‘The Gilded Age’ Recap: Season 3, Episode 6

If You Want to Cook an Omelette

Season 3

Episode 6

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

George’s meeting with the shady businessmen elicits a lot of intense emotions.
Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO

This season has really stepped it up. Remember when everyone was just sitting in circles having tea and talking about nothing? (Sometimes Peggy would take notes.) Now we have transatlantic showdowns and covert meetings of industrial titans, Peggy is organizing suffrage meetings for Black women, and Phylicia Rashad is there. What a time to be alive. I mean, the world is in many ways terrible, but also … Carrie Coon.

There is so much action this week: Bertha travels to England to help Gladys, George tries to buy a railroad, Jack’s clock fortune is discovered, Marian reacts to Larry going to the Haymarket, Oscar talks to Maud Beaton, Peggy tells William Kirkland about T. Thomas Fortune, Ada has a crisis with her medium, and two of the servants think they know who has been leaking all the gossip to the papers. (They’re definitely wrong.)

When we left George, he was dramatically proclaiming to Bertha that she should not expect him to be there when she returns from England. Okay, George. You’re dealing with some big feelings right now. We next see him at JP Morgan’s house. Love JP. He has summoned Russell, the Merricks, and Risley Sage. Sage’s first name is Russell, so I think they’re avoiding that entirely and sticking to his two other names. Sage also seems to be a real asshole, historically speaking, as when someone threw a bomb into his office, he used an employee as a HUMAN SHIELD and refused to pay any damages to the then-disabled employee. The New York Times headline said “Sage Must Prove that Laidlaw Would Have Been Injured to the Same Extent Had He Not Been Used As a Defense Against Norcross’s Bomb.” So Sage literally didn’t even claim he didn’t do it. His defense was, “Well, he would’ve gotten just as maimed anyway.”

So Russell is with that guy and then the Merricks, who currently hold a significant number of shares in the coveted Illinois Central Railroad. Morgan says that he has isolated them there at his house, cut off from their horses, and no one is leaving until someone owns 51 percent of this railroad. Also, George’s erstwhile bestie, Clay, is there! Working for Sage. Betrayal! George and Morgan work to convince the Merricks that Sage sucks, and it works, only it’s a handshake deal, so nothing is legally binding. A gamble, George! Sage and Clay conspire to float the idea to the newspapers that Russell Industries is in trouble, causing the stock to fall and the Merricks to pull out of the deal. Oh no! But also, George, what did you expect Clay to do? You very unceremoniously fired him. This is what he does best, so of course he’s out there working for some shifty guy. George needs to find more money, but no one is lending. What they need is a British heiress for Larry. Then it’s like a cross-cultural exchange, but instead of culture, it’s just money. George says that if he can’t save his company, he’ll let it burn. A lot of intense energy is coming from this one lately.

After the Great Shoving of last week between T. Thomas Fortune and Dr. Kirkland, Peggy feels awkward. Marian encourages her to be honest with William, so she goes for it, which is very brave! It’s men in the 1880s (1890s? Which decade are we in now?), so who knows how they’ll react to women doing literally anything. Peggy tells William that when she worked for Fortune, they became something “more” to each other. William says we all have a past. Peggy wants to go on and, one assumes, tell him about her baby, but he says he cares about only the present. I’ve got my eye on you, William, especially because every engaged man on this show turns out to be sus. Not that they’re engaged. YET. Peggy tells him about F.E.W. Harper and how she is hosting a small tea-based gathering to talk about women’s suffrage. He asks her to invite his mother. Hmmm.

Peggy invites Mrs. Kirkland, who then obviously hates it because it has to do with progress. She thinks the women there should leave the vote to the next generation. Peggy says she is the next generation (wooooooo). Mrs. Kirkland thought they were going to share recipes and talk about their children, because William had not told her this was a suffrage meeting. WILLIAM. When Peggy talks to him about this, he says his mother wouldn’t have come if she knew it was about suffrage. Sir!!! When Mrs. Kirkland and William leave, she asks if he can see Peggy running a house and taking care of the children. William replies that he would be proud of a wife who fights for reform and equality, and his mother tells him that he would be proud of a woman who does that. A wise distinction, Mrs. Kirkland! And if that’s true, then William, you’d better get out of here right now and stop trifling with Peggy’s affections. She has been through TOO MUCH.

