The Gilded Age Is Back! With OPERA WARS.
The Gilded Age Is Back! With OPERA WARS.
It's Season 2, Episode 1: "You Don’t Even Like the Opera."
In case you forgot how last season of The Gilded Age ended, I wrote a little refresher last week; in case you forgot what happened on Sunday’s (very entertaining) season premiere, get ready for a true cavalcade of crazy hats, one surprising reversal of a major plot point from last season, and at least one fresh Tony winner/one of my formative teen crushes.
As I did last season, I’m going to break these recaps up by family, but first, let’s set the scene: We open on Easter Sunday, at least six months since the events of the previous season’s finale, and everyone is donning their Easter best to head to church via a very enjoyable montage of headwear.
Notably, everyone looks extremely Over The Top… except for the Scotts, who are clearly in mourning and there is some clever subtle redirection that convinced me, briefly, that the show had gone and killed off Peggy’s father Arthur. I did predict he was “in for it” last week but I just meant Emotional Turmoil!
And these first few scenes are honestly masterworks of exposition. Don’t get me wrong — they’re VERY expository by necessity, but everyone delivers lines like “Our new house in Newport will be done in time for the Season,” or “Dashiell Montgomery, a nephew of my late husband, widower, and father to a spunky young daughter, has moved to New York,1” so smoothly that the whole exercise feels fun. This is one of the benefits of hiring extremely adept actors. On that tip, last week I predicted that Louisa Jacobsen’s performance was almost guaranteed to be more assured this season, now that Fellowes et al have a better grasp of her actorly strengths, and so far I think that is true2. Let’s dive in to the Van Rhijn/Brooks household’s drama first. And there is drama.
THE VAN RHIJN/BROOKS FAMILY
First and foremost: The VR/Bs are our entree to My Teen Crush Robert Sean Leonard (adding another Tony to this cast’s massive pile of them), who is the new rector at their fancy church and whom Julian Fellowes, who wrote this episode, forces to chat about clam chowder in a Boston accent. (Because he has moved to New York from Boston, not because he’s some kind of jokester who does voices or something.) I desperately hope this turns into a running gag and next week he’ll have a throwaway line about Harvard, then the act of parking, and then something about cars, which will be difficult as the automobile was not yet in wide use at this point. Perhaps train cars! Anyway: Reverend RSL also gets the gift of informing Marian, Oscar, and the Aunts that he’s about to perform his first wedding as their new rector: The Blessed Nuptials of a Miss Bingham and a Mr. Raikes.
Marian looks slightly stricken by this intel, while everyone else is like WHO? GROSS! NEVER HEARD OF THEM!!! Later, Ada checks in on her — she’s slightly bummed and a little worried that she may never marry, but basically okay — and assures her that everything will work out for the best. She is very kind and encouraging, as usual, and tells Marian that the reason she never wed is because she was too shy, and “it would have taken someone rare to see inside my shell.” I am DELIGHTED that — judging from early photos of this season and Max’s own PR materials — we’re going to get a romance for Ada this season, with, I assume, Reverend RSL.
I said this in my recaps of Downton and reiterated it last season, but as much as Julian Fellowes is perhaps overly prone to, say, having valets accused of murder, he’s also excellent at writing well-rounded female characters and he always, always treats the older women in his pieces like the interesting and fully-formed humans that they are. His work is, of course, imperfect, but this is such an admirable strength and I think one of the reason his pieces resonate with the female audience so much. One of my largest complaints about The Crown is that I felt Peter Morgan didn’t care about the inner life of many of his female characters, but I’ve never thought that with Downton, nor with this show — both projects brim with women having personal, professional, and familial conflicts that feel (mostly) thoughtfully and sympathetically explored. I mean, Downton’s final seasons had an entire running plotline where a senior citizen woman was in a love triangle, which was invested with as much importance as any other romance. I’d also argue that both Lady Mary and Bertha Russell exist in the same space of Leading Lady Who Is Not Always Particularly Likeable (Although I Personally Love Them) But For Whom You Root Anyway, which is a ballsy way to treat a heroine.
On that tip, Marian’s main plot in this episode is not about her romantic prospects, beyond the fact that she’s still a little tender from The Julian Fellowes Special: Being Left At Or Near The Altar, but about her professional ones. Remember how I just said it’s ballsy to make your female protagonist kinda prickly and ambitious, especially in a costume drama? It’s ALSO ballsy, as I’ve noted before, to make your ingenue kinda dumb sometimes and the thing Marian is dumb about right now is