THE GILDED AGE: Love is Never Easy

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Gladys pouts! George and Bertha argue! Ada and Agnes bicker! Marian whines! Peggy might have a beau! If you think these sound like lines we could have written for practically any other recap of The Gilded Age, you would be correct! Not a lot of forward movement on this one, we’re afraid. Once again picking up right where we left off (this season is more serialized and soapy than in seasons past), the Russell dinner has proven to be as tense and unhappy as predicted, with negotiations between George and the Duke’s lawyer breaking down almost immediately. Hector is getting greedy and Hot Beard isn’t inclined to give him a thing. It’s never actually stated or implied, but we suppose this is George’s way of putting a kibosh on Bertha’s plans. George blames Bertha for the Duke’s greed, noting that her open scheming and obvious desperation left the impression that Hector had the upper hand, which is absolutely not something Hot Beard can stand or allow. Bertha’s masterful social climbing has come crashing up against George’s tycoon ways. Gladys is thrilled listening in on their argument.

While all of this is going on, Larry closes the door on the parlor and kisses Miss Brooke, which is, admittedly a somewhat shocking thing to do. Running off to make out in carriages wasn’t any smarter, but the problem with doing anything behind closed doors in a well-staffed household is that those doors inevitably open. Bertha’s actually French ladies maid (as opposed to her formerly French chef) comes in on them and Marian has a complete meltdown, believing that she’s ruined yet another marriage prospect. Larry reassures her. “I love you Miss Brooke. That’s what matters.” Incidentally, Marian wins the Ugliest Fucking Dress prize for that frilly neon prom dress she wore to dinner.

Back home, she goes to Ada’s room and unloads everything on her, allowing Ada to switch over to her “loving, even-tempered, wise aunt” mode, as she advises her niece to use this opportunity to think about how much and how long she’s going to want to keep kissing Larry Russell. With this season, Ada has officially become the least consistent character on the show; kind and wise when the script needs her to be; pushy, strident and emotionally vulnerable at all other times. Marian reveals that Oscar told her the gossip about Larry’s affair in Newport the previous summer and Wise Aunt Ada tells her, “Whatever the justice of it there’s no hiding from the fact that our society gives more license to young men than to young women.” Which is a nice way of saying, stop kissing him and stop worrying over who he was kissing before.

The next morning, Hot Beard meets with the Duke and agrees to his increased ask, but the extra money would be paid to Gladys as a separate source of income for her. He’s doing his best to rig this awful game in his daughter’s favor. “But what use is that to me?” asks the Duke nastily. Once again, negotiations break down. The Duke announces at breakfast that he’s leaving immediately. Gladys is thrilled. Bertha is increasingly frantic. “This mess is of your making,” George tells her, as she watches all of her plans collapsing.

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Over at the Van Rhijn house, Agnes is beside herself to read that her name has not been included in the list of donors for the Christian Women’s charity, which is literally exactly the storyline given to Bitsy Von Mufflin in the latest episode of And Just Like That…, except she was upset about not being invited to a Tiffany party. Anyway. Agnes Von Mufflin is pissed and typically melodramatic about what she calls her “exclusion from society” because of the loss of her fortune. Ada points out that as long as she keeps contributing to the right charities, they’ll both be invited to all the parties and luncheons, but Agnes is revolted at the idea of a life as her former spinster sister’s plus-one. To be honest, while this is all catty and delicious, the way the two sisters openly bicker about money would have been seen as unspeakably vulgar by their class. Every time Ada says “I write the checks” or “I pay the salaries,” we cringe a little. By all indications, both women should be mortified by even the suggestion of talking about money, let alone arguing about it in front of servants and guests.

