'The Deuce' Season 3's Lori Madison is a spitfire who fights for self-worth in a predatory workplace
'The Deuce' is known for the brilliant portrayal of complex characters that struggle with self-worth, identity, and addiction of all kinds. Lori Madison began as a prostitute who was picked up by CC as soon as she landed in New York and assigned himself as her pimp. In season 3, however, Lori's past experiences have taught her enough to know when something is not right and unacceptable. At the beginning of the final season, she struggled with her identity. She just got out of a rehabilitation center and with her partner Greg Taylor's help, Lori hopes to overgrow her porn star persona.
Lori wants to do something substantial and is not okay with everyone around her, including her agent Kiki Rains (Alysia Reiner) taking her for granted. It begins with Lori getting booked for adult films that went way beyond kinky and was borderline abusive. For instance, one of the films that she works on has the director asking her to let the man insert a corn cob in her. She finds this unacceptable and even tries to fight the director on this. It becomes a point of contention between her and Kiki, enough to go to the extent of canceling work, but Kiki always manages to convince Lori to complete the assignment. She manipulates, coddles, and sometimes even berates Lori into doing things, but all of that takes a toll on Lori.
Especially in the episode titled 'This Trust Thing' where Lori is booked on an assignment that is a gang bang video. While Lori is not new to the concept and has worked with 4 or 5 men, she doesn't know that her latest project is a literal 'gang' bang. There is a crowd of men in the room that Lori is expected to sleep with over the course of the shoot. While the objectification of women in the porn industry is discussed even today, in the 80s, women were used more as tools that help men fulfill their kinkiest and sometimes even absurd sexual fantasies. All of this pushes Lori to the extent of firing Kiki, but only after she completes her assignment.
Another of Lori's defining characteristic trait since the beginning of the show has been her dependency on men. In the first season, she was chosen by CC and pimped out by him. While he treats her like a shiny doll initially, things take a turn for the worse once Lori realizes the truth about CC and how he not only manipulates the women that he works with but also outright blackmails them into performing every day irrespective of their health and body condition. Despite all this, she is completely dependent on CC until the second season when CC gets killed and Lori goes through a major transformation. However, this transformation doesn't change this trait of her because she is now dependent on her partner Greg who handles her financials.
Clearly, she hasn't learned about manipulative men enough because Lori initially trusts Greg to take care of her financials and even goes to the extent of investing in a business with him that she hopes will take her out of her current work and into mainstream filmmaking. Lori understands that if she were to measure her worth according to what people around her think, she may never leave her home to work. Her walking out on Greg is a culmination of everything that she has been through recently. After firing Kiki, to return home and find Greg having sex with someone else and give the excuse that Lori sleeps with many men, encompasses everything that she has been trying to fight. This is the final straw and Lori decides to cut off with Greg as well. The only problem is that Greg has dumped all her hard-earned money into a failing business possibly leaving her broke.
How would she continue after this is something that we should wait and see in the upcoming episodes of 'The Deuce' season 3 which will air on Monday at 10 pm.