The Gilded Age Recap: A Marriage Made on Fifth Avenue
I continue to be furious at this show’s insistence on taking itself seriously. Either take yourself seriously and say something, or be the ridiculous show we know you are and take some big swings. Maybe Marian has an evil twin! Gladys was a con artist this whole time and laughs in the duke’s face as her plans are fulfilled! We finally get that damn musical episode we and the whole world deserve! This has the potential to be the best show on television, and they are squandering it.
That being said, this season’s been pretty fun (in the context of its other seasons). We all thought the season would end on the wedding, but they have pulled the rug out from under us and used it for Gladys to walk up the aisle, because she is now married! Hasty? Yes, for sure. It would be shocking that they pulled everything together so quickly, but Bertha is managing it, and that woman can do anything. Also, she has the equivalent of a Scrooge McDuck pool of gold coins, and that will get you a church full of flower arrangements on short notice. Did you catch her pre-wedding CEO speech to the household staff about how they need to operate as OneHousehold and start breaking down silos? Put her in charge of Microsoft. Next, she’ll tell them they need more synergy in their day-to-day operations.
Gladys is gumming up the works by refusing to leave her room. Gladys, this family is a business. Did you not hear the speech? This means she does not meet Hector’s sister Sarah. Imagine me sitting there, taking notes, and then loudly exclaiming, “Is that HATTIE MORAHAN?” And yes. Hattie Morahan is Blake Ritson’s (Oscar van Rhijn) partner, but more importantly, she played Elinor in the 2008 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, the screenplay of which was written by Andrew Davies, because if it’s set in the nineteenth century and it’s on the BBC, will they hire anyone else? That adaptation is great and we should all watch it right now. More Hattie Morahan on my screen! But also, who else is visiting the Russells but Bertha’s sister Monica (Monica?) played by Merritt Wever! YAYYY. Bertha is not happy that she’s there, but Larry invited her, and now she and her hideous dress are at dinner.
Bertha wants to give Monica one of her dresses to wear to the wedding, but Monica says No, I will wear this awful dress, thank you so much. So Bertha arranges for Monica to have a coffee cup with a broken handle, causing Monica to spill coffee all over her ruffles and ruin them. I one hundred percent thought that George clocked what happened, but later, he’s like, “Wait, no, you DIDN’T.” Really, George? You knew Bertha didn’t like the dress, and then the handle just happened to fall off a coffee cup? You’ve been married for over two decades (we assume). She beat Mrs. Astor at opera. Get with the program here. And that program is cup sabotage. Bang Watch for the Russells is still at nil, by the way. Bertha is too mad that George isn’t fully on board with Operation: Marry The Duke.
That gets us to the wedding day, so let’s backtrack a little and check out some of our other story threads. Ada brings in Madame Dashkova, played by Andrea Martin (how blessed we are with guest stars this week), whose Russian accent is auditioning for the part of the Dowager Empress in a live-action version of 1997’s Anastasia. And let me tell you, she is killing it. Dashkova claims to communicate with Luke for Ada, but then Agnes barges in and orders away all this filmflam and hocus pocus. Ada emphasizes how lonely she is. Can we find a better support system for Ada? I am concerned about her.
Larry begs Bertha to ask Marian to step in as a bridesmaid for someone who had to drop out, and Bertha reluctantly agrees. I hope Larry is treasuring this begrudging acceptance before his mother makes him marry that banker’s daughter. Or she would before he got all his clock money. Okay, I am very against the clock money. Larry was helping Jack with what was entirely Jack’s invention. They sell it to Mr. Weston for $600,000 (roughly $20 million today, I think? I’m unclear on what year it is) and then we learn that Jack gets precisely half of that. I’m sorry, Larry, what was your role here? Oh, talking to Mr. Weston? The thing you failed at doing before Jack stepped in? Good LORD. Eat the rich, etc. I can’t believe he took half. And then Jack doesn’t even want to quit his job because it’s his first home. So his riches are a secret between him, Larry, and now Mrs. Bauer because he told her.
