Welcome back to HBO‘s The Gilded Age, the show and actual era that relished excess and social stature, when ambitious men attempted to monopolize industry and ambitious women fought about dukes and opera boxes. I have missed this so much.
**Spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 1 “Ring the Bells,” now streaming on HBO Max**
When season three left off, it seemed that for every new beginning (Peggy’s engagement to Dr. William Kirkland, Mrs. Winterton and Oscar van Rhijn’s engagement, footman Jack’s newfound wealth from his clock invention) there was also some kind of end (George and Bertha Russell’s marriage, Marian and Larry’s broken engagement, Ward McAllister’s role in society). And when Season 4 picks up, it’s a few months later but the needle really hasn’t moved much on any of those fronts. Except now, some people have phones!
The juxtaposition of new and old, campy melodrama and dire urgency are the weave and weft of this show, and it’s how season four begins. The very first scene of the episode features Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga), now Gladys the Duchess of Buckingham, screaming in agony as she attempts to deliver her child in her English manor. A doctor has been called, and Gladys’s mother Bertha (Carrie Coon) seems concerned, so you know this situation is dangerous.
And yet, just to keep things light, these shots that contemplate maternal and infant mortality are interspersed with the breezy (and very rainy) nuptials of Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) and Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran). As Oscar takes his bride’s hand and smirks, “This is going to be such fun!” we cut away to a sweaty Gladys whose perineum is about to rip open as if it were a bag of Big League Chew entrusted to an 8-year-old. Give the show’s editor a raise.
Gladys’s delivery is dangerous; the baby is breech and the lives of both Gladys and her baby are in jeopardy. Bertha, along with Hector, the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) and his terrible/incredible sister Sarah (Hattie Morahan) are briefed on the situation and asked, if it comes to it, whose life should be saved, Gladys’s or the baby’s. Immediately, Sarah (who, you’ll recall from last season, helped orchestrate Gladys’s marriage to the Duke and its accompanying dowry so that her family’s manor and name would not fall into disrepair) (…and if you also recall is the meanest person I’ve ever wanted to be friends with), tells the doctor, “The child, surely. If it’s a boy then he is your future. The future of us all. We must save him at all costs.” Hector, who has come to love Gladys, takes a more measured approach, telling the doctor to save them both, and if that’s not possible, to save Gladys. His sister is so irritated by his weakness for his wife.
Fortunately it doesn’t have to come to this. Gladys delivers Hector, Jr., Marquis of Sidmouth, but during delivery, she hemorrhages and the doctor removes her uterus without informing her, or anyone else. She will not be able to have more children, he explains to Hector and Bertha. “That is for you to tell her,” he says to them, and then he peaces right on out of there.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Gladys’s father, who is all of our Train Daddy, George Russell (Morgan Spector) looks terrible. I feel bad saying it because sure, he is still recovering from an assassination attempt where he was nearly shot to death, but the toll his work is taking has aged him well beyond these past few months. He’s currently at odds with John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil company is George’s biggest client. As Rockefeller tries to lowball George on oil transportation rates so he can get richer and monopolize the oil industry, that means George will have a harder time making all the money so he can monopolize the railroad industry. George and J.D. Rockefeller do have one common adversary though; newly-elected President Grover Cleveland – who is famously into regulation and anti-monopolization, who will be visiting New York soon.
Cleveland will actually be visiting the home of Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon), now that Agnes is the vice president of the Heritage Society. The honor of hosting the President might be Agnes’s, but the duty to pay for it all is Ada’s since she’s the rich one now. Ada is not thrilled to have to shell out so much dough to make their house cute for the President, especially when she learns from Peggy that Grover Cleveland was less of an emancipator and more a friend of the Confederacy.
Agnes is furious that Ada is withdrawing her support, and at the perfectly wrong moment, that’s when her ladies maid Armstrong (Debra Monk) casually brings up the fact that Agnes’s new daughter-in-law, Enid, used to be Mrs. Russell’s maid.
Agnes is angry that she didn’t know this information and summons Enid to her house to ask about it. “Yes, I was her maid,” Enid admits when asked if she worked for Bertha. Agnes grills Enid, asking if Oscar is aware of these facts, to which Enid coolly responds, “We have both entered this marriage with open eyes.” And then Enid does the one thing Agnes needs most in that moment; she offers to contribute money toward Agnes’s plans to host the President. She may just be the mother-in-law, but Agnes, too, is benefiting from this marriage of convenience.
Oscar and Enid aren’t the only couple whose marriage features a judgey in-law. Peggy Scott’s (Denée Benton) future MIL, Elizabeth (Phylicia Rashad) may even be a worse foe than Agnes. Peggy is about to become the wife of Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica), and though his mother makes generous gestures to buy Peggy and her mother dresses, and gift her with a fine lace veil, it’s all just to keep up her own appearances since she looks down on the Scotts’ middle class-ness and roots as slaves.
She also hates that Peggy is a published author, a huge honor for any women, but especially a Black woman, in this era, ignoring the joyful news that Peggy’s book in in print.
For the first time in this show’s history, Marian Brook has let her hair down (literally and figuratively). After Oscar and Enid’s stodgy wedding reception on Fifth Avenue, they invite Marian downtown to an afterparty that Agnes would surely disapprove of.
The emphasis on “downtown” cannot be understated. Marian is not a downtown type and in fact downtown — the Haymarket, to be precise — is the whole reason she and Larry Russell broke off their engagement. He was cavorting in a house of ill-repute downtown and Marian’s goody-two shoes couldn’t take it. But when she runs into Larry on this night — at Webster Hall! I love that this seedy den of sin is the place where I once saw Jimmy Eat World play — the two reconnect and the spark between them is clearly rekindled. Strange things happen when you venture below 14th Street! On their ride back up to Fifth Avenue in Larry’s carriage, the horse gets spooked from the lightning outside and their carriage breaks. In a torrential downpour, they find respite at a local hotel and well, Marian lets herself give in to her most… downtown… desires. In the morning light, she hates herself for it.”I am ashamed. And probably ruined,” she tells Larry before racing home, no longer a virgin.
Oscar and Enid, who are obviously the No. 1 seed in this week’s Gilded Age power couple rankings, continue to ooze Dionysian levels of self-indulgence with every word they utter.
As their wedding night concludes, Enid suggest they make their mark on society by holding artist salons. Like, fun, European-style salons, not fuddy-duddy ones like Lina Astor holds. Theirs will get society talking. Oscar is on board and declares the idea the perfect end to a perfect day. Enid pulls Oscar in closer and asks “I suppose it is the end?” implying that maybe another way their night could end is by actually consummating the marriage. Girl, I know you read the fine print, don’t do this. And yet, she seems dejected when Oscar tells her, “I thought we understood each other?” “Perfectly,” Enid says, now realizing she’s going to have to work a little harder to find some bedroom fun outside her marriage.
Also working hard this week are the Pinkertons. The famous detective agency has a new client in George Russell, who has hired them to track down his would-be assassin who shot him at the end of last season. They’ve been hot on the trail of a man who lives… downtown!… in the tenements. The man lives with a woman, and they both look familiar to George but for now, their identities will remain a mystery.
Stray Thoughts:
- “You don’t seem like yourself,” Larry Russell says to his father George Russell at the end of the episode. I have to agree with Larry and I’m wondering if that bullet in George’s stomach is doing what the worm in RFK Jr.’s brain did to him.
- I will never not love a montage, what a delight that this week, we get a “training Jack to be classy” variation where he learns the right way to eat an artichoke and how to find his oyster fork. It ALWAYS comes back to the right forks on this show.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