Larry is in Arizona trying to make money from copper mines, and Oscar lets it slip that Larry was with him at the Haymarket, which throughout the episode is referred to as a “house of ill repute,” “disorderly house,” and a “house of ill fame.” What it means is people have sex there. Marian is stunned and immediately tells her aunts. Agnes thinks she should call it off and refers to Larry as “a tenor in the opera,” which is pretty apropos, while Ada asks Marian to give Larry the chance to speak for himself. But no! Marian is too distraught and thinks nothing could possibly fix this between them. Marian, he didn’t even do anything. She calls it “a shadow between them.” She writes a breakup letter and gives it to Church to give to Larry in about a month. Church is confused and like, “You know you could send him a wire,” but Marian’s heart cannot be conveyed via wire.

Speaking of Ada and Agnes, Armstrong tells Agnes how much Jack made from his clock, and her reaction is Christine Baranski–level grandiose. She refers to him as their Croesus-like footman and “a Rockefeller in livery” and tells Ada that this is her house and she must handle it. When Ada goes to the medium to find out what Luke thinks, Madame Dashkova has his spirit speaking Italian, as a misprint in the paper had his name as Luca Forte. Ada is crushed as she realizes none of this is real, and she tells Dashkova she should be ashamed of her existence. C’mon, Ada. It’s a service.

Ada ends up telling Jack it’s time he made his way in the world. He tells her that this house is the closest thing to a home he’s ever known, and she says the staff will keep being his family. Not really, Ada! You can tell your co-workers you’ll be in one another’s lives forever, but how often does that really happen? I mean, do I have a group chat with six people from my old job whom I text daily? Yes, but Jack doesn’t have texting technology! But he can’t argue with Ada, so he moves out immediately and gives everyone (including Agnes and Ada) money because he is a good egg.

Bertha and Lady Sarah. I’ve been waiting for this since last week. Lady Sarah exerts a Mrs. Danvers quality that, as a lesbian, I find very compelling, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want her forcefully put in her place by Bertha. Bertha sits down with Gladys and finds out that Hector and Sarah’s parents died when Hector was young, and Sarah has been bossing him around ever since. Bertha tells Gladys that she needs to remind Hector who gave him piles of cash and that he should behave accordingly. Then Bertha’s maid, André, tells her that the scuttlebutt is that Sarah is trying to wear Gladys down and train her like a puppy. That’s it. The gloves are off — unless they’re needed for a social event, in which case they’ll stay on.

At dinner, the English are talking about Mr. Gladstone’s reform bill (“But do we want a bunch of vagabonds and farm laborers to decide how we are governed?”), which means we now know that we are in 1884. Bertha introduces the topic of suffrage for women, and when Sarah dissents, Bertha inquires if Sarah thinks women are stupider than men or unequipped for important decisions. Should the queen have stuck to her proper sphere and refused the crown, Bertha asks? Sarah mumbles some nonsense and changes the subject. Gladys sees Bertha’s value! A triumph! Gladys later tells her that she learned how to manage things from Bertha. Considering her life is falling apart, Bertha is doing a truly amazing job here. And she’s not putting anything on Gladys. She’s handling things the Mulaney way.

Gladys steps her shit up at the next dinner when Sarah stands up to lead the women away, and Gladys asks her if she’s quite well: “I thought, when you stood without waiting for me, that you must be ill.” Sarah sits back down. YEEEEEAH. YEEEEEAH, GLADYS. YOU DID IT. YOU are Mrs. de Winter now! The next day (I think?), Bertha and Gladys say good-bye, and Bertha tells her how proud she is of her. Then she stares into the middle distance, trying not to cry. It’s okay, Bertha! You said you would fix it, and you did!

We end with Oscar and John Adams. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I will because it’s a shocking ending, but also is it? They’re chatting because Oscar has sent off Maud Beaton with a train ticket to Ohio and $100, and John is happy with the person Oscar is becoming. Oscar tells John that he’s his savior. In the words of my in-the-moment notes, “Awwww, he wanted to kiss him. Oh fuck, John gets hit by a horse and cart.”

THAT’S RIGHT. Half of our gay characters just got Regina George’d in the street by a massive horse. Is John alive? I don’t know! Did another gay character get traumatized on TV by watching their partner/ex-partner get gravely injured and possibly die? Yes! There are so many people who could have gotten run over by that horse. There are so many characters on this show that I still don’t know all of their names. Stop! Running over! Gay characters! With! Horses! One star deducted from this episode rating for contributing to a shitty trope.

• That copper-mine guy … Is he for real, or is this one of those classic mining scams?

‘The Gilded Age’ Recap: Season 3, Episode 6

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