We get some time, but not enough, with Peggy, her family, and the Kirklands. Mrs. Kirkland, a.k.a. Phylicia Rashad, continues to be terrible, but in a compelling way. She talks about Peggy’s article in the paper, and says that her goal was to be a good wife and mother, but it seems like young women don’t want that anymore. Peggy replies that she wants to be a good wife and mother who has the vote. Zing! But also, live your dreams, Peggy. Also, none of these men you’re meeting are good enough for you. William Kirkland needs to stand up to his mother. He also needs to sing a duet with Peggy, but they didn’t even let Audra hum at the piano, so what are the odds of that?
Peggy gives a talk about Jim Crow laws and the post-Reconstruction disenfranchisement that they were witnessing. Aurora wanders up to Peggy afterwards, says she didn’t know about any of that, then wanders away again. Nice to see you, Aurora! Worried about you! (Dorothy is also worried about Aurora, despite never having seen her before.) When Peggy and Dorothy talk to the Kirklands, Mrs. Kirkland somehow manages to insult Arthur yet again when he isn’t even there. Dorothy defends him, and Mr. Kirkland steps up slightly. “The gall of that woman,” says Dorothy after the Kirklands leave (including William! Stand up to your mother!). And that’s the last we see of Peggy this week. I’m going to allow it because they had to fit a whole wedding in, but there better be more next week.
Otherwise, we have JP Morgan visiting George to harangue him. He’s truly channeling Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, telling George (gasp, “George”!) that he won’t support the great transportation scheme anymore and that George will lose all his money. He even twiddles his mustache. A+ villain energy. I love JP Morgan on this show so much. Can’t explain it. I’m just here for it. What if George loses all his money and Bertha marries Jack the Clock Twink? (Twitter’s extremely good name for him, not mine.)
Oh, also, Mrs. Astor’s family is threatened with scandal. Her daughter Charlotte has a duel almost fought over her, and it’s in the newspapers. So. You know — social ruin. Mrs. Astor refuses to bring her to the wedding and proceeds to side-eye anyone who asks about Charlotte, including a bewildered Bertha, who has not been keeping up with duel news.
As to the actual wedding — you guys, Taissa Farmiga is so wasted on this series. You notice I almost never talk about Gladys? It’s because she just sits in a room and looks scared. Or sometimes she leaves the room and looks scared. At least in The Nun 2, she has an actual reason to be scared. There’s a demon nun chasing her! A demon nun she was pretty sure she trapped forever, but then the first movie made a ton of money, so that demon nun was definitely going to return. I just want them to give her more to do than sit there. “But, Alice,” you say, “she ran away a few episodes ago.” Yeah, to BILLY’S HOUSE. Remember It Happened One Night? Her father traps her on a yacht, and she swims ashore and gets on a Greyhound bus! That movie literally came out more than ninety years ago. Have we learned nothing about what fictional Wall Street heiresses can do?
George tells Gladys it’s too late to back out without serious repercussions, and she ends up attending her wedding. She starts crying while walking up the aisle, which I think I mentioned back in season one or something, because it’s famously what Consuelo Vanderbilt did. This means I am unmoved because I want Andrew Davies et al. to be more creative. I kept hoping things would go in some unexpected direction, like she would say “no” and run off, but no. The priest does a “speak now or hold your peace” line, and no one says shit. Bertha is so happy. Next thing we know, Gladys is on a ship, sailing off to England with Hector, who comes in and is like “Erm, so you know about sex, etc? Great, because we’re gonna do that right now and it’s gonna be awkward.” Oh no, I do like it when people name awkwardness and try to find ways to openly navigate it. Hector is probably bad, right? Even though they’re making him likable now? Gladys is going to get to England, and it’s going to be awful. But what if it’s not!! I guess we shall see.
Gossip Items for Mrs. Astor’s Next Ball
• How close is Aurora Fane to a full-on breakdown? Like two seconds? Someone should really visit her in Newport. Not me, I’m busy deciding on the material for my new buttons. But someone.
• Someone is busy leaking details about Gladys’s wedding dress to the newspapers, but no one is leaking the fact that Larry took half of Jack’s money for doing nothing.
• So was the coffee cup handle like 90 percent broken? How did they do that? Putty? Because if it were fully broken, it would just break off when she tried to pick it up. I’m very impressed.
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