It’s not often when a husband walks into a room, confesses to his wife that he’s been cheating on her for months, and then asks — nay, demands she grant him a favor. But wait! It only gets weirder! The requested favor is a divorce, which you would think the betrayed party would be more than happy to grant. But she’s not! She won’t! You see, if their marriage ends, his life would continue relatively undisturbed. But for her — an ex-wife at the turn of the 20th century — her life would never be the same. Her so-called friends would cut ties, her reputation would be ruined, and don’t get me started on what the church would do.
So no, in this instance, she won’t grant him that favor. Despite the pain he’s inflicted, she won’t reward his infidelity. For her, there’s no choice but to protect their marriage, because there’s no way to separate her marriage from herself.
“There’s no logic in this, you haven’t done anything wrong,” a true friend tells her. “Society is not known for its logic,” she replies, “especially where women are concerned.”
And just like that, “The Gilded Age” has stakes. It’s not that Julian Fellowes‘ HBO drama previously eschewed the double standards inherent to New York’s late-1800s class system; prior seasons gave a respectful curtsy here and a polite bow there to the ways in which the lower class was kept down and the upper class held aloft. New money families fought for their place at the table with old money institutions by throwing undeniably elegant balls (with the proper soup) and funding irresistibly cultured opera houses (with the proper spectators).
But in Season 3, relationships take center stage and nearly every one is balanced over divorce’s trap door. Not only are the eight new episodes better at building drama from the era’s inequities, but there’s more to go around, and the pacing picks up to squeeze it all in. (Well, almost all of it — a couple of plot lines are left mysteriously unfinished.) Fellowes (who wrote every episode with executive producer Sonja Warfield) lends formerly flat stories just enough conflict and urgency to whip them into a frothy good time, and suddenly, “The Gilded Age” is humming. It’s still, by and large, a silly soap best enjoyed while screaming obscenities at your television — “Fucking get her, Carrie! That ass-backwards Brit can’t slight suffragettes in this house!” — but now each curse word is rooted in genuine interest, rather than forced out to avoid falling asleep.
So what are our socialites up to this season? Well, Ada (Cynthia Nixon) and Agnes (Christine Baranski) are adjusting to their flipped power dynamic. Now that Ada has all the money, Agnes has to submit to her sister’s not-always-sound judgement. The inherent difficulty of deferring to Ada on things like when to have dinner and which silverware to use gives Baranski ample opportunity to deliver her bracing zingers, especially when Agnes starts advocating for temperance. That’s right: She’s a teetotaler. Why? Even by “The Gilded Age’s” logic of convenience, it’s hard to say, but when Baranski starts shouting things like, “Let the sober circus begin!” it’s also hard to care. Just wind them up, and let them go.
Meanwhile, Marian (Louisa Jacobson) and Peggy (Denée Benton) are both, once again, smitten. Peggy meets a kind doctor who doesn’t get in the way of her writing or advocacy, despite his family’s doubts about her family’s background. (In a welcome expansion of the series’ class warfare, Phylicia Rashad plays a howlingly haughty old-money matriarch who would rather forget slavery ever happened than respect someone who survived it). Marian is still crushing on the boy across the street, Larry Russell (Harry Richardson), and while their over-glossed romance too often feels like a paint-by-numbers fairy tale, the two prove more interesting when they’re caught up in other people’s business.
Like, say, the bell of the downstairs’ ball, Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers), and his ringing achievement in alarm clocks. Time, ironically enough, has turned a goofy story into an endearing one, and even though it’s taken way too long for Jack’s arc to get to the point, now that it’s here, all the forced extensions and online joking along the way make the culmination that much more enjoyable.
Regrettably, there are fewer butler battles in Season 3 and too much serious business. Russell Industries is intent on creating a railroad that stretches from coast to coast, and the negotiations necessary for such a feat take way up way too much screen-time when they pivot on ludicrously simple arguments — like one guy saying, “If we do this, we could lose a lot of money,” and the other guy saying, “Ah yes, but we could also make money.” Wow, you’re so good at business, George. Just try not to shoot any more factory workers.
But speaking of George (Morgan Spector) — and thus Bertha (Carrie Coon) — the Russell marriage remains “The Gilded Age’s” greatest asset, and Season 3 pushes each partner to grandiose new heights. So far, the central couple’s crackling chemistry has been inextricable from their commanding success: Their shared ambitions have helped to rake in huge sums of money while rapidly growing their cultural clout. George’s business acumen (if you will) and Bertha’s social insight go hand in hand, with him providing the funds she needs to open the right doors, and her opening the doors he needs to connect with new colleagues.
What Season 3 asks, rather bluntly, is what would happen if their goals were no longer aligned? When Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) balks at her mother’s plans to marry her off to a Duke, instead preferring to find true love on her own, the question of what’s best for the family creates a schism between her parents. And rather than dwell on the age-old debate over whether marriage should be built on true love or more practical considerations, Fellowes & Co. force the audience to recognize that getting hitched in 1883 is a complicated endeavor.
George sees his daughter’s wedding as something pure, in part because, as a man, he’s privileged enough to see his own marriage the same way. But Bertha can’t allow her daughter to run blindly into a disreputable match, knowing full well what will happen to a woman whose fantasy wedding ends in the cold reality of divorce. The parents’ ideological split elicits difficult doubts about their own arrangement. If George doesn’t respect Bertha’s understanding of Gladys’ situation, does he really respect her opinions elsewhere? Her work as a socialite? Her life outside of his own?
“George, I don’t expect you to understand this because you’re not a woman, but I’m trying to empower her,” Bertha says. “[Gladys] doesn’t know anything about love or the world or anything else. I’m trying to protect her future.”
“I just want to know when I get a say in our daughter’s life,” George snaps back.
“The day I’m in your boardroom giving you my ideas on the railroads and the steel mills,” she says, unable to disguise her disappointment.
“The Gilded Age” Season 3 isn’t quite equipped to address the depths of George and Bertha’s dispute, but its actors are. Spector builds a steady, identifiable rage behind George’s oft-neutral expression. As he faces unexpected pushback at the office and at home, his unrelenting approach to each paints a convincing portrait of a businessman whose success in one field lends him the mistaken belief he can see all of society with the same unbiased vision. Coon channels Bertha’s own frustrations into a trap of her own making: At times, her desperate pleas to her once-receptive husband verge on hysteria, and for some, it may be all too easy to think she’s become the villain — another hysterical woman who must learn to listen to reason.
But then we must remember: “Society is not known for its logic, especially where women are concerned.”
Grade: B
“The Gilded Age” Season 3 premiered Thursday, June 12 at the Tribeca Film Festival. HBO will release the first episode Sunday, June 22 at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes will be released weekly and available on Max.
