RECAP: The Gilded Age Season 3, Episode 7
Ooh, honey, the last-second cliffhangers this season are taking me OUT. Between Episode 6’s out-of-nowhere death by fruit cart, and the more narratively understandable yet still shocking ending of this episode, this season is giving me classic, old-school “Dynasty.” That is the highest praise I can give to a show. I know that “The Gilded Age” is meant to be a prestige chamber piece — and it is — but it is still, at its core, a melodrama. It is a nighttime soap. And I find it thrilling. Multiple times I found myself thinking that this episode was jam packed. Several of this season’s plotlines were more or less resolved, and the other, larger arcs are building to what has the potential to be a terrific climax.
Read on for my take on Season 3, Episode 7, ranking the plotlines by the ones I found most interesting, to the least engaging (but honestly, there was almost no filler this episode).
SPOILERS AHEAD
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Lina Astor/Mrs. Fish/Bertha Russell/Ward McAllister
There were several major plots this episode, but this was the juiciest of the bunch. Nathan Lane’s Ward McAllister is back and causing quite the commotion, as the society maven publishes a tell-all about the scandalous lives of New York high society. While the book doesn’t identify the various socialites by their actual names, anyone in the know would be able to make some clear connections. Among the information shared in the book are details about the Russells’ strained marriage, the financial ruin of the Van Rhijns (and even innuendo about Oscar’s sexuality), and the already much-gossiped-about situation of Lina Astor’s daughter, whose husband is on the verge of filing for divorce after his wife had an affair with another man.
The various attacks leads to an unlikely collaboration between most of the major women in the show, as Lina Astor calls a meeting of Mrs. Fish, Bertha, and Agnes Van Rhijn. Although they have had disagreements in the past, they are unified on two points: 1) they must all present a unified front in public, so as to cast doubt about the veracity of McAllister’s stories, and 2) McAllister is banished from New York society immediately and in perpetuity.
That banishment was apparently a shock to Ward McAllister, who barges into the Astor home (!) to confront Lina about her retaliation. This unfolds in a truly great scene between Lane and Donna Murphy, where McAllister states without a hint of modesty that he created the reputations of most of New York society, and that he can destroy them. Astor fires back that she helped to domesticate McAllister’s more outrageous Southern mannerisms, and the two of them verbally slap and accuse until McAllister delivers one last, brutal blow, calling out Lina as a lonely, betrayed housewife whose husband prefers the company of his young yacht girls.
It’s important to know that Ward McAllister was a real person, and his Society As I See It was a real book. Watching McAllister’s scenes this episode, and the women reeling from his betrayal, my immediate thought was that basically the same exact situation would unfold about 80 years later with Truman Capote and his “Swans,” the New York socialites of the 1960s and 1970s in whose fabulous inner circle he was admitted, and whose secrets Capote would publicly spill in service of his writing career and quest for fame and fortune. FX’s Feud season on the subject was a maudlin, maddening exploration of the dynamic, but the parallels between McAllister and Capote are striking, right down to these men thinking they were completely justified in publicly smearing rich and powerful women on whom they had grifted for decades because…reasons? They were “bad people” who deserved to be humiliated? And yet, both McAllister and Capote — gay men who would have been social pariahs in any male-dominated social scene — gladly suckled at their bourgeoisie teats for years prior. Both this show and Feud attempted to justify the authors’ actions, and I am still not buying it from either angle.
Anyway, in light of all the scandal and publicity, Lina decides she cannot possibly host her annual end-of-season ball at Newport, and instead invites Bertha Russell to take over running the event. This presents an opportunity for Bertha to formally become the HBIC of New York society, and McAllister encourages Bertha to go for it. He also begs Bertha to maintain his own access to the moneyed class, and Bertha declines, explaining that he made his own choice to blow up his place in society. On the other hand, Bertha is thinking very seriously about officially lifting the ban on divorced women attending social functions, which she assumes Lina will be in favor of, given her own impending divorced daughter. McAllister warns that may not be the case. The divorce subplot has been percolating all season, and I’ll be curious to see how it all plays out in next week’s finale, especially given Bertha’s own strained marriage…
George Russell/Larry Russell/Clay
The episode begins with George confronting the very real possibility that he will lose everything — he even sends a telegram to the Duke informing him that this month’s dowry payment might be late, or might not come at all (more on that in a minute). When Bertha arrives back in New York and assures George that things with Gladys in the U.K. are much improved, she is greeted by only contempt. Listen, I get that Train Daddy is stressed beyond belief, and I get that Bertha pushed WAY too hard on the Gladys/Duke stuff. But George is acting like a maniac, and his aggression toward Bertha feels frankly out of character to me. I am assuming they want to show us how intensely these captains of industry were personally impacted by their successes and failures — I’m sure that’s even true. But it feels forced given the bond we saw between the two of them in the first two seasons. Both parties in that marriage admired the ambition in the other, and that is feeling entirely lopsided here. Bertha even called George out on it, with George replying that the difference between his ambition and Bertha’s is that Bertha doesn’t ever ask what anyone else wants. The implication is that George does — but that is bullshit. He more or less ordered Larry to go out to Nowheresville, New Mexico for an entire MONTH the day after he got engaged, and wasn’t exactly a model of flexibility. So, methinks the hot guy doth protest too much.
