For a show about the scheming and social climbing of the nineteenth century’s wealthiest people, The Gilded Age is oddly devoid of, well, drama. This is surprising, given that it’s a show about one of America’s juiciest gossip eras. It’s also surprising merely because The Gilded Age is an entertainment program on TV, featuring people doing interesting things while dressed to the nines. Like Sex and the City or Empire. You know…TV shows. Do you know what we call a non-comedic television show in the biz? A drama. Generally, what that means is that there are dramatic stakes involved. One might even say there are heightened dramatic stakes–you know, for entertainment purposes.
Yet at every fork in the road, every opportunity for conflict and soapy melodrama, The Gilded Age chose to avoid the conflict and sidestep the histrionics.
There was plenty of potential! Carrie Coon’s ambitious Bertha Russell is ruthless and determined to clamber right over everyone on the ladder up to the highest rungs of New York society. Her husband, railroad magnate George Russell, wants to take over the entire world. (I’m exaggerating, but only a little.) Their children, Gladys and Larry, are desperate to find a way out of the shadow cast by their larger-than-life parents.
Below stairs, the Russells’ servants have their own intrigues–lady’s maid Turner plans to seduce the master of the house, French chef Monsieur Baudin is hiding a secret, and valet Watson has a weird obsession with a high society lady.
Meanwhile, across the street, old money Agnes van Rhijn and her spinster sister Ada (Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon) have just taken in their penniless niece, Marian Brook, who dares to think for herself and make inappropriate friends. Agnes’s son, Oscar, is carrying on an affair with John Quincy Adams’s great-grandson while also searching for a rich wife. The van Rhijns’ servants have issues ranging from gambling debts to childhood abuse to caring for a poverty-stricken mother.
Marian’s traveling companion-turned-Agnes’s-secretary, Peggy Scott, is a member of the elite Black society of the day, with parents living in a gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone, an ongoing estrangement from her father, a dream of becoming a writer, and a shameful secret.
There were SO MANY juicy possibilities! But it all went nowhere. At every turn, The Gilded Age squandered its potential.
Agnes’s number one rule is that Marian must not fraternize with the “new” people. Old New York society will never accept someone who acknowledges upstarts like the Russells! But when her own butler causes her to crash in on the Russells at lunch–WHERE MARIAN IS IN ATTENDANCE–does Agnes pull an Alexis Carrington-level hissy fit? Does she drag Marian out by her hair? Does she banish this disobedient and disgraceful niece from her house? No. She politely apologizes, slinks back home, and doesn’t even fire the butler. Later on, when ordered by Mrs. Astor to attend a ball at the Russell mansion, does Agnes stick to her guns, setting up a pissing match with the most fearsome old money society doyenne in town? Nah. She puts on a nice dress and goes to the ball like an obedient puppy. At least she promises Ada they can quarrel with Mrs. Russell in the future.
Peggy’s big secret is discovered when Agnes’s lady’s maid, Armstrong, opens her mail, leading to a showdown between Agnes, Peggy, and the clearly racist maid. Are there accusations of bias? Does anyone point out that tampering with the mail is a federal offense? Nope. Agnes says it’s too hard to train a good maid, keeps Armstrong on, and lets Peggy quit instead. Is Peggy furious at this treatment? Does she expose Agnes as a racist enabler in the pages of the newspaper she writes for? Of course not–she sincerely thanks Agnes for being so kind to her all along.
Oscar and John Adams fight in public about the fact that Oscar wants to marry a woman so nobody notices their affair. John even says–in a crowded restaurant–that he loves Oscar. Does the repressed, homophobic society of the late 1800s turn on them? Does anyone else even overhear and start a rumor? Don’t be silly–nobody bats an eye.
Turner strips naked and waits in George Russell’s bed. Ooh, are we in for a torrid affair? Will this servant give him what his wife can’t? AS IF. He turns her down cold. Does he fire her ass? Out her indiscretions to his wife, her boss? LOL no, that would be far too interesting.
There’s a terrible train crash and George is blamed for the deaths of innocent people. Alas, Bertha is more concerned with how the scandal will impact their social lives than she is about her husband facing jail time. Shockingly, George calls her on it! Is this it, the moment Turner has been waiting for? Will George finally realize Bertha cares more about herself than about him? Will he find solace in the arms of her lady’s maid? Well, no, he gets let off the legal hook and he and Bertha never talk about it again.
Bertha has longed all season for the approval and attention of the society queen, Mrs. Astor. She even got Nathan Lane’s ludicrously accented Mr. McAllister to sneak her into the Astors’ mansion in Newport! Was she caught? Humiliated? Mocked on the society page? Arrested for trespassing? Of course not, she just snuck out through the servants’ entrance. Finally, after an entire season of scheming, she gets Mrs. Astor to attend her ball. And…they chat. Bertha says they’re a lot alike. Nothing else happens.
And finally, the biggest romance of the season: Marian and her lawyer from back home, Mr. Raikes. This handsome guy followed her from Pennsylvania just to woo her into marriage. He’s relentless–he even finagles a way to get her into a hotel room away from the city and tries to take advantage of her. Does she give in to a night of passion? Or does he force himself on her? Nope. Peggy interrupts them making out and he just leaves. But wait–they were making out in the hallway! Did anyone see them? Is Marian’s reputation going to be ruined by being seen alone with a man just like Daphne’s in Bridgerton? Nah. In fact, she goes on to routinely visit him alone in his office, take unsupervised walks with him in public, and even openly kiss him in Central Park! No repercussions.
Surely there’s more to this story, right? Mr. Raikes, the man who told Marian she was left penniless after her father’s death, is trying to make her marry him. What gives–does he know there actually is money and he wants it? Or is he a villain out to compromise her and then blackmail her rich aunt with it? Is he going to elope with her but not actually marry her, like Mr. Wickham and Lydia Bennett? Or will they go through with it and he’ll become a neglectful or abusive husband for Marian? So many melodramatic options!
None of the above. He just doesn’t show up for their planned elopement. It’s disappointingly mealy mouthed for a man Agnes labels “an adventurer.” Oh, well, at least we’ll get to see Marian’s rage at being his dupe, right? She’ll tear him a new one and promise to ruin his prospects with any respectable woman? Oh. No. She’ll tell him they’re not enemies and then say hello to him when he shows up at a ball with someone else that very night.
I don’t know how such a soapy show, with such a talented cast, could be so lacking in sizzle. The number one requirement for drama is conflict–why is The Gilded Age afraid of it? If it weren’t for the gorgeous costumes and hints of actual Old New York drama, this show wouldn’t be worth watching at all. So here’s hoping that season two wakes things up a bit–that Agnes gets to leave her sitting room, that Mr. Raikes actually does ruin someone, that George and Bertha finally have a knock-down, drag-out fight leading to hot makeup sex, that Peggy and her family get an entire spin-off show, and that Marian learns how to have more than one facial expression.
Until then, we’ll have to make due with imagining the quarrel Agnes is planning to have with Bertha Russell in season two.
