The new episode of The Gilded Age is everything.
A perfectly timed takedown by none other than sweet Gladys? A heart-wrenching misunderstanding between two lovers? Death by...carriage?
Julian Fellowes, you’ve truly outdone yourself.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Titled “If You Want to Cook an Omelette,” Sunday night’s episode made one thing abundantly clear: everyone is going through it—yes, even the unshakable Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), the formidable matriarch of the railroad tycoon Russell family.
After securing her daughter’s loveless marriage to Hector Vere, the 5th Duke of Buckingham, Bertha clashes with her husband George (Morgan Spector), who’s disgusted by the transactional nature of it all. Unable to forgive her for trading their daughter’s happiness for a title, he can barely stand to look at her.
Eventually, George delivers an ultimatum: go to England and “make everything alright” with Gladys, who is, predictably, miserable.
So, Bertha sails across the Atlantic, resolved to teach her daughter how to run a household with an iron fist. Naturally, the mother-daughter dynamic isn’t smooth sailing. But not everything is horrible, one glorious moment makes it all worth it: watching Gladys put that awful Lady Sarah (Hattie Morahan) in her place.
The Takedown of the Century
It all goes down at the dinner table.
Lady Sarah, ever dismissive of Gladys’ position, stands to leave before the meal is formally over—a deliberate breach of etiquette meant to diminish her.
But this time, Gladys fights back.
“Sarah are you quite well?” she asks, her tone cool and composed. Lady Sarah, puzzled, assures her she’s perfectly fine.
“Oh,” Gladys replies with a faint smile. “I thought when you stood without waiting for me, you must be ill. I’m so glad if I was wrong.”
Mic dropped. Or the Gilded Age equivalent of that—fan snapped? Quill cast aside?
Bertha May Have Her Flaws, But at Least She Is a Feminist
Honorable mention for best takedown of Lady Sarah goes to Bertha. During a dinner party, Lady Sarah expressed disdain for suffragettes and beliefs that women should stick to their proper “sphere.”
Naturally, this ticks off Bertha, who has rather feminist beliefs for the time. She asks Lady Sarah whether she thinks the Queen “should have stuck to her proper sphere, then?”
Chastised, Lady Sarah falls silent, looking uncomfortable.
No one does a putdown quite like Bertha.
Marian, Nooooooooo
After a slow-burn romance, Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) and Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) finally get engaged.
However, their happiness appears to be fleeting. After becoming suspicious of Larry’s whereabouts during the night of their engagement, Marian gets the truth from Oscar, who lets her know that Larry was at Haymarket—a house of “ill repute,” meaning a place where people have sex.
Thinking Larry cheated on her and then lied about, Marian decides to break things off with him via a letter. To make matters worse, he is off on a business trip, so he can’t even explain himself to Marian at the moment.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t know that Larry never did anything with anyone at the so-called “house of ill repute.”
Get Out of the Streets
Fair warning: avoid the streets if you want to survive a Julian Fellowes period drama. Did we learn nothing from Matthew Crawley’s death in Downton Abbey!?
Poor John Adams (Claybourne Elder), no one warned him. The lad never stood a chance.
After coming to help his friend and secret lover, Oscar van Rhijin (Blake Ritson), who was financially ruined thanks to a scheme, John is hit by a carriage on the street.
He was waving farewell to Oscar when it happened.
The moment stunned viewers. No one saw it coming, especially not after such a sweet and heartfelt interaction between the two lovers.
Naturally, fans were upset, wishing that the death was bestowed on a more deserving person, like the contemptuous Charles Fane (Ward Horton), a relative of the van Rhijin family.
Poor Oscar.
However, that didn’t stop people from teasing the show about how, well, questionable the CGI looks during the accident.
There are two more episodes left in Season 3, and we can’t wait to see what will happen next. But first, we need some assurances that our favorite characters will return, even if that means bringing them back from the dead.