For his part, Larry returns home with good news, and finds bad news waiting for him. Church immediately hands over Marion’s “Welcome to Dumpsville, Population: You” note upon Larry’s arrival, and Larry storms across the street to understand what happened. Ada tells Larry that Marion is not able to see him yet, but will not clarify what called Marion to break off the proposal. Larry returns home, and before he can share his break-up news, informs George: he was able to secure the land George needed AND those supposedly worthless mines are actually filled with high-grade copper, which will basically solve all of George’s money problems. I don’t think they had Staples Easy buttons back then, but this situation is whatever the 19th Century equivalent would be.
When Bertha checks in on her returned son, he informs his parents that Marion has broken off their engagement, but won’t say why. Bertha says that shows the weakness of Marion’s character (which, honestly: fair), and that prompts Larry to take a few more whacks at his mother, the family pinata, including accusing her of being involved in Marion’s change of heart. The upshot is that both Russell men ignore and insult Bertha, and then storm off to stay at “the club” (I’m assuming the YMCA, but fancier) where they will be living for the foreseeable future.
Later Larry shows up at Marion’s school (not a great episode for men respecting women’s boundaries) and demands an explanation. She calmly explains that she knows that on the very night of their engagement, Larry went to a house of ill repute. Larry first attempts to lie — that was a mistake, and shows his character — until Marion makes it clear she knows exactly where he was, and what goes on at such establishments. Larry swears up and down that he did nothing wrong, but Marion points out that the fact that he did not trust her enough to tell her what he was really doing, and then attempted to lie about it after the fact, is all the reason she needs to not trust the man. I know some people find the issues between these two contrived, but honestly, I get it. Marion is not in the wrong here. If your partner went out to a strip club/brothel/women’s fight club the night you got engaged, even if he didn’t do anything improper, but then LIED to you about it, I think you all would have issues. I would.
George meanwhile calls in unscrupulous business rival Sage and his own former No. 2, Clay, to inform them that he has purchased the Merricks’ Chicago line (totally off camera), has J.P. Morgan back on his side (also off camera), and achieved it all via money from mines that Clay himself had claimed were useless. This leads to Sage firing Clay on the spot, and George metaphorically waving his dick in Clay’s face and stating that Clay is done in New York. He offers Clay a spot in one of his Pennsylvania mills, working alongside the laborers Clay himself urged George to shoot last season (#savage). Clay responds by assuring George that he hadn’t seen the last of him, comparing himself to a cockroach. Not the flex you think it is, bud.
And then, at the very end of the episode, George is getting ready to go somewhere on business, when his footman (not Church) informs him there’s a message being delivered to him. A guy busts in through the office door, whips out a gun, and kills at least one other man in the room (I don’t think we know who that was), and then fires another shot pointed right at George Russell. In case you wondered if that’s a fake out, the preview for next episode makes it clear that it is not: George Russell has been shot in his own home, and looks to be in bad shape next episode. My hope is that this will bring him and Bertha back together, but the preview clips are not encouraging on that front.
Peggy Scott
Peggy herself has a successful episode, bringing the suffragette author she interviewed to speak at a suffrage meeting held at Van Rhijn/Forte home, and then having a lovely picnic date with the charming and handsome Dr. Kirkland. Unfortunately for Peggy, she’s about to deal with a mess of trouble, as some gossipy old biddy named Ernestine (of course her name is Ernestine) informs Dr. Kirkland’s mother about Peggy’s big secret: she had a child, who she put up for adoption, and the child died. There is also some question as to whether or not Peggy was actually married to the father. (I’ll confess, I also don’t recall if she was married or not.) That causes Mrs. Kirkland (Phylicia Rashad) to get up immediately and grab a train to New York, where she informs her son about Peggy’s past and her alleged lies.
In Peggy’s defense, she DID try to tell Dr. Kirkland. We saw that. She wanted to come clean with everything, and he told her not to bother — he didn’t need to know her whole past, he was much more concerned with her present and future. That’s great, and I do have hope that Dr. Kirkland will not be dissuaded by this revelation. But realistically, a secret kid put up for adoption, possibly out of wedlock, would have been a HUGE issue for any respectable family at that point in American society. Peggy’s gonna have a rough finale.
