Agnes Is Upset on This Episode of The Gilded Age

"PLEASE DON'T TELL ME HOW TO SPEAK TO MY OWN BUTLER!!!!"

This was another entertaining episode from our friends at The Gilded Age, a show that has dramatically improved in its second season. (No pun intended.) Sometimes, it takes a television program a little while to figure out what it is, and it does seem like Julian Fellowes et al. have at last figured out that this is, mostly, a soap opera where real-life historical people and places of interest happen to make cameos.

So let’s dig into it! I’m going to start with Peggy’s plot, because it’s self-contained, and also tonally different from the rest of the episode; it admittedly felt a little weird to be cutting between light servant shenanigans and Peggy and T. Thomas Fortune being in literal mortal peril.

The Scotts

Things start off quite well in Tuskegee. Peggy gets to interview several young female students in the Domestic Economy building as they sew and chat, and they’re lively and smart and personable, asking her to come teach them a journalism class and wanting to hear all about New Y…