‘The Gilded Age’ Remains the Most Gloriously Silly Show on TV

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.

This week:

• My biggest takeaway from Britney’s memoir.
• Christine Baranski in a fancy hat has returned!
• Round of applause for Kyle Richards.
• Weirdest movie ever.
• A question to ponder.

My Beautiful Bad Show Is Back

The most thrilling television event of the year is upon. It is perhaps the tensest, most explosive drama we may see, likely to elicit the most tremorous reactions from those who dare to watch. The Gilded Age is returning, and with it, the series’ incendiary question: Who will cross the street?

There is a certain bliss to a series like The Gilded Age, which returns Sunday for Season 2 on HBO. Like its spiritual prequel Downton Abbey, which was also created by Julian Fellowes, Gilded Age builds a minor soap opera around a central foundation: rich, old-money folk who are aghast at modern interlopers who don’t abide by their traditions. I kid you not, the main concern of the first season was whether or not to attend social functions at the neighbor’s house across the street. Not since Sybil wore pants on Downton has there been such hysteria surrounding matters so trivial-seeming or mundane.

But that’s the beauty of these period series. (As its title suggests, Gilded Age is set in 1880s New York City, when a financial boom allowed new-money robber barons into the previously fortified walls of high society, where its members were at odds about how much to accept their presence.)

In The Gilded Age there is, of course, the high-stakes drama and intrigue that you would expect from Fellowes—secret romances, secret babies, and secret death coverups. But they are, gloriously, treated with the equal heft of an afternoon tea gone wrong, a chef serving the wrong soup, or a woman seen conversing with someone who is beneath her station. The Season 2 premiere triggers two narrative earthquakes: A fancy lady is horrified to learn that her niece is teaching art classes—not a woman having a job!—and a bunch of people are thinking about going to a different opera house. It’s so silly as to be utterly riveting.

Through it all, Carrie Coon delivers one of TV’s most transfixing performances, in that it is both utterly bizarre and absolutely brilliant. Her character and her husband, played by Morgan Spector, have electric sexual chemistry, making you yearn for this series to turn into a (literal) bodice-ripper. Christine Baranksi gets to be pretentious and cranky and yell at Cynthia Nixon. The always flawless Audra McDonald is there. Is any of their material good? No! But the fun is watching thespians elevate garbage into fabulous garbage.

Season 2 opens with a minutes-long montage of all these women (and several others) putting on ornate hats. That’s the big hook to draw you into the new season: Ladies donning hats. And you know what? I’ve never been more sold.

She Really Did Mention It All

There are people who don’t know who Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky are, and there are people like me, who think about the married Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ stars separation multiple times a day, as if it’s my own parents who have decided to break up.

There have been dizzying reports about who may have had an affair, whether Richards is now a lesbian, if Umansky is seeing his Dancing With the Stars partner, or if all of this is just made up for a juicy RHOBH storyline. I’m as mentally and emotionally out of shape as I am physicall;: I don’t have the stamina to keep up with this.

But, in a surprise move, Richards appeared on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live this week and answered every single one of Andy Cohen’s to-the-point, brutally personal questions about all of this with unexpected directness. (Watch the clips here.)

Celebrities can be obsessed with controlling their own narratives, often twisting it for their personal benefit. Reality stars, especially, often bend the truth or straight-up lie in response to tabloid reports, when they acknowledge them at all. So for Richards to answer Cohen’s questions, when so many others would just say, “I don’t want to talk about that,” is remarkable. But I was shocked that she was so truthful about everything.

I am usually of the mind that celebrities’ relationships are none of my business, but the caveat to that is reality stars, who turn those relationships into TV that they profit from. It’s crass to feel “owed” explanations for the gossip surrounding Richards’ breakup, but there’s no doubt that many RHOBH fans felt they were. And Richards delivered.

I Smell an Oscar

The more I read the plot of this new film Wicker that Olivia Colman and Dev Patel have signed on to star in, the less I understand it—and the more I want to see it.

According to Variety: “On the outskirts of a village by the sea, lives a Fisherwoman (Colman); smelly, single and perpetually ridiculed. One day, fed up with her stuffy, small-minded neighbors, she commissions herself a husband to be made from wicker (Patel). In an otherwise conservative town, this unconventional romance sparks outrage, jealousy and chaos.”

So basically, a smelly lady (Colman) romances a wicker basket (Patel). I am there.

Provocative Questions

I have not stopped laughing at this tweet from RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Trixie Mattel about an interaction with his partner, David.

Makes you think!

What to watch this week:

Fellow Travelers: It is sexy and historical and important and did I mention sexy? (Now on Paramount+ With Showtime, Sun. on Showtime)

Suitable Flesh: Trippy, full of mayhem, and featuring a fantastic Heather Graham performance. (Now in theaters)

The Gilded Age: Just give into the silliness! (Sun. on HBO)

What to skip this week:

Five Nights at Freddy’s: And yet not a single night of fun. (Now in theaters and on Peacock)

Pain Hustlers: Another lazy attempt to turn Big Pharma into juicy entertainment. (Now on Netflix)