George Russell’s (Morgan Spector) brush with death this week on The Gilded Age has, unfortunately for his wife Bertha (Carrie Coon), given him even more perspective about what he wants out of his life and his marriage. But also, thanks to this week’s episode we’re left to ponder, what does marriage even mean anymore, now that Oscar (Blake Ritson) and Mrs. Winterton (Kelley Curran) may be entering into their own marriage of convenience, and divorced women are allowed to attend fancy balls now?
This week’s episode picks up immediately where we left off last week, with George getting shot by a hired assassin (we assume to have been hired by Clay, although that’s still unconfirmed). George is rushed to his Fifth Avenue home where doctors are called but, thankfully Bannister, the van Rhijn’s butler, sees George in his bloody clothes and offers to fetch Dr. Kirkland (Jordan Donica) who is currently at their home to speak with Peggy (Denée Benton) about her past. That conversation will have to wait though.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Bertha (and George, too) may seem traditional in many ways, but they’re people of progressive values for this time. When Bannister warns Bertha that the doctor he’s about to send to their house to help George is Black, she frantically shouts, “What do I care, go get him!” While it’s possible that she felt that any doctor was better than no doctor at all to help save her husband, the Russells will later acknowledge the significance of just how risky it was for Kirkland to actually accept the responsibility of caring for a member of the white elite – God forbid George died while in his care – and eventually pay him handsomely for his help and the courage he showed for offering it.
Kirkland arrives, as does Marian (Louisa Jacobson) with his medical bag. When Kirkland says he needs another set of hands to help with the removal of the bullet lodged in George’s chest, Marian goes full Florence Nightingale and jumps on the table where George is bleeding out to apply pressure to his chest. It takes the strength of every staff member in the house to hold George down while the bullet is successfully removed. Hours later, when the Russells’ actual (white) doctor, Dr. Logan arrives and he sees George in the care of a Black man, he throws a fit until he sees that Dr. Kirkland actually saved George’s life.
While Marian is at the Russell’s house, Larry (who has been living at the Union Club) arrives in the wee hours of the morning after learning what’s happened to his father. This gives him and Marian an opportunity to discuss their breakup, which they haven’t really done. Even though Larry explained to Marian that he was at the Haymarket with friends on the night of their engagement, she didn’t believe him when he told her nothing happened, and it wasn’t until Jack corroborated Larry’s story that she accepted it. Larry is just disappointed that she wouldn’t take his own word for it, and it leaves them at an impasse. (The funny thing is that Marian’s actions, helping to save George while he lay bleeding, have completely changed how Bertha sees her – while she was once not good enough for Larry, she tells Marian she knows she’s “no feeble debutante” and she won’t let Marian give up on Larry now.)
The trust within Bertha and George’s relationship has similarly eroded of late, but after George’s shooting, Bertha tells him she’s committing herself to his recovery, and that she’ll cancel the end-of-season ball in Newport that she’s hosting. George refuses to let her cancel, in part because he still respects her ambitions and understands what her hosting means for her place in society, but also because he doesn’t want news of the shooting to become public knowledge for the sake of his own business. News that he’s on death’s doorstep could tank his railroad aspirations, and he won’t allow it.
Unfortunately for Peggy, that very important conversation she was supposed to have with Dr. Kirkland was interrupted by George’s shooting, so he arrives to her home in Brooklyn to pick up where they left off. Peggy assumes that there’s going to be a positive spin here – she’s expecting a proposal. But instead, she’s confronted by William’s questions about her past. The rumors his mother has heard about her previous marriage and the death or her son are not as salacious as Mrs. Kirkland had suggested, but in these times, it’s still an unsavory look for Peggy to have already been married and have a child that was put up for adoption (by her own father while she was unconscious!). “I was going to tell you, I just needed to build up the courage,” Peggy tells Kirkland through her tears, and he seems unmoved. “I see,” he says, adding that his mother will not be happy to hear that this news of Peggy’s past is true. “I’m afraid this information has strengthened her argument against us.” Peggy assumes he’s broken things off completely and she’s devastated.
