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Oh cruel, cruel fate. Just days after a camera crew from Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels swept into Deuce on a comfortably busy Friday night, the popular Liberties Walk anchor is closing down. As in: Last night was… the last night. (And yes, the website is already down.)

Feel free to peruse quotes from owner Laura Vernola on The Clog or even peek into the wormhole of message-board outrage, but in yet another bizarre twist of fate, we’ve got an inside track on Friday’s spectral Ray visit. Doug Wallen explains it all after the jump.

So it was Friday and old friends were in town for a visit. We’d done First Friday in Fishtown and decided to meet another friend at Bar Ferdinand for dinner and drinks. Ferdinand was packed and since it turned out my old friend’s dad’s nickname is Deuce (he’s a II), we put aside our tapas cravings and settled for Deuce, where my wife and I had been once and had such a bad experience that we’d hoped never to return. Like what do I mean? Sand in our mussels, a Happy Hour that we were told was a mistake halfway through (so drinks were full price after all), and generally bad food and service and vibes. So thanks but no thanks was our policy with Deuce, especially since Bar Ferdinand is one of the best restaurants in the city and sits right next door.

Anyhow, we ended up there Friday and were told that Rachel Ray’s crew would be filming there shortly, which I did faintly remember reading about. We ordered and then delved into some pitchers: First PBC’s Newbold IPA, which had a ton of head and then promptly ran out; the waitress apologized profusely and said something about missing this week’s delivery or shipment. (How ominous in hindsight.) So we switched to Stella and started in on our food, which — and here’s the rub — had vastly improved since our first visit. My rock shrimp salad was huge and zippy, my wife’s chicken sandwich was huge and soft, and the communal fish tacos were reportedly solid.

So our opinion of Deuce was making a gradual but inevitable U-turn when Ray’s acolytes invade with boom mics and spotlights. We were told not to look at the video camera while they got shots of the crowd. Ditto when they got close-up shots of us eating; we were instructed to “pig out.” Then the spunky young woman in charge interviewed me and my wife (separately) on camera about Deuce. Flustered by the attention and beer and close proximity of Deuce’s bar staff, we said nothing but nice things, lying and saying we go there all the time.

We were supposed to incorporate the woman’s question into each of our answers, as in “We come to Deuce once or twice a week” instead of “Once or twice a week.” When the woman asked my wife the questions, though, she kept saying Deuce’s (with an ’s) and so my wife unwittingly kept answering that way, which was pretty funny. We both spoke highly of the neighborhood and the food, but when asked about the special menu for dogs, which I was completely oblivious to, I said something like, “Well, I don’t know about that but they have TWO Happy Hours, an evening one and late-night one.” The woman laughed and I thought for sure my YouTube moment had arrived.

But alas, as swiftly as the crew exited (they reappeared later with consent forms), my hopes of TV glory have also left the building. Deuce is done, and so it seems unlikely the segment would air post-mortem. I’m a little sad, not just because of that, but because I had actually witnessed a restaurant in Philadelphia somewhat get its shit together and improve my tarnished opinion of it. (It’s usually the other way around.) And no lie, yesterday I was totally thinking of going back for that rock shrimp salad sometime this week. It was that good.

Instead, we’re left with a shuttered restaurant steeped in an uncertain future and lots of finger-pointing and speculating. My question is: Why close Deuce on the very verge of national exposure at the hands of a living zeitgeist? Regardless of behind-the-scenes turmoil, could there have been a better reason for staying open a bit longer and soaking in the limelight? Or was everything just that deeply fucked by then? Maybe we’ll never know.