The Gilded Age Recap: Never Propose in Public
Carrie Coon gets to wear a ridiculous hat and have her hair down? Best. Episode. Ever.
Chaos! Chaos, intrigue, and subterfuge! I cannot be alone in caring Not At All about the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Don’t you know more important things are happening, Show? Get out of here with your bridge! Oscar is the victim of a SWINDLER.
Yes, we all knew it was coming, but Oscar being fully duped by a charlatan hussy has been laid bare. There never was a Casterbridge Pacific! Do you think the innocent souls watching this who fully believed in Maud and Casterbridge feel as grief-stricken as Oscar? I mean, they didn’t lose all their money on it, presumably, but imagine being like, “Wow, Oscar’s going to make so much from this great railroad deal!” and then finding out that Maud is not visiting her aunt in Newport, but is instead — probably — Scrooge McDucking it in a railcar filled with gold coins.
I will admit that I misjudged the direction this swindle would take. I thought Oscar would find out everything was lies, and then he’d learn a valuable lesson and find a new purpose in his life or something by going off to Italy and being gay there. Everyone was doing it, Oscar! (I think. Wasn’t there a Merchant Ivory film with some gay Italian subtext? Plus Death in Venice?). Then, when Oscar brokenly tells an already-crushed Aunt Agnes that he’s lost almost all the Van Rhijn money, and she tells him to go and get it back, I thought we were about to queue up a season three quest where Oscar goes overseas in search of Maud and the Van Rhijn family fortune and — yes, again, goes to Italy and is gay there.
But instead everything is sad and this isn’t fun anymore! Why do you think I am watching this show, Julian Fellowes? Is it to be reminded of the horrors of humanity and the crushing desperation that comes with wave after wave of awful occurrence? No! I am watching it to see rich people wear ridiculous hats. I thought we had an understanding, but instead here I sit with a dead Robert Sean Leonard, and now I have to be worried about how Christine Baranski is going to buy her next brooch.
Fortunately, we do still have ridiculous hats, and Bertha wears one that has approximately fifty giant white feathers on it in the shape of a vee. It was my favorite thing in this episode. Why not look like you have a large mutated swan sitting backward on top of your head? I hope Carrie Coon truly appreciated this opportunity. Otherwise, the hats were fine. They were probably all intimidated by the Swan Butt Hat.
Speaking of the Russells and the horrors of humanity, I guess it’s good they revealed that George has ulterior motives when it comes to not letting soldiers murder his workers. Speaking of! When I asked for an example last week of something that was at least somewhat reminiscent of what happens at the mill, with the soldiers almost opening fire on the strikers, some of you were good enough to point me to the Lattimer massacre. This occurred in 1897 when United Mine Workers miners were killed by a sheriff’s posse after going on strike. There’s also an entire Wikipedia entry on worker deaths in U.S. labor disputes. It’s not all fun hats here on Vulture dot com! We talk about other things! (But mostly the hats.)
George is giving the workers safeguards, medical care, a children’s park, and a slight pay raise, but he’s going to use it to split the union and make everyone hate “the Catholic immigrants and the Jews.” Cool, cool, cool. I guess it’s salutary not to be overly sympathetic towards a legitimate robber baron? So good on you, show, for reminding us where George’s priorities lie (with money). His assistant, Patrick Page from Hadestown, is proud of his boss once again.
It’s hard not to still be slightly pro-George, though, because we get the best scene between him and Bertha yet? Mrs. Astor offers Bertha a box at the Academy, which has been Bertha’s goal all along, but now Bertha has thrown her weight behind the Met. She and George talk about it in what I assume is her massive room because HER HAIR IS DOWN. Her HAIR. IS DOWN. I could hear nothing in this scene because of how massively attracted I suddenly was to Carrie Coon. I had to go back and watch it again. This is like that dubious idea of Victorian men losing their shit over glimpsing an ankle, only it’s me in 2023 and it’s Bertha Russell with her hair down.
George reminds Bertha that the Academy excludes the people who are changing society and that she can reign over the Met. It’s true. Also, did we all see that climate protesters crashed the opening night of Tannhäuser at the Met, which many people were angry about, but one could say this only makes opera slightly more relevant? So many social justice groups that were eventually vindicated have done similar things in the last century, so maybe just accept that you’re part of a historical moment. Also, that opera’s premiere in Paris was famously interrupted, so really it’s just like a fun repetition of history, only instead of the Jockey Club being mad they missed the ballet, it’s people pointing out that we need to act because our planet is dying. Wheeee! Oh, and in a fun coincidence, this protest happened the very night The Gilded Age cast was at the Met.
During all this, Peggy is trying to save Black-run schools from being shut down by the school board. Principal Sarah Garnet talks to Dorothy and Fortune about needing to enroll white students and employ white teachers if they want to keep the doors open. Peggy has an idea and it’s definitely Marian. She’s not even a teacher! They had schools for teachers back then. Hire a graduate! Marian teaches watercolors! But whatever, here we are. Dorothy is onto Peggy and Fortune, and she is not a fan. Nor would I be, Mrs. Scott! We do get to see Dorothy and Peggy wear some beautiful dresses at the Brooklyn Bridge rooftop party, so that’s a positive.
Blah, okay, here we go. Reverend Luke has come and gone. He was BUT A FLICKER OF SUNLIGHT in Ada’s life and now things are dim once more. I wish we could have gotten more emotionally invested in this storyline, or even at all emotionally invested, but maybe Robert Sean Leonard had vacation plans, and I respect that.
It’s extremely funny to me how people talk about what a change this is for Cynthia Nixon after playing Miranda on Sex and the City, because I have never watched SATC, but I have watched the joyless Cynthia Nixon–starring Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion, which features excruciatingly long nineteenth-century deathbed scenes. So this felt really par for the course for Ms. Nixon to me. (Much more fun and super gay is Wild Nights with Emily.)
Right, back to Reverend Luke’s death. It happens extremely quickly! He collapses while at Agnes’s, and instead of remaining at home like he wanted to, he spends the rest of his life in Agnes’s home. Agnes makes sure Ada takes care of herself even the slightest bit, which is good, and she has a very nice conversation with Reverend Luke before he passes.
Larry and Marian get A Moment, and hopefully we’ll move their relationship forward by the finale. We all know it’s happening. He checked in on her after the bridge opening and he appears fully to have gotten over his ride or die. They go for a walk together, and that means maybe she’ll break up with Dashiell by next week.
As we close, where is Mrs. Winterton? There is so much doom and gloom in the air, and I just want to see Mrs. Winterton concoct another scheme as dastardly as her soup plan. Maybe a thumbtack on Bertha’s chair. We don’t even get to see her stare pensively into a fire with a calm face while her hands rip up a newspaper illustration of the Russells. The only thing I can conclude from her absence is that life is unfair, and we rarely get what we want. We do sometimes get what we need, though, which is Bertha Russell with her hair down.
Things to Gossip About at Mrs. Astor’s Next Ball
• I just don’t know if you’ve made it if you can’t Scrooge McDuck your way into a coin vault.
• I’ve spoken to my haberdasher and insisted that my next hat be inspired by the Spanish War of Succession but done entirely in feathers and ribbon.
• Did you hear about Oscar Van Rhijn? He’s off on some journey by hot air balloon to recover his stolen fortune and platonically marry the woman who stole it from him. Oh, that’s not it? He’s going to sit in his room and be sad? Well, that’s another option.