“The Gilded Age” Is a Poor Man’s Period Drama

In the HBO play “The Gilded Age,” the characters are keenly alert that they unrecorded successful absorbing times. Early successful the series, which is acceptable successful the eighteen-eighties, an property lawyer observes that million-dollar fortunes are made and mislaid by the time successful the railway business. One of its titans, the robber baron George Russell (Morgan Spector), envisions an explicit enactment that volition alteration cross-country transport astatine an unprecedented pace. Thomas Edison makes existent the erstwhile fantastical conception of an full gathering lit up by electricity, and Oscar Wilde charms the New York aristocracy with his witticisms, if not his plays. The committedness successful the aerial inspires immigrants, unionists, suffragettes, and a rising Black bourgeoisie. But though “The Gilded Age,” which returned for its 3rd play connected Sunday, alludes to each of these humanities developments, it’s chiefly occupied by the social-climbing efforts of George’s wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon), who’s hellbent connected dominating Manhattan precocious society. Although an full metropolis beckons, the archetypal play hinges successful portion connected whether the Russells’ neighbor—the huffy, old-money Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski)—will ever transverse Sixty-first Street to visit.

The operation “the gilded age” is borrowed from Mark Twain’s 1873 caller of the aforesaid name, a governmental satire astir the materialism and corruption of the years pursuing the Civil War. The epoch is often invoked to explicate the skyrocketing inequality of our ain time. But the creator of “The Gilded Age,” Julian Fellowes—whose earlier play drama, “Downton Abbey,” drew criticisms arsenic a rose-colored apologia for the British aristocracy—is single-minded successful his absorption connected the loveliness of the veneer. It’s hard to deliberation of different bid presently connected the aerial arsenic lavish, oregon arsenic vacuous. A businessman’s quip that banks are similar women—they “panic astatine the unimportant and disregard the essentials”—is expected to scan arsenic boorish but inadvertently summarizes galore of the show’s communicative lines. Plenty of bid person managed to marque frivolity consciousness meaningful, oregon astatine slightest fun. But truthful small really happens, occurrence by episode, that “The Gilded Age” scarcely qualifies arsenic a soap opera: by the clip the Russell and Van Rhijn butlers statesman passive-aggressively debating the placement of crockery forks and java spoons, it’s wide we’re meant to feast connected scraps.

Part of the occupation is that determination person been nary existent stakes to the proceedings. Other bid astir the ultra-wealthy, specified arsenic “Succession” and “The White Lotus,” exemplify however wealth cannot support against affectional (or adjacent physical) harm; if anything, the characters’ riches marque them much susceptible to it. “The Gilded Age” takes spot during a clip of utmost flux, and the variability of its characters’ fates is meant to beryllium cardinal to its premise. The anticipation is acceptable aboriginal successful the series, erstwhile an alderman who tries to swindle George bankrupts himself successful the process, past kills himself successful shame. But thing truthful consequential has happened since—if ruin ever looms, it doesn’t stick. Toward the extremity of the 2nd season, for example, Agnes’s son, Oscar (Blake Ritson), loses the household fortune. Oscar, who is successful the closet, has spent the bid seeking a affluent heiress done whom helium tin support his beingness style; the pistillate helium chooses turns retired to beryllium moving a strategy of her own, with disastrous repercussions for the Van Rhijns. His widowed parent abruptly faces the imaginable of selling her location and surviving retired her last years with her sister, Ada (Cynthia Nixon), successful dire straits, portion her household unit are near to fend for themselves. The twist is 1 of the show’s fewer satisfying developments: comeuppance for a would-be conniver! And then, successful the adjacent episode, done an inheritance bequeathed to Ada retired of the blue, the family’s wealth troubles are instantly over. Agnes and Ada’s niece exults that “nothing needs to change.”

The bid is not wholly unaware of its characters’ myopia. In the archetypal season, Bertha focusses connected the minutiae of her girl Gladys’s entrée into nine portion her hubby faces the anticipation of imprisonment, and the antecedently uxorious George finds her progressively ridiculous. In the caller season, erstwhile Bertha believes that she’s recovered the close lucifer for Gladys—an English duke whose old-world rubric would springiness the new-money Russells a societal trump card—she acts much similar a madam than a mother, icily dismissing the girl’s feelings successful bid to adjacent the deal. But Fellowes refuses to dainty it arsenic a bottommost turn, adjacent clumsily transforming Bertha into a proto-feminist who picks a combat astir pistillate suffrage astatine a meal enactment and risks her ain societal presumption to advocator for divorced women. The attempted redemption arc ne'er rather rings true.

It doesn’t assistance that Fellowes reaches repeatedly into the aforesaid tiny container of tricks. Even with Baranski’s flawless enactment readings, determination are lone truthful galore times we tin expect to beryllium amused by Agnes dubbing things “fiddle-faddle” oregon “hobbledehoys,” oregon being scandalized by, say, the newfangled imaginable of blistery crockery for lunch. She’s an evident successor to Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess connected “Downton,” and not the lone retread that reaches a constituent of diminishing returns; the upstairs-downstairs opposition was cardinal to the earlier show’s appeal, but the secrets that are everlastingly being tearfully confessed by the servants of “The Gilded Age” are nary substitute for interior lives. (Denée Benton’s Peggy, the sole Black lead, is the lone subordinate of “the help” to basal out, but she travels truthful acold afield of the Manhattan and Newport enclaves wherever the remainder of the bid is acceptable that she often feels similar she’s connected a antithetic show.) On the higher floors, engagements are made and breached with the regularity of a Swiss clock.

In this season, though, consequences get astatine last. It’s not a coincidence that it’s the series’ strongest. Seeds planted astatine the outset are coming to fruition—most significantly, Bertha’s pitiless ambition starring to the formerly unthinkable crackup of the Russell marriage. Across the street, the foundations of the Van Rhijn location are besides shaken aft Ada’s unexpected windfall enables her to situation Agnes arsenic caput of the household. These plotlines present connected the anything-goes unpredictability that the amusement had initially promised: “The Gilded Age” won’t unit immoderate of its characters to relinquish the gilt, but their luxurious environs are present the backdrop for much superior woes.

Fellowes is adjacent letting immoderate of these characters evince much analyzable emotions. Late successful the season, an irreversible calamity does strike: 1 of Oscar’s lovers is killed, and he’s near incapable to explicit to his household the grade of his grief due to the fact that helium cannot uncover the quality of their relationship. Even aft the arc resolves itself, the rawness of his sorrow lingers. For each the references to real-life personages and humanities events, this fictional bushed is 1 of the fewer times erstwhile “The Gilded Age” offers genuine penetration into what it indispensable person been similar to unrecorded successful specified an era. The remainder is fiddle-faddle. ♦