‘The Gilded Age’ Episode 9 Recap: Here We Are, All Of Us Together

I saw a tweet recently about The Gilded Age that has stuck with me. It read “I am overjoyed to see Julian Fellowes is succeeding in his life’s work of lowering the stakes.”

I think the biggest issue I, or anyone living in 2022, might have with the (literally hundreds of) plots and subplots of The Gilded Age is how antiquated they all seem. Rich people being rejected by society for having an inferior kind of money! Using the wrong table service at lunch! Employing a Midwestern chef named Josh! These customs have largely disappeared for most of us and it seems surprising that anyone would ever get upset by such things. Alas, these people didn’t have distractions like Netflix or slow fashion Instagram accounts. And yet – AND YET! – the show manages to wring delightful drama from these low stakes, and I find myself actually caring who tattled on Bannister for helping to lay out the forks at the Russells. (Was it Church? Is that what Miss Turner’s letter revealed? Sometimes the show is too cryptic for a dummy like me to actually figure stuff out.)

Point is, I care. I care about the Russells, who deep down seem like decent people who are forced to do indecent things in order to ingratiate themselves into a society with stupid rules. I care about all the servants and their very minor, occasionally tragic plot lines. I care that Aunt Agnes was right about Tom Raikes all along, because as boring as Marian and her bird watercolors are, she didn’t deserve all that. And despite the fact that there were many loose ends left untied on the season, as the sun rose over the Russell home and everyone meandered home drunk off the thrill of Gladys Russell’s debut as a woman, I found the season finale of The Gilded Age to be satisfying, even hopeful.

Marian and Mr. Raikes made the decision to elope, and right quick too. Marian fears that Aunt Agnes will shun her when she finds out, so she asks for help from the DGAF queen of them all, Mrs. Chamberlain, who offers her home as a meeting place for Marian and Tom so they can travel out of the city on Friday in secret. Aunt Agnes may have been hinting all along that Tom wasn’t the nice country lawyer he seemed to be, and her premonition was right after all. Aurora Fane warned Marian that Tom was getting close to wealthy Sissy Bingham and Marian brushed it off, but this week, Aurora sees Tom at the opera cozying up with Sissy on the eve of the elopement and that drives home the point that, yep, Tom is a schmuck.

Peggy, having agreed to help with the elopement, smuggles Marian’s suitcase out of the van Rhijn’s, and while she’s at it, Aunt Ada sniffs things out and realizes something strange is afoot, so she questions Peggy about it. Peggy talks in circles, and the look on Ada’s face offers about ten different emotions once she realizes what Marian is up to. Cynthia Nixon’s role as Aunt Ada has been a minor one this season, but I really appreciate the strokes she’s been painting in the past few episodes. Though she was set up as weak and meek, her takedown of Armstrong last week and her concern for Marian this week have provided her with more backbone than Agnes would ever give her credit for.

And so, as Marian sits at Mrs. Chamberlain’s waiting for Tom, who is hours late, to arrive so they can run off together, Aurora Fane shows up bearing the news that she saw Tom and Sissy Bingham canoodling. Marian doesn’t believe it adds up, so she goes looking for him at his office, where he admits that yeah, he was planning to stand her up at the alter. Now that he has a taste of the good life, broke Marian can’t provide all that, so he’s been having second thoughts. Marian is devastated.

While so much of Peggy’s story this season has revolved around her advancing career, last week we learned that her big secret was that her newborn son died in childbirth and she’s been searching for answers about his death ever since. This week, we got answers, and they’re not at all what we wanted to hear. As Peggy’s mother happens upon a letter in her husband’s coat pocket, she reads it to discover devastating news: Peggy’s young son is alive, Peggy’s father having placed him up for adoption after his birth so that Peggy wouldn’t have to raise a child with a poor husband. Peggy’s father has been cold to her all season, explaining that he only wants what’s best for his daughter, but when Peggy and her mother learn what he did, stealing Peggy’s child and misleading her to think he was dead, they are rightfully devastated. They pack for Philadelphia to try and locate him. Her father knows where he is, and refuses to help.

The entire season has been hinting at Gladys’s debutante ball, and it’s the climax of the episode, the event that will finally bring all of our major players together. With Gladys’s new friend Carrie Astor involved in the quadrille at the ball, Bertha calls on Mrs. Astor herself (who seems to know nothing about Bertha being at her Newport mansion, and secretly being shuffled out the back door), who refuses to see her. Mrs. Astor’s butler, whose name is Hefty (!), repeatedly tells Bertha, “Mrs. Astor is not at home,” his tone getting increasingly… “Snooty? Snotty” like the maître d’ in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off deciphering if he truly was dealing with Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago. Bertha knows Mrs. Astor is home, as she receives another guest instead. She is a woman snubbed. As a result, she disinvites Carrie from the ball, telling Gladys, Larry, and George at dinner, “I can’t have her daughter here if she doesn’t receive me.” The entire family is outraged that Mrs. Russell is taking things this far, but they’re powerless against her.

