I would like to start by explaining that I am not saying The Gilded Age on HBO (Max? HBO Max? Do they even know anymore?) is a perfect show. It is flawed in many ways.
It is however perfectly silly biscuits and every episode finds me laughing with it and at it. Also kudos to every actress on this series who is wearing a serious corset and dresses that I can only imagine pinch in the armpits.
For me this is peak brain rest viewing. Even when the stakes are high, they aren’t really (more on that later), and there’s so much beautiful costuming and scenery to gobble up.
Season three also heavily featured romance novel tropes including: arranged marriage, slow burn, friends to lovers, and heroine with a secret past.
The series started with Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) arriving in New York as the poor relation of Mrs. van Rhijin (Christine Baranski). Mrs. van Rhijin dutifully takes lovely young Marian in and teaches her the ways of being an upper class socialite. They live with Mrs. van Rhijin’s spinster sister, Ada (Cynthia Nixon), and her banker son Oscar whose mustache makes him look perpetually damp.
Mrs. van Rhijin’s favorite things are being snarky and looking down on people so she’s not very happy when a new money family, The Russells, move in across the street. The Russells are disgustingly wealthy and have the audacity to spend their money among their betters (people who became disgustingly wealthy an appropriate amount of time ago). Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) is determined to see the family accepted among Mrs. Astor’s 400 (New York Society’s elite). Bertha Russell would stab someone in public to make this happen; she’s not fucking around here.
Like Julian Fellowes’ previous work, Downton Abbey, this is an upstairs/ downstairs drama that focuses on the lives of the wealthy and their servants. Unlike Downtown Abbey it strives to be more diverse.
One of the main characters is Peggy Scott (Denee Benton), a Black woman and a journalist, who works part time for Mrs. van Rhijin as a secretary. She has her own dramas and romances, experiences episodes of terrifying racism and less terrifying but no less depressing colorism.
The Gilded Age also examines life as a queer and closeted person more thoroughly than Downton did, especially in season three…
Show Spoiler
when Mrs. van Rhijin begins to realize her son Oscar is gay.
Also like Julian Fellowes’ previous work, the conflict in this series exists on two levels–complete devastation and minor inconvenience. There is no in between. A normal episode has two plot lines made up of one family facing a crisis that will destroy them forever and also a maid selling gossip to a tabloid.
Both things are treated as equally concerning. In a way this is what makes the show so soothing to watch. If everything is a crisis, then nothing is a crisis really. I don’t need to worry so much about Mrs. van Rhijin’s diminished financial status since it’s treated as seriously as Mrs. Russell trying to steal her butler, so it can’t be that bad.
Also, the problems the characters face are often borderline ridiculous. At one point Ada finally meets the right man and gets married. Shortly after the wedding he suffers from some lower back pain that he assumes is a sprain.
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His lower back pain is actually cancer and he dies almost immediately, as if he had in actuality been diagnosed correctly by Google.
Marian is supposed to be the character we root for the most, our Cinderella heroine, and she’s endlessly prim and annoying. She makes a point of working even though Mrs. van Rhijin forbids it. She doesn’t understand racism, which for someone living 20 years after the Civil War, is quite the trip.
We yearn for Marian and sweet Larry Russell (a Gilded Age Jonas Brother) from across the street to fall in love (Larian is the ship name) even though we know both Mrs. Russell and Mrs. van Rhijin will oppose the match and then…
Click for spoilers
She finds out Larry had a single drink in a “disorderly house” with his friends and dramatically breaks up with him from her moral high horse not explaining why and declares that all men “fail” her. The audacity, Larry!
It’s so over the top, I feel like the series knows it’s ridiculous and just decided to run with it.
There are also some great romance novel tropes here that I love. There’s an arranged marriage trope for two characters (I won’t name them to save the spoilers) that I’m enjoying immensely. Larry and Marian are friends to lovers as well as slow burn.
There are some interesting historical tidbits here too. There’s a plotline regarding the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the fact that Emily Warren Roebling, not her husband, was the true chief engineer.
It’s also worth watching just for the costumes. The dresses here are either gorgeous or hideous, but they’re all historically appropriate. The Gilded Age was a time for weird ruffles and bows, man. I can watch this entire series on mute and just critique the fashions.
Mrs. Russell’s peacock dress is my absolute favorite so far. By contrast her daughter’s aqua…thing makes me think she wronged her modiste somehow.
Shoulder ruffles…
There are also Extremely Large Hats.
The Gilded Age is a drama that’s easy to watch feels like low stakes no matter what the characters are facing. It’s also worth watching purely for the costumes alone. If you need some tropey brain rest tv, this is it.