‘The Gilded Age’ Episode 7 Recap: Turner The Hooch

Why must Julian Fellowes always create a disgruntled and angry lady’s maid in everything he does? On Downton Abbey, there was O’Brien, who was so evil she went so far as to cause Cora Crawley to purposely slip and fall on a bar of soap, causing her miscarriage. On The Gilded Age, it’s Miss Turner, a woman so set on ruining the marriage of George and Bertha Russell she just keeps showing up in George’s bedroom.

Every week I feel like we get a scene of some servant or another quietly absconding to the outside world and tending to their family, like Agnes van Rhijn’s (equally angry) ladies maid, Miss Armstrong, or Michael Cerveris’s thankless butler, Watson, who leaves the house to spy on an unnamed woman and then tells everyone what a nice, “Nope, not stalking anyone here!” walk he went on. Yet we know virtually nothing about Miss Turner save for her previous employer, and get no clue as to why she is so bitter. I can appreciate Turner’s game: she’s playing everyone, from Bertha to George to Oscar van Rhijn, but it doesn’t serve her well in this episode, because by the end of it, angry, lusty Miss Turner gets sacked from the Russell home, and it makes her even angrier than she was when she was employed there.

Also kind of angry this week is Marian Brook, but only because she wasn’t invited to go sit in a car and eat sandwiches while watching a bunch of men turn a light bulb on. The event in question was the day that Thomas Edison himself lit up the New York Times building on Park Row (a thing that really did happen on September 4, 1882), illuminating downtown New York with one of the first fully electrified buildings in the city. Mr. Raikes, who manages to propose to Marian every episode, was there, as were the Fanes and the Russells and Mr. Ward Chamberlain and his moustache. But, on account of there not being enough seats in the Russell’s carriages, Marian wasn’t invited, and not only was she not invited, Bertha Russell was like “LET IT BE KNOWN: YOU ARE NOT INVITED,” when she told Marian (I’m paraphrasing, lest you think I’m directly quoting Mr. Fellowes’ script), “I wish you could come to this thing that your crush Tom Raikes is coming to, but I’m inviting another woman for Tom to sit next to and she’s not you.” Twisting the knife even more is the fact that Marian’s only other friend, Peggy Scott, got to go, in order to report it for the newspaper. And so, at home Marian sits with her spinster aunts, glimpsing a vision of her future, while all her friends ooh and ahh at the marvels of modern technology.

But let’s back up a bit. The episode begins with a hilarious conversation between Agnes and her sister Ada, with Agnes revealing her disgust at the idea that her son Oscar might be romantically entangled with Miss Turner, a servant. He wasn’t, of course, he just happened to be using Turner for information so he could get in the Russell’s good graces, marry their naive daughter Gladys, and keep her as a 19th Century beard so he could keep cavorting with the real love of his life, John-Adams-no-not-THE-John-Adams-but-an-heir-to-John-Adams-named-John_Adams. But his mother thinks he and Turner the servant were doin’ it, and there’s no convincing her otherwise. Aunt Ada, ever the optimist, asks Agnes, “What would you prefer, an actress? Or a prostitute?” Agnes replies, “Ada!I’m going to have to ring for my smelling salts if you do not moderate your tone, you should not know that these words exist!” I really do love how Christine Baranski’s role is to represent the genteel and delicate feminine sensibilities of the era, and yet her delivery is always so comically brutal. Also brutal is the cold shoulder Agnes is still giving her butler, Bannister. She’s still salty that he helped the Russells lay out the shrimp forks at their lunch with Ward Chamberlain. (Bannister is still keen on finding out who sent Agnes a letter informing her that he was there. This week, he learns the culprit though we, the audience, do not, and he vows revenge.)

Over at the Russell house, Gladys and her new best friend Carrie Astor make plans to practice a quadrille dance, and when Bertha sees how chummy they are, she starts planning Gladys’s debutante ball, a full 180 from her previous stance, and Gladys is stunned at her mother’s change of heart. A change of heart which seems to have come exclusively from seeing an Astor in her home and assuming it can only mean that her own acceptance into society awaits. The other Russell, Larry, tries to make headway with his father, asking for permission to become an architect (encouraged by his new friend from across the street, Marian, who gives him a “follow your dream” speech which he takes to heart.) George has big plans for his son Larry to take of the family robber baron business, but Larry lays out a convincing argument as to why he shouldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. George, who had previously opposed Larry’s request, hears him out a second time and decides to think on it. George is also dealing with a potential lawsuit over the train wreck that occurred in Pennsylvania. The train that crashed was apparently constructed out of faulty parts, and the man overseeing its construction, Dixon, claims that Russell gave him the order to use sub-standard, cheap parts. If George is convicted, we can just cancel this show right now because the Russells’ life in New York will be just about over. George’s lawyers can’t find any proof that Dixon is lying, which worries George (for prison reasons), and Bertha (for society reasons).

Thus far, the most scandalous thing to have happened on The Gilded Age was when a naked Miss Turner showed up in George Russell’s bed. Though George has kept that interaction and his subsequent prolonged-eye-contacts with Turner quiet, they’re not actually what leads to her being fired. See, after Agnes found out that Oscar and Turner were talking, she forced Marian to ask Mrs. Russell to fire Turner. Marian was deeply uncomfortable with the task, but it planted a seen in Bertha’s mind that Turner was up to something. Marian’s request, coupled with the fact that Bertha saw Turner joking with Larry, leads her to dismiss her while getting dressed for dinner one evening. Later that night, Miss Turner approaches George while he’s in bed AGAIN to tell him “I would have loved you to the exclusion of everything else,” and George reminds her that he’s not actually unhappy with Mrs. Russell. “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” she tells him, and it feels a little “I’m not going to be ignored, Dan!” and one fears that she might boil a bunny to send him a message. Turner meets with Oscar one last time to tell him she’s been sacked and can no longer be his informant.

And so, we return to Marian, whose blandness is only matched by that of her suitor, Tom Raikes. Marian and Tom meet at Mrs. Chamberlain’s home, having been offered it as a secret meeting place where they can talk undetected by nosy society people or Aunt Agnes. Mrs. Chamberlain, who herself has shunned by society for taking up with a married man, offers them a piece of advice: it’s worth being shunned if it’s true love. Marian and Tom make out and it only cements her growing affection for him, which is why she’s so upset that Tom’s out there in a carriage cavorting with the Russells and the Fanes and some sketchy girl named Sissy Bingham who may or may not be oil tycoon Henry Flagler’s niece watching Thomas Edison make history. As she sits at home lamenting the situation, Agnes scoffs that the only people going are “ruffians, thieves, and worse.” “Mrs. Russell is taking a party,” Marian tells her aunt.

“I rest my case,” Agnes quips.

As the lights come on downtown, Ward McAllister tells Mrs. Russell, “This is a turning point in history, Mrs. Russell. But are we ready for it?”

“We don’t have a choice in the matter Mr. McAllister,” Bertha Russell says. “We must go where history takes us.” And with that, someone call a lady’s maid, because that right there is quite a button.