This season has felt disappointingly thin when it comes to the amount of bon mots Christine Baranski has had to deliver, to say nothing of how her only real story line has been whether she or Ada is the boss of their house. Which is why I’m excited that she’s gotten at least one (potentially) juicy new avenue to explore when the mysterious Mrs. Foster of the New York Heritage Society offers her a position as vice president of their organization. Agnes has assumed all Mrs. Foster wanted was a charitable donation, but what they’re really after is a connection to her family legacy. Whether this plot point will be completely ignored after this episode, or will become the crux of season four, truly anything is possible. (It’s possible that, once she’s given this new position of power, she’s finally able to concede her position at the head of the family dining table – after eight long episodes of Agnes and Ada’s power struggle, Agnes bequeaths her old seat to her sister, acknowledging that Ada is officially the head of the household.)
Speaking of season four, if there’s one character whose trajectory I hope we explore more of it’s Jack the clock-making footman-turned-$300,000aire. The show has already followed the upstairs-downstairs lives of its characters, but it’s been a thrill to see one of those downstairs types ascend. Between his newfound fortune and his new, budding relationship with Bridget, it’s easily the most charming aspect of the show.
With the ball still on, the whole of New York society heads to Newport, but it’s not the only ball in town. Elizabeth Kirkland (Phylicia Rashad) is heading up her own ball, because even in the north, we’re still living in heavily segregated times. When Mrs. Kirkland runs into Peggy’s mother in Newport and learns that Peggy and the Scotts are all still planning to attend her ball, she’s… disappointed? Disgusted? She informs Mrs. Scott that she’s surprised Peggy would dare show up after “deceiving” William, and the women exchange words in the most polite, but barbed, way possible. “I had hoped Peggy would do the respectable thing and send her regrets,” Mrs. Kirkland says, and that’s when Mrs. Scott gets into full Mama Bear mode, going – if I may – full Clair Huxtable on Clair Huxtable herself, telling her, “Perhaps you should get off your high horse. You have enjoyed a certain kind of privilege amongst our people here in Newport that has created an illusion for you… that has enabled you to act without grace, manners and impunity. But I am not from Newport,” she says, adding that the Scotts will be at the ball, thank you very much.
This is just the first tongue-lashing Elizabeth Kirkland will receive during the episode, because both her son and husband also go in on her for her behavior as the ball is set to begin. William may have walked out on Peggy, but it’s clear he’s been thinking about her and is unable to let her go. Mrs. Kirkland insists that Peggy wasn’t good enough for William (“All I will say is that I’m a good judge of character,” she says, mirroring one Mrs. Bertha Russell whose meddling resulted in her daughter moving across the ocean – and also like Bertha, she now finds herself at odds with the men in her family as a result). “Don’t you see, this is the woman he loves?” William’s father (Brian Stokes Mitchell) tells his wife. “Loves?” she scoffs, and later tells her son, “You cannot be involved with someone with such a tainted past.”
“Woman! You are not above reproach!” Rev. Kirkland shouts at his wife. “You have sown calamity and heartbreak and this is not the first time. It stops now.” And so, when William does find himself at the ball, he realizes that the woman whose feelings he should be considering are not his mother’s but Peggy’s. He asks Peggy’s father for her hand, and then he sweeps her off her feet on the dance floor and proposes. To his mother’s horror.
At Bertha’s ball, Gladys and Hector are freshly arrived from England and ready to help her receive her guests. Even the divorced ones and the ones who used to work for her.
I have to wonder how far in advance Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield plot out their storylines, because ever since the early days of this show, there has been a kindred connection between Oscar van Rhijn and the woman once known at Turner, now known as Mrs. Winterton. Oscar (and by extension, Marian) have often been tasked with representing a younger generation on this show, a generation that doesn’t emphasize social class or adhere to the constructs that the older generations do, serving as foils to fuddy-duddies like Aunt Agnes. Oscar’s experience as a gay man in the 1880s has informed many of these seemingly progressive values, but it has also informed his motives, his search for a wife (in name only).
