding from his guts. Is this the end he pictured for himself?
With Frankie possibly ending up dead, how is Vince going to cope up in life? That is something that we will see explored in the upcoming episode to be aired October 7 at 10 p.m. on HBO.