Oh, dang, George Russell has had it with Bertha, finally! I mean, this could possibly just be a little tiff, a plot misdirect to make us wonder if the most cunning couple on The Gilded Age is on the rocks, but it was just one of several truly juicy moments in a comparably dry-ass season where the biggest drama so far has been about a guy and his clock.
I guess this explains why there’s been so much talk of divorce this season, too. It started with Aurora Fane (Kelly O’Hara) being ostracized by Mrs. Astor and the rest of her squad, but now not even Mrs. Astor can escape the stink of divorce-by-association now that her daughter, Charlotte, is headed toward splitsville. Do we really believe that Bertha (Carrie Coon) could be joining this untouchable caste of newly single ladies?
Someone who desperately wishes she was divorced is Bertha’s daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), who has finally arrived in England after trekking for days and miles across her own property, her new home at Sidmouth Castle. You know it’s bad though when the dreary, arduous trip is the highlight of your stay at Sidmouth. As soon as Gladys arrives, the Duke of Buckingham’s sister, Sarah, starts to really make life miserable for Gladys. Sarah, who still shares the home with her brother, is still very much the woman of the house. Is she just domineering, or is it more like… What’s the sister version of an Oedipal complex?
Sarah makes Gladys feel unwelcome by chastising her for the sparkly barrettes in her hair, she leaves her out of any social planning, and inundates her with a list of house rules and expectations. At least Gladys has her lady’s maid, Adelhide, to confide in. Except she doesn’t, because Sarah fires Adelhide. Gladys confronts Sarah about this – Adelhide wasn’t meant to stay permanently, but she was a comfort to Gladys, the only relic of her old life she was allowed to keep – and Sarah coldly justifies her actions, telling her “Surely even you concede that I know a little more about how things are managed in England.”
Hector, observing this, comes to Gladys’s defense (like, only slightly) by asking Sarah why Gladys can’t just keep her damn maid, adding, “It was you who told me I must save the family with a Yankee heiress.” THERE IT IS. That’s what these noble goons are up to! “I suppose it never occurred to me that you’d have to bring her home,” Sarah deadpans. She’s the worst, but also kinda the best? The situation causes Gladys to fire off a desperate letter to her parents, explaining just how much she hates it here.
Peggy (Denée Benton) can’t seem to catch a break with the men in her life. While Dr. Kirkland is a good match on paper, his mother Elizabeth (Phylicia Rashad) is an elitist who literally sneers at Peggy’s family… still, Peggy is seeing where things are going with the good doctor. But when she encounters her old crush/editor, T. Thomas Fortune – who is married with kids, but with whom she shared a kiss and immediately regretted it – Peggy is torn. Not because she still has feelings for TTF, but because as much as she wishes to avoid him, he’s offered her the opportunity to go to Philadelphia to interview Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the Black author and suffragist.
This exciting opportunity for Peggy is sullied when TTF arrives unexpectedly at the train station demanding to join her on her travels. Peggy refuses to travel with him, knowing their past has made their relationship awkward and complicated, and she’s trying to move on with Kirkland. But Fortune won’t relent, forcefully shoving Kirkland who comes to Peggy’s aid in the train station. (While their fight was dramatic, my favorite tense interaction between the two men was this exchange when Fortune greets Kirkland: Fortune: “Mr. Kirkland.” Kirkland: “Doctor Kirkland.”) Fortune eventually backs off, and Peggy promises to tell Kirkland what the story is behind all this tension when she gets back.
I never thought I’d see the day when the unflappable George Russell would start to, you know, flap. But George’s emotions are heightened these days, what with his desire to own all the railroads on the Monopoly board and his guilt over sending Gladys off to England with a man she hates. The first time we see George flap is when he gets rid of his lackey, Clay (Patrick Page). It turns out, this villain-voiced sidekick isn’t ruthless enough for George.
When Clay is unable to procure the railroad lines and land George needs to build his continental railway, George is furious. But, as Clay points out, it’s because George doesn’t have enough money on his own to seal the deal. (Maybe giving much of his fortune to the Duke as part of Gladys’s dowry wasn’t such a good idea after all?) But George scapegoats Clay and fires him, telling him, “You are finished with me. I don’t need counsel to tell me what’s not possible. I need someone to help me achieve the impossible!” (This is 100% the vibe you get watching one of the Titan submersible documentaries about the guy who refused to listen to experts and ended up killing everyone on board his deathtrap submarine — George Russell walked so Stockton Rush could blow up.) To replace Clay, George hires his own son, Larry (whose initial response to being given a new job is literally, “What’s in it for me?” Like capitalist father, like capitalist son.) to go to Arizona to procure the land they need. But before Larry can leave, he has one quick thing he needs to do: propose to Marian (Louisa Jacobson). (Marian’s third proposal for those of you who are counting. Will this be the one that sticks?)
