Or maybe we're still in the world-building phase of The Deuce. So maybe 'What Kind of Bad?' is just filler-a chapter within a larger story that sets up something we're about to see. Their relationships guide the narrative, not the opposite. He provides a setting in which we see a group of characters interact. Simon's latest effort, The Deuce, works that way, and this week's episode, 'What Kind of Bad?', is a good reminder of his approach. And every episode won't have a mind-blowing revelation, a major plot twist, or a cliffhanger. Damon Lindelof, the man behind Lost and The Leftovers, said as much in an interview earlier this year.īut David Simon is part of the old guard of television makers his shows are not meant to be binged necessarily, but rather watched over the course of several weeks with room to breath in between each episode-time to digest what happened. At the same time, streaming culture has changed the way we consume television-and, in turn, changed the way showrunners develop their stories. It's now the Peak TV era, and many of the shows found inspiration in David Simon's brand of slow-moving narrative storytelling. TV has changed significantly since The Wire debuted in 2002 (and even since it ended in 2008).