Oscar Van Rhijn/Agnes Van Rhijn/Ada Forte/Marion Brooks
Following last week’s shock ending, in which Oscar’s former lover and current benefactor John Adams was brutally killed by a runaway carriage, Oscar is summoned to meet with John’s sister. She informs Oscar that she and her brother told each other all their secrets — all of them — and she knows about Oscar and John’s relationship. Oscar is obviously petrified about this exposure, but the sister assures him that his secret is safe with her.
She is also giving Oscar something else: John’s lake house, where the two of them had apparently spent some time. Oscar at first attempts to decline the offer, but the sister insists that it is what John wanted, and that Oscar should find happiness there, and think of John. That was really sweet.
But it’s also complicated, because Oscar is very much trapped here. He is grieving the death of a man he loved deeply, who died — brutally — right in front of him, but he cannot publicly ACT like he is grieving. To the world, Oscar and John were just friends. What Oscar is feeling clearly runs much deeper than that, but he cannot dare say it.
That all leads to a fantastic scene in which Oscar loses it with his mother, his aunt, and his cousin when they ask him how he’s doing, and Agnes demands to understand why a man would leave another man what I assume is an expensive property. Oscar goes right up to the edge of telling his mother what was really going on between him and John, and the panicked looks on both Ada and Marion’s faces suggest they have at least some inkling about Oscar’s real situation. Marion in particular intervenes and offers a somewhat plausible defense for Oscar’s emotional outburst, but the look on Agnes’ face seems to suggest that she too is wondering about what is REALLY going on with her son.
Marion and Oscar have a private chat in which Marion suggests that she is aware of what’s really going on with Oscar, and while she doesn’t understand it, she would never abandon him. That is a monumental deal at that time in history. The fact that both Marion and John’s sister explicitly tell Oscar that they understand who he really is, and will not shun him, is powerful. I have never particularly cared for Oscar, but this whole storyline is making me far more sympathetic to him, and I think the acting all around is quite strong.
But arguably the best performance of the episode came in another private scene between Ada and Marion, when Ada pushed her niece to at least explain to Larry Russell — either in person or via a letter — exactly why she was ending things. Marion reacted angrily, saying that every man in her life has failed her (kind of true, as her father left her penniless and Mr. Raikes completely used and abused her), and that she would be better off a spinster. Ada claps right back, explaining to her niece that NO, she most certainly would not. Cynthia Nixon acts the shit out of this sequence, putting words and emotions to the almost palpable loneliness that defined Ada for most of her life, and also provides additional closure for her when she considers that her brief time with Luke gave her so much happiness. I think anyone who has been single for any significant length of time resonated with much of what Ada said there. A great moment.
Gladys Russell/The Duke
The plotline that defined the first half of the season is largely resolved this episode, as Gladys and The Duke seem to be genuinely into one another, and finding their way forward as a couple. That includes pushing out The Duke’s uptight sister, Sara, who The Duke more or less tells to leave the estate by the end of the episode. In addition to the burgeoning closeness between the newlyweds, there was also what I think is an essential conversation regarding the financial component to their marriage. The Duke tells Gladys that her father may not be able to meet his financial commitment to the estate, but assures Gladys that he doesn’t care — it’s Gladys that he cares about. For her part, Gladys DOES care, presumably because she has taken a genuine interest in the estate and its future.
This storyline could have gone dark and depressing, but it actually seems to me that these two are going to be a great pair. I’m glad. Gladys has never been my favorite character, but I like this new side to her — I think the two of them actually bring out the best in each other. When they sailed to England I thought this whole plotline was veering dangerously close to tragedy, but it has weirdly turned into one of the more charming romances on the show.
The Russell House Staff
We also got a resolution to the gossip-informant plotline, and as expected, it was the French ladies’ maid. Church, Mrs. Bruce, and Borden set a trap and she fell right into it, selling a made-up story they told only to her to a newspaper writer. It was a cute sequence, although not much of a payoff (I guess we did learn that $40 was considered a great deal of money back then). It did lead Church to suggest that he has a more intriguing past than we have been led to believe.
Jack
Jack, with help from Marion, is looking at at a grand house to rent with his newly acquired clock fortune. He’s still highly nervous about this new way of life, but Marion assures him that he will grow accustomed to having his own staff, and will be happy. I hope so, but I also share Jack’s anxiety. He has what is very clearly a lot of money in 19th Century dollars, but this seems like an awfully big, recurring expense considering he doesn’t have any MORE money coming in. Couldn’t he just get a room at the same club Larry and George are living in? Jack also vouches for Larry’s innocence at the house of ill repute, and Marion seems to be softening on her resolve. So we’ll see how that all plays out.
Next up: It’s the season finale, as George Russell lies shot in his study, Peggy deals with the fallout of her big secret, Marion and Larry figure out what will become of them, and Bertha throws the end-of-season ball…while her husband recovers from a gunshot wound. Yeah, I don’t imagine that’s going to go over well with George.