In Newport, Peggy and her mother are staying with her aunt Athena when a letter from Dr. Kirkland arrives. Aunt Athena is extremely excited by the news because the Kirklands are evidently a very influential family. Peggy and the doctor go for a very formal and polite walk on the beach, complete with top hat and parasol. He invites her and her entire family to a party that his parents are giving. After her walk, Peggy’s aunt and mother pester her about it. Aunt Athena notes that his mother rules Newport Negro society and that one of her sons went to Yale. Peggy responds that his pedigree means nothing to her, but that she’ll be going to the party.

Tea in the Van Rhijn parlor. Agnes is once again chewing on a bone; this time it’s over Marian’s work teaching English to immigrants, which she somewhat offensively relates to Jack’s plans to find investors for his clock. Jack thanks the ladies for allowing him to continue to wait on them while he tries to better himself. Oscar sashays in, flops down on the settee and announces that his career is back on track. “What if success and money do not bring happiness?” Agnes asks John, who replies that he’d like to find that out for himself.

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“We weren’t bad people,” Not-French Chef tells his housemaid girlfriend about his dead wife. This show always does this sort of thing; gives characters who haven’t been particularly well developed these emotional scenes where they talk about characters we haven’t even met. The French ladies maid rather slyly asks Bertha if Larry and Marian will be marrying soon and “let’s slip” that she walked in on them kissing. Little flames briefly shoot out of Bertha’s nostrils but she’s got other fish to fry at the moment. Or rather, Mrs. Fish. At the opera, Gladys and Mrs. Fish are delighted to see the Duke chatting up another wealthy family with a daughter of marrying age. Smoke briefly billows out of Bertha’s ears.

That night, Hot Beard and Bertha have yet another in their ongoing series of one-act plays about marriage. These debates and arguments have gotten tiresome if only because they’re so repetitive. “George, winning in business and winning in society are linked. We are facing a very public defeat,” she pleads with him. Again, she’s not wrong. It will be a humiliation to her if she doesn’t secure the engagement and George is too dismissive about what it means to have standing in high society. They’re not seeing eye to eye at all. She tries to get some of that Hot Beard action but he turns her down, which is not a good sign.

Luncheon at the Van Rhijn house. Ada pesters Bannister about the sobriety pledge until he admits that the only person who signed it is Armstrong. Agnes is – once again – beside herself. “Nothing is as it should be!” she bellows. Armstrong is surprisingly firm in her convictions and says that she signed the pledge because she believes in the cause and that alcohol has ruined many lives. Given the rather grim view of her family life last season, she’s likely to be speaking from experience. “You never noticed I don’t drink?” At the very least, as a member of the working poor, she’d have seen this sort of ruin first hand throughout her community. Agnes is shocked that someone who works for her would sign such a thing and Ada once again takes the opportunity to point out that she pays Armstrong’s wages before storming off because she can’t control the staff the way her sister can. Honestly, she’s getting pretty tiresome at this point.

Bertha sent a message to the father of the girl the Duke was talking to at the opera and he gets a read on her within seconds. She tries to imply that he doesn’t have the finances to provide the kind of dowry the Duke requires and he openly mocks her for being so tacky about it before noting with more accuracy than her entire family seems able to muster when they counter her, “I think you cannot stand aside when you see a plan of your own making start to fall apart.” He assures her that he has no plans to press for the Duke because he wants to see his own grandchildren raised in New York and notes – again, quite accurately, “I think you give these matters more importance than they’re worth.” But he confesses to admiring her and he tells her, after she asks for his card, that she’s much more intriguing than the Duke could ever be.

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Jack puts on his fine new suit and top hat before going off to his meetings. The staff bucks him up and wishes him luck, except Miss Armstrong, the human onion. Unfortunately, the meetings don’t quite go as well as hoped – there’s been no reason to think Larry has any real talent for business, after all. Wasn’t he architecting a while back? He freezes up the second anyone asks a technical question, and in the final meeting, Jack takes over, explaining the technical details of the clock and giving the potential investors two models to examine on their own. Still, he fails to get any offers. Of all people, it’s Miss Armstrong who bucks him up, noting that he got further in the business world than anyone else they know and that a lack of offers isn’t the same thing as a bunch of denials.