Carrie, realizing that this is her stuck-up mother’s fault, gives her mother the silent treatment. If Mrs. Astor has but one weakness it is her daughter, so she agrees to call on Mrs. Russell and apologizing so that Carrie will be re-invited to the ball. Even more, Mrs. Russell gets her to invite Agnes and Ada to the ball. Hell, freezing, etc!

As the ball begins, the names of all the guests are announced. They include a Mrs. Robert McNeil, the woman the butler, Watson, approached in the previous episode. He sees her and casts a wistful look her way, but thank God for a second season renewal because I will not be satisfied until I know what their relationship is, and we certainly don’t learn about it this season. Also in attendance is Julius Kuiper and his wife, who were extorted by George Russell into coming. Aunt Ada and Aunt Agnes are there, begrudgingly. Tom Raikes is there to rub his new girlfriend Sissy Bingham in Marian’s face. And indeed, Mrs. Astor is also there.

As Gladys, Carrie and their friends dance the quadrille at the celebration, Mrs. Astor asks Mrs. Russell, “Didn’t it ever worry you that I might decide to destroy you after this evening? Because I could, if I chose.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Bertha Russell tells her coolly. “But you won’t. We’re too alike. I will be a good friend to you if you’ll let me.” Whether they become friends or frenemies or whatever, I am here for this alliance!

Now that Marian is freed from her elopement with the 19th century version of a day trader who keeps it casual with a fleece vest over his khakis, she quickly starts to sow her own wild oats, accepting a dance with Larry Russell. We should have known from the way she’s been pumping him up to achieve his architecture dreams that these two might pair up. I like Larry. He’s good people.

Also dancing together? Oscar Van Rhijn and Gladys, the belle of the ball. Oscar has made no secret of his wish to marry Gladys for her money and naivete, and after the ball, he arrives back at his home where his boyfriend John Adams awaits. (Wait, weren’t they broken up because John Adams didn’t like that Oscar was planning this deceptive seduction of Gladys, but then he, in turn, also tried to gain her affection, despite both men being gay and in love with one another?) “I think I can do it, John,” Oscar says. “I think I can reel her in. And don’t worry, nothing will change.” Ugh, Oscar, this side of you is a whole Lifetime movie I am not interested in watching.

I can’t believe I didn’t lead with this but, Josh Borden, everybody! JOSH MOTHER-Asparagus-Fork-ING BORDEN. Last week, Monsieur Boudin, the Russells’ French chef, was seen scrapping with a woman on the sidewalk. Well, it turns out that someone was his wife, who tracked him and his new identity down. Boudin is not actually French at all, hes “just a farm boy from Kansas,” as George tells Bertha when he learns his chef’s true identity. Once a merchant seaman stationed in France named Josh Borden, he learned to cook there and returned to America to try his hand as a chef. No one would hire him, so he pretended to be French and changed his name and his accent (Oh God! His Kansas accent!!), and once his estranged wife caught whiff of what he was cooking, she wanted to reconcile with her newly French husband. “I’m sorry George, but we cannot have a chef from Kansas,” Bertha spits, disgusted to even have to say the name of that wretched flyover state, and they dismiss Boudin right before Gladys’s ball, meaning that a replacement chef has to come in and cook the meal. (Blah blah blah, the chef is a drunken disaster and the Russells ultimately soften to the idea of Boudin/Borden and hire him back.) George and Bertha thank Borden/Boudin for his help cooking at the ball, and he speaks, for the first time with his Kansas accent, saying, “I was glad to do it.” Upon hearing his new drawl, Carrie Coon as Bertha winces in a way that is so comical and speaks so many volumes that this wince needs its own Emmy category.

The episode ends as the morning papers are picked up on the front step of the Van Rhijn home by Bannister. He looks across the way at the Russell’s where Church is overseeing the party cleanup, and the two men cordially nod, a symbol of a (temporary?) peace brokered between the two houses. I guess we’ll see how long that lasts when season two comes around.

As I mentioned, there are literally thousands of storylines on this show, and several of them were not resolved in this finale. A few of them that I hope will be next season: Miss Turner: where did she go and what is she plotting? Mr. Watson: who is he really and who is the woman he’s stalking? Will Mrs. Astor ever find out Bertha was in her Newport home? Will Ms. Armstrong become woke, or at least not a full-blown racist? Will Larry become an architect?? All that and hopefully more will be addressed, in, what, 1884? ’85? See you then.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.