The Gilded Age recap: All is fair in love and social war

“We are entering into the final phase of our grand enterprise,” Carrie Coon’s Bertha announces at the top of this week’s The Gilded Age. She’s speaking about the swanky new Metropolitan Opera House, on which she assures its high-paying patrons that construction will be complete well before that big planned opening. But we know better from this show. We’re only four episodes into this season, and they’re going to milk every single minute of this opera drama until the finale. (Hell, we’ve gotten an entire season-long plot about Jack Trotter’s broken alarm clock.)

It’s during this concert-hall sneak peek that Bertha receives distressing news—two bits, in fact. First, yes, Mrs. Winterton née Turner (Kelley Curran) is still around acting petty AF and snubbing her former boss’s Met membership offer, which is especially annoying as Bertha’s been informed on the downlow that construction on the new hall is actually behind schedule and over budget. Secondly, there’s gossip buzzing in the local rags about Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) and Mrs. Blane (Laura Bernanti), whose relationship has progressed from going over home-renovation blueprints to swapping hot-and-heavy “I love yous” in bed, much to Mama Russell’s disapproval.

Things are cheerier over at the Van Rhijn residence, where Reverend Forte (Robert Sean Leonard) is once again the guest of honor at an afternoon tea, this time to raise funds to support missionary work down in Mexico. Ada (Cynthia Nixon) is still flushed and fawning over the hunky man of god, but Agnes (Christine Baranski) remains characteristically unimpressed. (“Calm down, it wasn’t the Gettysburg Address,” she snipes at her sister’s enthusiastic applause.) Alas for Agnes, the rector happily reciprocates Ada’s affections, if that Mr. Darcy-level hand brush is any proof. That finger graze left the poor girl gasping.

Across the street, it looks like the ice-out between the Russells hasn’t exactly thawed since last week, with Bertha still refusing to dine with George (Morgan Spector). However, Mrs. Russell does warm to the news that her husband has not only managed to score them a reception with the Duke of Buckingham but will also work his robber-baron mojo to get the opera house construction back on track.

And much further away, Denée Benton’s Peggy has made her way down to Tuskegee, Alabama alongside her editor Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones) to trail the famed educator Booker T. Washington (Michael Braugher). The latter’s brand-new dormitory for Black Americans is being praised by even the white folk (“Have things changed that much in the South or is it just you?” Thomas incredulously asks him), but not everyone is a fan of Washington’s ways. A former slave himself, Fortune would rather Washington teach the pupils how to fight than how to milk a cow or make peace with their oppressors, but Peggy assures the men that their goals align even if their methods differ. And given the very evident blush young Peggy was sporting after accidentally encountering her shirtless editor the next morning, it seems politics aren’t the only thing stirring up in the South.

Back up north, Bertha has invited Mrs. Blane over to get to the nitty-gritty on the latter’s buzzy May-December romance with her son. “Some gossip has reached me that I confess I find disquieting,” Bertha declares while wearing a Neapolitan cake for a dress as thunder cracks overhead. The camp of it all! She says to Susan, “In twenty years when he is in his prime, you will be walking with a stick. Even if he feels too guilty to leave, part of him will be waiting for you to die.” That was way harsh—so much so that Mrs. Blane not only storms out but also later tearfully breaks things off with dear Larry.

Where one romance wilts, another is officially blooming: Ada and Rev’s courtship is hitting Jane Austen levels of swoon, complete with adorable bumbling, dramatic rainfalls, and repressed emotions. Though Ada is continuously worried about her sister’s judgment of their relationship (“It would seem a poor return after all these years if you were to desert me now,” Agnes does warn her), that doesn’t stop her from accepting the rector’s sweet marriage proposal right there in the church pew. A spinster no longer!

Happier days are also ahead for Bertha, who nearly charms the title off the Duke of Buckingham (​​Ben Lamb) at dinner—after ruthlessly swapping out her and Mrs. Winteron’s seating cards, of course. She even manages to get the young aristocrat to agree to stay at the Russell residence during his time in Newport instead of the Wintertons’ place. Couple that news with the blow that Mrs. Astor and the rest of the Academy of Music board have been tipped off about Turner’s lowly former position as Bertha’s lady’s maid and have demanded the Winterons surrender their opera box as a result, and Mrs. Winterton is positively fuming: “I will upset myself and I will upset Mrs. George Russell if it’s the last thing I do!” Oh, it is on.

Stray observations

• George Russell—a rich, white, male railroad magnet—unironically whining about being “the villain in every story” is equal parts gross and hilarious.
• Several of the “romances” this season are yawn-inducing so far (Oscar and Maud Beaton, Marion and Dashiell), but one was a pleasant surprise this week: that between Chef Borden (Douglas Sills) and Mrs. Bruce (Celia Keenan-Bolger), who bond over their love of classical music. The cook invites the housekeeper to join him to a concert in Central Park, which she happily accepts. Cute!
• And in other downstairs news, Watson (​​Michael Cerveris) still hasn’t accepted Mr. McNeil’s West Coast proposal because he wants to hear it directly from his daughter—which is exactly the same stance the valet had last week. This show sure knows how to stretch out a storyline.

Stream The Gilded Age now on Hulu.