Hot Beard meets with his Sith apprentice, who tells him he doesn’t have enough money for his railroad project. George tells him to use the money put aside for Gladys’ dowry. “You’re risking more than you have and it may not be possible in the time frame you want” apprentice says darkly and mysteriously and, of course, extremely vaguely. Hot Beard slaps him and tells him to get it done.

In Newport, the Kirkland party is tense and judgy. Mrs. Kirkland is an enormous snob who spews her family’s accomplishments and lineage without any prompting and needles Mr. Scott about his own background, mentioning that she thought he was “some sort of salesman” and going silent when he tells her that he was formerly enslaved before tearing into her grandchildren’s governess for exposing them to the sun. Later, he mentions that he never wants anything to do with her again, which concerns Peggy, since it’s clear that she and the doctor are heading into something. Later still, Arthur expresses his concerns about their dark-skinned daughter spending time with a family as colorist and snobbish as the Kirklands, and even goes so far as to worry about any potential grand-children being as dark-skinned as he is. The show is clearly trying to draw some sort of line connecting this with the old money/new money obsessions of the white characters, but slavery and colorism are far too complicated for such simple comparisons, although this storyline is infinitely more interesting than Gladys’s engagement or Ada’s ongoing nervous breakdown.

Larry went to see Billy because Gladys asked him to and he relays to her that Billy has moved on. We’re not sure what the point to this was, since Billy was pretty clear about where he stood at the end of the last episode. This whole Duke storyline just amounted to a lot of narrative wheel-spinning. To that end, Hector arrives back at the Russell house with his lawyer, who advised him to reconsider George’s offer. When Bertha tells him that the offer hasn’t changed, he gets up to leave AND WHY DID YOU EVEN COME HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU ANNOYING POVERTY-STRICKEN DRAMA QUEEN? Bertha veers into full-on villainy and all but assures the Duke that he can wrest control of whatever money is part of Gladys’s allowance, which seals the deal for them both. George argues for Gladys’s happiness and we’re treated to like the tenth version of this same argument and discussion about trusting Bertha to give their daughter a perfect life. Again, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to be debating this at this point, since an offer was made and accepted. They break the news to Gladys by popping a Champagne cork directly into her face. Gladys asks why George broke his promise to her and he never answers because there really isn’t an answer to give. Fellowes keeps wanting to make George seem moral and conflicted about this, even as he’s writing the checks to the man who’s buying his daughter. “You can’t change the world, Gladys,” he says to her rather ineffectively.

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Downstairs at the Van Rhijn house, Ada can’t sleep so she decides to engage in her newest hobby, harassing the people who work for her and trauma-dumping on them. She asks Mrs. Bauer if the servants would have signed the pledge if Mrs. Van Rhijn had asked them to and Mrs. Bauer begs her to leave her alone and let her get back to washing things in the middle of the night, except she didn’t say that part out loud and instead took time out from her midnight pot scrubbings to tell her employer that she’s doing right by her dead husband and that she may know someone who can help her reconnect with him. Uh-oh. Looks like Ada’s gonna get deep into the spiritualism movement and you can be sure Agnes is going to have some opinions about any seances happening under her roof.

Gladys and Hector have their first real conversation together and it doesn’t go terribly. Hector is shown to be concerned for Gladys’s happiness and honest about the strangeness of the situation, although that doesn’t quite jibe with his greedier attitudes earlier in the episode. He says that he hopes that she’ll come to see that what he’s trying to preserve is worth preserving. He promises not to be dishonest with her and she says that she likes that about him. We don’t know. He was very sweet to her here, but we can’t help assuming he’s going to be a royal dick once the marriage certificate is signed.

Later, the Sargent portrait is unveiled and Gladys pulls a Martha Wayne in front of everyone.

[Picture credit: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO]

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