Finally, real messiness has hit The Gilded Age. We’re talking light poisonings, forbidden marriages, torch-wielding mobs—Sunday night’s episode gifted us all that and more as we enter the back-half of season two.
Things kick off at the Russells’ Newport abode, where everyone is in an absolute tizzy getting ready for the big Duke of Buckingham dinner, no one more so than Bertha (Carrie Coon). She’s passive-aggressively picking out Gladys’ outfit (“I would like to choose my own clothes!” “But your choice would be wrong, my dear”), shooing a heartbroken and hungover Larry (Harry Richardson) all the way back to Manhattan, and having extra staff brought up from the city to supplement Church (Jack Gilpin), Mrs. Bruce (Celia Keenan-Bolger), and the rest of the usual downstairs help, including a sous chef who might just have a sinister connection to one scheming Mrs. Winterton (Kelley Curran). But more on that in a bit.
At the Van Rhijn residence, Ada (Cynthia Nixon) is suffering from her own bout of anxiety: It’s time to tell her deliciously judgmental older sister about her upcoming nuptials to her very own hot priest, Reverend Forte (Robert Sean Leonard), which will be happening in a week’s time. (Girlfriend’s been waiting her whole life for this: “I don’t need a long engagement,” she quips.) And she’s right to worry: “This is very melodramatic. Are we to witness your will?” Agnes (Christine Baranski) harps before Ada can even get to the good bit.
Marion (Louisa Jacobson) and Oscar (Blake Ritson) are positively thrilled for their long-suffering spinster aunt, but not Agnes—she shuts down the celebratory calls for champagne and declares that not only will she not be attending the wedding, but she forbids Oscar to as well. “Mama, this is harsh even for you,” he chastises his mother, but Mrs. van Rhijn ain’t budging one bit. Ada is understandably upset with her sibling, even refusing to join her at meals, but isn’t quite getting to the real root of Agnes’ dissatisfaction: If Ada and Hot Priest marry up and settle down, Agnes will be left all alone, a worry she tearfully shares with the Reverend when she unexpectedly drops by the rectory. However, our hunky clergyman stands firm. He’s not going anywhere so she better start picking up what he’s preaching.
Hopping below the Mason-Dixon line, things are initially going swimmingly for Peggy (Denée Benton) & Co. in Tuskegee. Booker T. Washington (Michael Braugher) has successfully unveiled his new dormitory, the female students are all in awe of Peggy’s successes up north, and affairs are pleasant yet professional between Peggy and her editor, T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones). All of that goes up in flames, nearly literally, during a dinner out at a local Black-owned restaurant when two white men barge in and start causing a ruckus. Things get physical when Fortune intervenes, leaving him and Peggy on the run and hiding out in a barn as an angry white mob searches the town for them. “My mother warned me but I never could have imagined this,” Peggy distresses. Her editor comforts her, which leads to her editor smooching her, but the pair thankfully stops themselves before things go too far.
And that’s only the tip of the drama this week: Apparently, Mrs. Winterton has been conspiring with several Russell staffers to ruin Bertha’s big dinner, including hired chef Mr. Schneider and footman Peter Burns. Mrs. Russell is distracted trying to wingman the duke with her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), but Watson (Michael Cerveris) comes to the rescue. The eagle-eyed valet catches Schneider going all Phantom Thread on a sauce pot and assertively cancels the first course before it reaches the table, and he tips off Church (Jack Gilpin) about Peter’s treason, banishing the young servant from the dining room before a plate could deviously end up in the royal’s lap. Watson, you’re a G. All in all, the duke’s dinner is a triumph, much to Mrs. Winterton’s vexation. (“I wouldn’t admit it if they tore my fingernails off to make me.”)
Will Ada’s wedding be so fortunate? Though she luckily has Marion as a maid of honor, who enlists cousin Dashiell (David Furr) to walk the future Mrs. Hot Priest to the altar, she still doesn’t have Agnes’ blessing. (“Et tu, Bannister?” the latter lady moans as her butler makes off for the church.) It ends up that the blushing bride doesn’t need Dashiell’s help at all. Oscar movingly rebels against his mother and ushers Ada (who, yes, is giving Midsommar vibes in her florals) down the aisle. But it isn’t the only surprise cameo at the ceremony. Yes, not a moment too late, Christine Baranski shows up, majestic in maroon, to support her little sister on her big day. And there’s not a dry eye in the house.
Stray observations
- George “Hot Beard” Russell (Morgan Spector) is too busy shitting on workers’ rights to attend a trustees’ meeting on the soon-to-be-unveiled Brooklyn Bridge, so he sends Larry to do his bidding. While there, sonny boy discovers that the engineering brain behind the impressive build is not actually Washington Roebling as believed, but his wife and fellow architect, Emily (Liz Wisan). It’s a nifty bit of real-life history, that one of the world’s greatest landmarks was secretly the doing of a woman, but it’s handled with such girl-power anachronism (“It’s a shame, an unjust shame!” Larry laments to the rafters) that it’s impossible to take seriously.
- Speaking of “impossible to take seriously,” the show’s hat game has gone full-blown Georgia O’Keefe. They’ve got poor Maud Beaton bopping around town in a purple number that looks more suitable for Skinemax than Max.