His quest for a lavish but sex-free marriage has seen him make moves on rich young debutantes like Gladys Russell and Maud Beaton, but it seems only right that the one woman who might be his perfect mate is the newly widowed Enid Winterton (whose husband was, of course, Headmaster Charleston from Gilmore Girls).
Their friendship has always felt like it crossed boundaries – first, these two bridged the class divide when they became friends while Enid still worked as a ladies maid, but now, he has finagled an invite for Enid to attend Bertha’s ball where he offers her a deal, a literal proposal. He asks if she’d be interested in being “a fighting pair,” getting married essentially just to keep each other’s lifestyle afloat. “With your money and my connections, we’d have the whole world at our feet,” he says. The thing is, each of them feels like they can trust the other to keep their dirtiest secrets, namely Oscar’s sexuality and Enid’s lower class past, so if they can do that while stealthily living in separate homes on one another’s money…honestly, it doesn’t sound terrible. The two are both sharp-tongued and world-weary, like Gen X but if the X was a Roman numeral. I would party with them.
Enid’s presence at the ball is delightful not just for what transpires between her and Oscar, but for the glimmer of a potential friendship with Bertha. Even though Bertha had to be persuaded to invite her, when Enid suggests the two of them could be friends, Bertha quips, “Stranger things have happened.” Please, Julian, make my dreams come true.
Enid’s presence at the ball isn’t the only surprising one: Bertha makes good on her threat to allow divorced women to attend, and both Charlotte Astor Drayton and Aurora Fane come.
Lina Astor had been disgusted by the idea of this, explaining, “We cannot allow the scourge of divorce to infect the social circles we hold dear,” adding that if Bertha receives these women – one of them her own daughter – “it will become an epidemic. Though she initially refuses to attend the ball, she shocks everyone when she makes a grand entrance. “What made you change your mind?” her daughter Charlotte asks, to which Mrs. Astor responds, “Your situation may be embarrassing, but you are not an embarrassment. You are my daughter.”
The ball also gives Marian and Larry a chance to reconnect and finally clear the air between them, each of them taking responsibility for the actions that led to their momentary breakup. But though they seem to be back on for now, their conversation doesn’t instill confidence that they’re feeling as passionate as they once did.
When George Russell finally makes an appearance at the ball, Bertha lights up brighter than the Edison bulbs glowing in her backyard. Bertha is thrilled that he’s well enough to attend, but even more than that, she sees his attendance as a symbol that all has been forgiven, that in his brush with death, he’s now willing to bypass any of their previous conflicts. Bertha is sorely mistaken.
The day after the ball, George informs Bertha that he’s leaving Newport. “I thought you understood that I only came to the ball to protect the business,” he tells her, explaining that he still can’t forgive her for convincing him to marry Gladys off to the Duke. Even though Gladys seems happy now, even though she’s now carrying the Duke’s baby, even though the Duke’s dumb sister has been shipped off to London and the Duke himself seems like a nice enough guy, George is mad that he allowed Bertha to exert all that ambitious control over them all. “I don’t blame you for being ruthless. I admire it. It’s what we share. But I am ruthless in business, not with the people I love,” he says, walking out on her. “I am ruthless for the people I love,” she calls to him.
He explains that he won’t be coming home until each of them knows what they want. “I know what I want,” Bertha tells him, and he replies, “Of course you do. I, on the other hand, am not so sure.” The fact that George simply nods at her to bid her farewell is the worst part. There’s no intimacy, no familiarity or tenderness to his actions, right now, Bertha is no different from a business associate.
Up until Gladys’s wedding, George forgave Bertha for her ambition and encouraged it when it all had to do with her own success and place in society. There is no one in Bertha’s life – not her kids, not Mrs. Astor – whose admiration and respect she craves as much as George’s. And now that she’s finally gotten everything else in life that she wants, the respect of the one person she loves has slipped away.
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.
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