By now we’re all aware of Morgan Spector‘s reputation as Train Daddy and I’m thrilled to report that he’s really living up to the name this week on The Gilded Age. In the most paternal sense, not in the GQ photo spread sense.
When the Duke of Buckingham arrived at the Russells’ home last week, it was in the wake of a leaked announcement that Bertha (Carrie Coon) had planted in the news that Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) and the Duke would be getting engaged. But now that the Duke is here, and he’s brought a lawyer with him to negotiate the business terms of the marriage, George is furious. It seems that Bertha may have over-promised the Duke, and the Duke is one greedy guy who sees this marriage as an opportunity to make some bank. When George holds firm on the dowry he’s offering, the Duke tells George, “I’d hate to disappoint everyone who’s looking forward to this union. I’m sure you’d be disappointed, too.”
“That is where you’re wrong. I couldn’t care less,” George tells the Duke coolly. When they go back to the negotiating table the next day, George proposes an even more generous offer, with the caveat that the additional money be given to Gladys as an allowance. “Paid to Gladys? But what use is that to me?” the Duke asks. “A disappointing response, if I may say so,” George tells his ungrateful would-be son-in-law. The Duke grumpily takes his leave of the Russell home, which is a shock to Bertha. She’s furious that George wouldn’t give in to the Duke’s demands so that Gladys could become, I don’t know, the Lauren Sanchez-Bezos of her day, and George tells her, “This mess is of your making.”
Later, when Bertha, Gladys and Larry head to the opera, they spy the Duke looking flirtatious with another young woman, Martha Delancey. Gossip hound Mamie Fish (Ashlie Atkinson) fills Bertha in on the Delanceys reputation and background, but Bertha feels humiliated to see the Duke with another woman. When she tells George she’s concerned about their status in society, he explains that the Delanceys have a fraction of the Russell’s wealth and would be a step-down for Bertha. This gives her the idea – a newly-invented light bulb seems to go off above her head – which she’ll set in motion shortly.
Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) is still struggling to accept her new role, both in society and in her home, as Ada’s plus one. Now that Agnes doesn’t control the family purse strings, she’s fallen a rung or two down on the social ladder. Ada (Cynthia Nixon) argues that she spent a lifetime as Agnes’s plus one, and somehow she survived. by Agnes explains that the situation is different. See, Ada was always a spinster, while Agnes has experienced a fall from grace because her fortune was erased. It’s just not the same. “Perhaps I will find my place in Newport with Aurora and spend the rest of my days with society’s cast-offs and women of ill-repute. At least they’ll have wine,” she snarks, taking a dig at Ada’s new flirtation with temperance.
In one of the most fun scenes of the season, Ada asks Bannister for a tally of how many members of the staff have signed her temperance pledge. When they learn that Agnes’s ladies maid, Armstrong is the only one, Agnes demands an explanation from Armstrong who explains, “Alcohol…has brought whole families to ruin. Haven’t you ever noticed I don’t drink?” to which Agnes replies, “I’ve noticed you’re no fun!” Oscar, looking in, seems delighted by this entire thing, but Ada is frustrated that her staff is ignoring her wishes for them to sign.
Speaking of flirtation, Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) and Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) are still getting cozy. Maybe too cozy – after spending time at the Russell home, Larry makes a move on Marian and kisses her in the drawing room, but they’re interrupted by Bertha’s ladies maid, Turner’s Replacement. (I can’t be bothered to remember her name. She’s French. Likes to gossip and do hair.)
Marian is concerned that Turner’s Replacement is going to blab that Marian, a single maiden, was kissing a man she’s not engaged to and sully her reputation and… she’s right. Turner’s Replacement tells Bertha, who seems stunned at the impropriety (but why? Larry had a steamy affair with Mrs. Blane last summer in Newport, she’s familiar with her son’s urges), or maybe by the fact that Marian is so blah? But Bertha also kinda doesn’t care about what Larry’s up to right now because she’s schemin’.
Without George’s knowledge, Bertha invites Mr. Delancey to their home to discuss the Duke. Mr. Delancey immediately realizes that Bertha is up to something (“This is getting odder and odder,” he tells her when she reveals that she knows he’s fallen into money troubles recently). But he assures her that he’s actually got a very diverse portfolio of investments. “I can easily purchase a Duke or two, but you can relax, Mrs. Russell, I don’t want Martha to be a great lady on the far side of the world. I intend to watch my grandchildren grow up right here in New York.” (LOL at the fact that Bertha has no such desires.) As Delancey bids Bertha goodbye, he tells her, “You rather intrigue me, to be honest, Mrs. Russell. I only wish you knew how much more interesting you are than the Duke of Buckingham.”
We are finally seeing the fruits of Jack’s labor, as he and Larry start to take meetings in search of investors in his new clock patent.
While Larry is the one who’s been doing most of the talking, Jack interjects during their last meeting with a curious investor and proves himself a capable salesman, although no one offers to invest, not yet anyway. (Of all people, Armstrong is the one to give Jack a reassuring pep talk to pull him out of his disappointment. Maybe he fashioned her a heart out of a clock, Tin Man style?)
You wanna know how I know that Peggy Scott’s relationship with Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica) is going to lead to some drama? You don’t bring in Phylicia Rashad to play his mom if it’s not.
The Scott Family is spending the summer in Newport and while they’re there, they visit Dr. Kirkland’s family home where his parents live. Peggy’s mother and aunt (played by a delightfully gossipy Jessica Frances Dukes) are initially thrilled at the prospect of Peggy courting Dr. Kirkland, who is educated and refined, but it turns out that the Scotts may not be refined enough for the Kirklands. When Mrs. Kirkland (Rashad) asks about Arthur Scott’s pharmacy, she dismisses him as nothing but a salesman, forcing him to explain that, after he was freed from slavery, he went to school to become a pharmacist. Mr. Kirkland (Brian Stokes Mitchell, barely used, surely he’ll have more to do soon), is Arthur’s old friend, but his wife’s disdain for the Scotts is off-putting to say the least. As Arthur describes life as a slave, her status as a lifelong free woman is evident, as is the colorism she displays when dealing with her lighter-skinned family and the Scotts.
While George Russell believes the Duke to be out of their lives, he gives his man Clay the go-ahead to spend all the money they’ve set aside for Gladys’s dowry on an investment in his new railroad. But unbeknownst to George, Bertha is renegotiating the terms of their offer with the Duke, and telling him that Gladys’s allowance will actually be both of their allowance. So the Duke is back in, and when Gladys learns, she treats it as a fate worse than death. The only thing that salvages the situation is – surprise! – the Duke himself. Good old Hector of Buckingham has a heart-to-heart with Gladys where he assures her that he knows how weird this all is, and he hopes he can offer her some happiness (while also using her father’s money to save his family’s reputation). This helps, slightly, except Gladys doesn’t realize that he’s been promised the money George intended for her. I can’t help but feel like Hector’s nice-guy vibes are performative and Gladys is going to be trapped raising rich brats in a dilapidated castle on some moor.
The engagement is made official just as Gladys’ portrait, painted by John Singer Sargent, is unveiled at the Russell’s home. Sargent unveils the picture and George announces the engagement and Gladys’ wearing a pearl choker, feels ill at ease and pulls at her necklace which falls apart, beads spilling across the marble floors of the home she can no longer call her own.
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.