George is thrilled that at least one of his kids is marrying for love, but when Bertha finds out (she’s the last to know), she is livid. Marian’s just not the trophy wife/status symbol Bertha needs her to be. It’s a fair point.
Even though Larry is leaving for Arizona in the morning, he ditches Marian for a boys’ night out at the Haymarket, the legendarily raucous den of sin in New York’s Tenderloin, located around what we’d call the Garment District nowadays. That’s where he spots a familiar face, one none of us thought we’d ever hear from again: Maud Beaton. When he approaches the woman he knows to be is Maud, she tells him he’s mistaken, her name is actually Dolly Trent. But Larry knows that scammer anywhere and tells Oscar that the woman who stole his family fortune is in New York and she’s a hooker! I’m loving this plot twist.
George is starting to see ole Bertha as the root of all of his problems. She’s too casual about the Gladys situation, assuring George that “no news is good news” now that Gladys is in England. The wedding, the dowry, all of her high-society whims are costing him a fortune. Her fixation on whoever is leaking gossip about their family to the press is getting to him. (“Of course there are leaks, of course they sell secrets about us, that is the way we live,” he explains.) Things get truly tense between the two when George enlists Bertha’s help to schmooze a man named Alfred Merrick, whose family owns the Illinois Central railroad, which George is desperate to buy. Merrick and Bertha run in the same social circles, so she invites him to their house for dinner to butter him up.
At the dinner, Bertha and Alfred trade compliments like they’re playing tennis, and George sits there watching the flirtation. Later, when George and Alfred retire to play pool and George proposes a purchase of the Merrick’s railroad, things turn sour. George tries to sweet talk Merrick to convince his family to sell him their shares and allow them some control over the line, and Merrick tells George, “You didn’t become this rich by making heartwarming promises,” and refuses to sell, leaving in a huff.
Furious at his failed business deal, and even more furious that Bertha was flirting with Merrick, George goes awf on her. “I am still the head of this house, though your behavior tonight has made me think. I felt like a cuckold at my own dinner table,” he tells her. When she defends herself saying she was only behaving that way because George asked her to, he snaps, “Really? Because I’ve never seen you behave like that with anyone.”
Bertha heads to Newport for a party at Mamie Fish’s – a good thing, I think these two need some space – and it’s a great opportunity for her to pull some classic manipulative Bertha shit. Marian, Bertha’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law, is also invited to the same party, as is Aurora Fane. When Mrs. Astor hypocritically refuses to socialize with the new divorcée it causes a stir among the women, but Bertha comes to Aurora’s defense so she won’t be ostracized. Aurora is forced to leave, and Bertha offers (disingenuously, in hindsight) to go with her. It almost seems like Bertha is being kind, from one formerly-fringe socailite to another, maybe she was lending a supporting hand. When Marian then jumps in and offers to leave with Aurora, allowing Bertha to stay, it seems like that was what Bertha was going for the whole time. Now, Bertha doesn’t have to deal with Marian or announce to the group that they might soon be related.
I’ve never quite figured out exactly what Mamie Fish’s (Ashlie Atkinson) deal is, she’s in the highest echelon of wealth, yet is somehow allowed to be friendly with both old and new money, and she’s immune to whatever kind of societal influence Mrs. Astor has. In some ways it seems she even more powerful than Mrs. Astor, because after Aurora leaves the party, Mamie pulls Lina aside to call her out on her hypocritical views of divorce, especially now that her own child is going through one. Mamie points out how quick Mrs. Astor is to cast out Aurora, and asks, “Are you willing to exile your own daughter from society? If not, you cannot exile Mrs. Fane.” Truth to power.
When Bertha returns from Newport, she arrives home to a furious George, who has finally received Gladys’s letter from England. She is miserable, and George blames it all on Bertha. Some welcome! The woman just walked in the door. Bertha assures George she will fix this, she’ll go to England and see to it, but George seems to have done some thinking while Bertha was away and he tells her, “You made me weak, and I find that hard to forgive.” (A little toxic male, but understandable, he just sold his daughter’s happiness away for what?)
“I can fix this, believe me,” she pleads to him. We’ve never seen Bertha this vulnerable or George this angry. She’s desperate to make things right (not necessarily for Gladys’s sake, but to keep George happy) which is why it’s especially brutal when he tells her, “Don’t expect me to be here when you get back.” Train daddy, don’t leave!
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.