The Gilded Age Is a More Focused, Still Delightfully Well Dressed Diversion In Season 2

HBO’s The Gilded Age is not a serious television program. Don’t get me wrong—that’s not in any way an insult. In fact, it’s precisely what makes the show so great.  Sure, it’s got all the trappings of a serious prestige period series (a massive cast of A-list actors, a hefty budget, a recognizable writer in Julian Fellowes, the man behind the juggernaut that was Downton Abbey) but, at its heart, it’s pure soap opera.  And it’s so much more enjoyable when it embraces simply being entertaining rather than trying to make some sort of larger social statement or tell a particularly weighty story. Thankfully, its second season finally seems to realize that fact, gleefully jettisoning its dullest, preachiest elements in favor of even more breathtaking gowns, jaw-dropping architecture, and petty society squabbles. The end result is something that is both deliciously satisfying and strangely ephemeral, a celebration of glorious excess that we, as viewers, are simply asked to enjoy. 

In its eight-episode second season, The Gilded Age is more fun, more focused, and more confident than ever, leaning fully—and unapologetically—into its most dramatic tendencies and framing its season around the sort of rich people problems that are both indulgent and completely ridiculous. (But that are somehow almost impossible to look away from.) There’s virtually no other show on television that could unironically center an entire season around the fate of two dueling opera houses and the question of which rich society lady is allowed to rent a box in which building to watch performances of a style of music they don’t even particularly like all that much. Yet, here we are, and it’s all sorts of delightful, particularly because these battles primarily involve fancy dinner parties and sly verbal barbs.

Not content with her social ascension at the conclusion of Season 1, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) longs for a box at the prestigious Academy of Music. The possession of such a box is another big status symbol among New York’s moneyed elite, and it’s yet another arena dominated by the famous Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy). But despite her successful ball, Mrs. Russell is denied entry into the ranks of the Academy’s most favored patrons—she can’t be expected to buy an orchestra ticket like some commoner—and she’s very unhappy about it. So unhappy that she’s ready to back the upstart new Metropolitan Opera and proverbially spit in Mrs. Astor’s face while doing so, even going so far as to set its opening performance for the same day as the Academy’s. 

Bertha immediately sets out trying to tempt the rich and powerful of New York City to choose her organization over Mrs. Astor’s, all while insisting that’s not at all what she’s doing. Her devoted Wife Guy husband George (Morgan Spector) is there to help support her with both funds and advice, and Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane) is playing both sides between the two women. This opera war is (naturally) almost exclusively conducted via a variety of increasingly elaborate dinners, parties, and social events, as both Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Astor scheme and cajole everyone around them. It’s as delightfully petty and pretty as one could ever expect and the story raises questions no more serious than which lady will wear the most elaborate hat. (And let me tell you, both women pull out some stunners.) 

Elsewhere, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) remains as much of an old-money traditionalist as ever, though she seems content to disapprove of Bertha from a distance this season. (Unsurprisingly, she’s on Mrs. Astor’s side in the whole opera house business.) She’s more interested in finding her niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson) a proper suitor and judging her son Oscar (Blake Ritson), who’s still on the hunt for a rich wife, despite the fact that he’s very clearly in love with a man. Thankfully, both Marian and Oscar have become something much closer to three-dimensional characters this season, and the friendship between them makes the van Rhijn household feel more like a cohesive family unit and less like a space where everyone lines up to get bullied by the woman in charge of it. 

So much of The Gilded Age Season 1 revolved around the twin spires of Agnes and Bertha that it’s a real shame the pair share so few scenes this season, if only because it’s always extremely fun to see two powerhouse actresses go toe-to-toe. (But don’t worry, Baranski still gets all the show’s best lines.) Instead, Season 2 finally digs a bit further into Agnes’ relationship with her spinster sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon), and the co-dependent bond they share. The arrival of Reverend Matthew Forte (Robert Sean Leonard), the new rector at the church all New York society attends, finally offers Ada a chance at the love story she’s spent her life waiting to find but saying yes to a romantic suitor naturally means potentially leaving her sister behind in a way she’s never had to consider before. Baranski and Nixon are wonderful together, and it’s lovely to see them both finally given such solid material. 

The Gilded Age hasn’t course-corrected all of its flaws in its second season, however. The cast is still wildly overstuffed, though the series has at least generally streamlined some of its most tangential plotlines into something that’s marginally easier to keep track of, even if it means some of its dozen or so supporting characters don’t get nearly the screentime they deserve. For some reason, the show still seems convinced that viewers care as much about the lives of the downstairs servants in the van Rhijn and Russell households as they do the fantastically dressed war of polite words between their bosses. (At least the upstairs/downstairs split is less prominent this time around and I’ll never get tired of literally everyone hating Mrs. Armstrong.) But the inclusion of a plot about union organizers among George Russell’s rail employees isn’t as nearly effective as it could be given how insistently the series privileges the perspectives of the rich and successful, and how half-heartedly it presents the workers’ views.

The show also hasn’t entirely figured out how to integrate its most interesting subplot into its larger canvas. Peggy Scott (Denee Benton) and her family remain a rare depiction of  Black upper-middle-class entrepreneurial success in nineteenth-century America, particularly on shows like this. The fallout from Peggy’s search for her son, as well as her determination to make her community better—through her journalism, her campaign to keep public schools open for Black students in Brooklyn, and more—makes for compelling television. But it often feels like her entire arc is happening on a completely different show, and her story rarely intersects with the rich white folks of 61st Street in a way that doesn’t feel like a fancily dressed after-school special.

Still, The Gilded Age Season 2 represents a marked improvement over the series’ first outing and concludes by leaving enough dangling plot threads to point the way to an even stronger third season. And while its gaudy delights may occasionally seem a little gauche, viewers everywhere will have a great time rolling about in its excess.

The Gilded Age Season 2 premieres Sunday, October 29 on HBO. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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