It did it! The Gilded Age delivered a pretty solid season finale. Could it be better? Sure, but at this point, that’s like complaining about the burrito place down the street with 2.5 stars on Yelp. You know what you signed up for. And sometimes that place makes a pretty decent burrito. (Sometimes.)
And now, negating what I just said, here are some notes: Why are we sticking so closely to history? It literally does not matter! If I wanted to watch a documentary on the Gilded Age, I would watch American Experience: The Gilded Age on PBS, which I have! This is basically Julian Fellowes playing with dolls and being that kid who says you have to stick to the story of the movie when you’re playing with them, and you can’t have Belle run off and marry Ariel despite their mutual curiosity and zest for life. The History Police are not going to arrest you, JF. I am the History Police, and I say history doesn’t matter when your main characters are “inspired by†historical figures. Also, literally like ten people care if you go off-script from 1880s America. This isn’t Tudor England. Very few people are emotionally invested in the actual facts.
In the finale, we’re dealing with Bertha vs. Mrs. Astor in the opera war, the ruin of the Van Rhijn family, the potential closure of the Black (and now also Irish!) schools, and some romance items. When it comes to the opera war, we are sticking unfortunately close to the script regarding what’s going to happen to Gladys. We’ve all suspected it, and here it is! Bertha sells her daughter to the Duke of Buckingham so she can one-up Mrs. Astor’s opera house. I guess you can quibble with this and say, “Excuse me, Consuelo Vanderbilt married the Duke of Marlborough, so really, how closely are we sticking to history?†To you I raise one imperious eyebrow, cowing you into abashed silence, as which particular duke is hardly the point. Consuelo was engaged to a man named Winthrop Rutherfurd before being forced to marry the duke, and it looks like our version of Winthrop is this Billy Carlton.
Bertha gets frightened about publicly losing to Mrs. Astor after all her social climbing because whoever gets the duke to attend their opera house’s opening night “wins.†You guys, there is actually important damn stuff going on in the world. Regardless, first, Bertha squired the duke toward the Met, then Mrs. Astor offered him social connections, then Bertha apparently said, “I will give you my firstborn†(daughter) like she’s the Baker’s father in Into the Woods, and the duke said, Oh, okay. This is what happens when you steal magic beans and/or buy into a social system that is just going to become two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desert one day.
Bertha’s moment of triumph at the Met is quite fun, though, as we get a sweeping version of the show’s theme, and everyone turns and stares at Bertha entering the center box. Mrs. Winterton seethes in one of the boxes to the side. Mamie Fish arrives and says the Academy was a morgue, and American society has been reinvented tonight (haha, okay, Mamie, this isn’t a bicycle factory). Bertha makes Gladys sit next to the duke and forbids her from visiting Billy Carlton’s box. Ugh.
So now the Russells are going to get divorced and everyone is going to be sad, all because Bertha needs to be socially tops in 1880s America. And who is her rival? An ASTOR? The ones who made their money from trying to kill all the beavers? Oh, yeah, better impress them. This situation is butts.
Staying on a bummer note, Peggy’s father, Arthur, learns that the Board of Education secretly switched its meeting time in an attempt to keep the Black parents and teachers from attending and advocating for Black schools. Fortunately, he makes it there in time, along with Dorothy, Sarah Garnet, and other school supporters, and they convince the board to at least keep two out of three schools open. It’s a victory (overall). In the midst of this, Peggy sees T. Thomas Fortune’s wife and their new baby. SIR. SIR. Absolutely not. Get right out of here with that. Peggy decides to quit the paper and work on her novel, and like, okay, cool with the novel, but it sucks that she feels she has to quit because her married-with-a-new-baby boss is not doing anything to put distance between them. Booooo, sir, booooooo. Peggy has been through enough this season.
The arc of Marian and Dashiell this season has been so performative that even the writers hated it. (I’m pretty sure this is true.) Marian just goes with the flow the whole time until she suddenly realizes she does not in fact want to marry her cousin, who accidentally calls her by his dead wife’s name. Their breakup is the nicest and easiest breakup of all time, and even Agnes afterward is like, Yeah, okay. The entire story line could have been erased, and we would have missed nothing. I’m definitely enjoying Marian much more this season now that she’s an encouraging background presence, but I don’t need to go on an emotional journey with her that might as well culminate in her singing Ragtime’s “Back to Beforeâ€Â (oh my God, if only).
Immediately after the opera, Larry Russell walks Marian back to her house across the street and they kiss on the stoop. Wow, we are just wasting no time. Why does every relationship on this show go from zero to 60? The second Larry shows any actual romantic interest in Marian, we are OFF. The idea of a slow burn probably makes Julian Fellowes want to vomit. “Unresolved sexual WHAT?†he would ask. “No, everyone loves when one person vaguely expresses attraction and then the two people get married. Satisfying for all.†Why can’t Marian slowly realize she has feelings for Larry, but she’s engaged to Dashiell still, and her sense of HONOR will not allow her to act on it, then Larry passes her a teacup, their fingers brush, and there’s a look? A LOOK. And then one time they kiss in a conservatory (a Russell move) and she breaks it off and runs away weeping. So good. But no, instead, they’re just happily making out on a stoop. Whatever, show. I read this section to my wife, and she said these were suspiciously specific events, and then I had to admit they basically both happened on Days of Our Lives in 1997.
Obviously, we have to end with the Van Rhijns. I was really scared Oscar was going to harm himself! And then I realized I cared about one of the characters on this extremely silly show, and I was irritated with myself for being taken in (like Oscar!). Agnes is giving him no quarter and tells him he has thrown away the work of centuries, and now she must beg for her bread on street corners. It’s a classic Lucille Bluth “Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant; it just makes me want to set myself on fire†rant. And to clarify, they still have money. The family will just need to sell the house and move downtown.
But in a stunningly melodramatic twist (JF got my letters!), Ada discovers that her late husband secretly had heaps of money, and now the Van Rhijns get to keep their house and servants and dresses. The extremely fun part about this is the immediate shifting of the power dynamic within the home, as Ada will be paying the bills. I am delighted. If this is why we had the Reverend Luke–Ada two-minute marriage, it was worth it, and this will be the primary reason I tune in next season. Onward!
Things I Want Next Season
• A musical episode.
• More thwarted revenge plots from Mrs. Winterton. When they fail, she has to angrily stomp around like Yosemite Sam.
• Lots of Christine Baranski sputtering because she can’t get her way.
• MORE HATS.