(Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 2, Episode 2.)
Bertha might be on the verge of upending the Manhattan opera scene as the 19th century knows it, but all is not necessarily well in the House of Russell. As seen Sunday night on the HBO drama, the “new money” social climber’s family’s situation might be a little more precarious than she’d like to admit: Her fledgling-architect son has apparently decided to hook up with a client twice his age; her daughter is contemplating marrying a villainous gold-digger; and there’s something strange going on with one of her valets that she doesn’t even know about yet. None of this is what you want if you’re just trying to hoist yourself to the top of New York’s steep social ladder.
Oh, and to boot, Bertha (Carrie Coon) also just ran into her former ladies’ maid, Miss Turner (Kelley Curran)—whom she fired, and who might be hellbent on destroying her family—at a party in Newport. It turns out, she’s married to a crucial potential donor for Bertha’s pet project—the Metropolitan Opera. So much for a relaxing country getaway.
Bertha’s robber-baron husband, George (Morgan Spector), nips one of their problems in the bud at the start of the episode by telling their daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) that, no, he will not sign off on a marriage of convenience with the wily Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) just so that she can get away from her repressive mother. As much as he might sympathize with her plight, he also argues that “marriage is not the place to look for freedom.” When Gladys all but confirms she’s not in love with Oscar, her dear old dad makes her an offer she can’t refuse: If and when she approaches him about a suitor she really loves, he’ll support her even if Bertha does not.
With that understanding in place, George gives Oscar the old heave-ho. Then, it’s on to more pressing business: stopping those pesky unions from organizing any further.
Speaking of grimy laborers, Agnes (Christine Baranski) is still disgusted by her niece Marian’s (Louisa Jacobson) commitment to shirking her generational wealth by… *checks notes* teaching children how to watercolor paint. Agnes’s gentler little sister, Ada (Cynthia Nixon) has mostly talked her down, but this week, she’s even more preoccupied with her church’s cute new reverend, Matthew Forte (Robert Sean Leonard). Agnes seems to have made her peace with Marian’s transgression—that is, until she sees her niece’s packed lunch and gets spiritually nauseous all over again.
Poor Marian is basically batting suitors away at this point. Her cousin Aurora (Kelli O’Hara) sets her up with a drunken dullard for a date to a tennis match, but she’s delighted to see that her far more charming not-quite-cousin, the widowed Dashiell Montgomery (David Furr), has also attended the match. Hopefully, this budding romance turns out better than Marian’s last one did, but in the meantime she’ll always have her girls and their watercolors.
In spite of the Marian madness (and her son Oscar’s decision to pursue another young wealthy girl—this one named Maude—in his quest to remain in the closet) this week brings good news for Agnes: Her former secretary, Peggy (Denée Benton), has asked to come back to work after her traumatic discovery last week. There’s just one catch: Can Miss Armstrong (Debra Monk) actually play nice with Peggy after a season of cold, racist rejection?
Agnes insists that Armstrong behave herself and warns that otherwise, she’ll have no choice but to fire her. Armstrong knows that this would spell disaster; she already takes care of her mother, and should she wind up unemployed at this age, it’s unlikely another family will train her. Nevertheless, she persists in being rude to Peggy and refuses to let her help with the sewing. Peggy helps out anyway, but when Armstrong makes another catty comment, she lays down the law: “I have no quarrel with you, Miss Armstrong. I mean it. But I promise, you do not want one with me.”
Over at Casa Bertha, things have gotten equally tempestuous. When she accompanies her son, Larry (Harry Richardson), to pitch himself as an architect to the widow Susan Blaine, Bertha instantly catches the pheromones floating between the two and tries to fan them away. Once she leaves, however, the inevitable happens: Larry and Susan share champagne and a few good laughs, and before you know it, he’s rolling up to the family house the morning afterward with a big, proud smile on his face. This does not please Bertha, who doesn’t want her son to make a fool of himself with a woman twice his age—even if she is played by the radiant Laura Benanti.
There’s also some strange business afoot with one of her valets, Mr. Watson (Michael Cerveris)—who, as we found out last week, is somehow the father of high society queen Flora McNeil (Rebecca Haden). It’s unclear how he fell from grace, but with Flora’s husband already sniffing around (and Bertha’s butler Church now in the know) the truth is bound to rise to the surface soon enough.
Until then, the good news is that Bertha’s plan to supplant the stuffy Academy of Music with a new, bigger opera house seems to be going just swimmingly. Her pragmatic high-society buddy Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane) is fixing her up with a new “old-money” potential donor whose young new wife Ward suspects might find the Academy a little too stuffy. Meanwhile, Bertha’s rival Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy) is hitting up the van Rhijns with a plan to save her beloved Academy and its limited box seating.
Whatever Mrs. Astor has planned, however, she might not be the only enemy keeping Bertha on her toes this season. At the very end of the episode, Bertha runs into an unexpected guest at a party in Newport—her former ladies’ maid, Turner, who is now married to the aforementioned potential donor.
As you might recall, Bertha and George fired Turner last year once her scheming got out of hand. (It’s hard to blame them for firing her; there’s only so much you can do when your maid won’t stop letting herself into your husband’s room and trying to convince him to make him her mistress.) But they also made the mistake of not barring her access to their home, so she could break into George’s office and rifle through whatever files she might want to exact revenge—say, perhaps, some documents related to George’s train company, which faces its share of legal problems? It’s unclear what Turner does and does not know, but from the stunned looks on all the Russells’ faces when they see her at the party and realize she’s climbed the social ladder, it seems safe to bet there’s a lot she could have found.
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