Aunt Ada Saves the Day on The Gilded Age Season Finale

Hopefully not the series one.

Friends! Welcome to the final recap of this season of The Gilded Age — if you’ve missed any of them prior to this, you can catch up here. As I noted last week, as of this writing, Max has not yet renewed this show for another season and I am frankly concerned that its budget, which has to be high, is going to kibosh the further adventures of Bertha Russell and her band of merry bitches. That would be a real shame; this season was such a fun, soapy improvement over the first season (which I liked!) and we left our cast of characters in compelling places for the next chapter. Don’t you want to see Gladys Russell forced to marry a Duke against her will, and Ada being in charge of Agnes’s household spending? Because I do.

My theory is that The Gilded Age’s pacing issues would actually be ameliorated by having more episodes per season, as loath as Max will probably be to write that check. Downton Abbey usually had eight episodes (plus a Christmas special) per season, but The Gilded Age has…