‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: My Neck, My Back

This week, The Gilded Age creator Julian Fellowes whipped up a meal that I’ll call “Tension Three Ways.” Some of the tension was predictable: I actually had my money on something bad happening to Reverend Forte (Robert Sean Leonard) from the moment Ada (Cynthia Nixon) started to like him, and that’s simply because Julian Fellowes shows all follow a formula: Aunt Ada, like Lady Mary on Downton Abbey, has always pined for love and happiness, and so it stands that she would find it, but only briefly before losing it tragically. One man’s cancer is another man’s car wreck in the Fellowes-verse!

Some of the tension was incredibly melodramatic, as when we watched George Russell (Morgan Spector) make a real-time decision as to whether his steel workers would get gunned down in front of his eyes, or tell the armed guards at his mill to stand down. It had a whole 60-second countdown and everything! And of course, there was the tension we all experienced for Jack (Ben Ahlers) when he sent off his patent for an escape wheel or whatever for his alarm clock. I am enraptured by one man’s quest to make a clock and am fully invested in his journey. Let’s begin at the beginning though…

With Mrs. Winterton’s (Kelley Curran) plan to ruin Bertha Russell’s (Carrie Coon) big dinner for the Duke foiled, she’s found yet another way to make Bertha’s life miserable: she’s vying for the central box at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mrs. Winterton has done Bertha a solid by recruiting several of her rich, old-money friends to the Met, so in return, she feels that the center box is owed to her… knowing full well that this is Bertha’s box. (Bertha clearly doesn’t know what happened at the Duke’s dinner with Mrs. Winterton’s attempted sabotage, if she did, she’d likely be much more defiant about this situation.)

All these striking steel workers in Pittsburgh want is 8-8-8: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours to eat sandwiches with French fries on top of them while watching the Pens try to make the Stanley Cup playoffs. They’re striking knowing full well that scabs have been hired to replace them, and that they will face mortal danger on the picket lines, as the mills will be heavily guarded by National Guard troops. George Russell already faced enough bad press though when one of his trains derailed last season, and while he’s holding firm against the strikers, he’s also showing some signs of, some might say weakness, wondering if what they’re asking for is really so bad.

Though George is preoccupied with the strike, he takes some time to sidebar with The Met director Mr. Gilbert aboard his very fancy personal train, to remind Gilbert who secretly funded the construction of the Met when they had previously run out of funds. Mr. Russell. Mr. Russell was the secret benefactor. And as such, he expects his wife to get whatever box her heart desires at the opera house. Mr. Gilbert is stuck between the warring Russells and Wintertons, but George tells him that he had best give Bertha her box back, or else. Oh, and Gilbert has to figure out how to do so without hinting to Bertha or Mrs. Winterton that George has been meddling this whole time.

The first season the The Gilded Age was all about Marian’s (Louisa Jacobson) arrival to the city, introducing her to the world of old money and New York society and giving her a boring love interest who turned out to be a dud. In fact, most of Marian’s existence was a dud. Fortunately, she’s not as central to the plot this time around and that’s been a wise choice. Marian’s teaching career has given her old Aunt Agnes some incredible opportunities to slag on her niece and poor people (of course we can laugh at these jokes about “a bunch of indigents” and “beggars” because really, the joke is on the callous rich people making them… right?) and her love life is complicated and interesting. Marian is interested in finding The One, and while Cousin Dashiell (David Furr) looks good on paper (except for the moment this week when he tells her “It’s not as if you’re a real teacher!”), she’s not feeling any butterflies under her corset for him – still seems like she’s maybe holding out hope for Larry Russell.

Marian has grown on me, and I like how Jacobson plays her these days; without being overt, she’s making small attempts to bring her character into a modern era, quietly trying to normalize women’s independence. (And she’s also become a master of the polite but disinterested smile, a trait she’s employed constantly with Dashiell and his daughter Frances. It’s an all too familiar expression worn by every woman who has ever been unable to shake the unwanted attention of a man they don’t know how to tell off.) So she commits herself to an afternoon of teaching poor hobbledehoys to read and write rather than attending a party at the botanical garden to celebrate the opening of the solarium that Dashiell’s family has donated. But even the headmistress at the school is like, “Marian, what are you doing with these poors, get over to the garden for that party,” and so Marian goes, and that’s where she realizes it’s a proposal ambush. Dashiell gets down on one knee and no polite smile can get her out of it: Marian is forced to accept in front of everyone. (Larry Russell and Aunt Ada appear to be the only ones not happy for Marian, as they both seem to instinctively know she’s not feeling any of this.)

Peggy (Deneé Benton) is back from Alabama, safe and sound after being chased by a mob of angry white Southerners, and she has decided to write about the ordeal she and T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones) faced while they were there. She’s admittedly conflicted about her relationship with him after their kiss, but now that they’re working together even more closely, it’s hard to separate her work from her romantic feelings. But Peggy also has a new assignment, covering the way that Black schools in New York are being threatened with closure. Her mother has put her in touch with Sarah Garnet (Melanie Nicholls-King), a real-life educator and activist who was principal of one of the only Black schools in the city, in an effort to inform Peggy of the injustices they face.

Peggy and Fortune are once again put in a position to break a big, impactful story, but Peggy realizes the optics of a woman and man working so closely together might become suspicious.

The new clock part that Jack has developed actually works, so everyone downstairs (except for Mrs. Armstrong, that old nay-saying witch) chips in money to pay the $15 for the patent application. Last week was a real moment for us to see the camaraderie between the servants at the Russell’s house as they foiled Mrs. Winterton, and this week, watching this display of support between the van Rhijn’s servants is a delightful gift as well. I just want nice people doing nice things! (Perhaps I’ve been watching too much House of Villains and just need an antidote.) For all her harsh barbs at Marian and Ada this season, even Aunt Agnes is getting in on the nice! When she hears about Jack’s plan she chips in, explaining, “I like the idea of supporting an inventor!” Unfortunately, the patent is rejected because Jack isn’t a member of a horological society (“Hororogical?” asks Mrs.Bauer) but it seems like Bannister isn’t ready to let his young charge give up on his dreams yet.

And now, of course, for the tragedy of it all: Reverend Forte has cancer. This news is inopportune for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I too have a bad back, so my WebMD spiral has been real this week. (“Bad back cancer” “back spasm tumor?”) But also, it’s a real bummer for Ada. The honeymoon phase is over as soon as it began, quite literally.

She and Luke have only just returned from Niagara Falls when his back pain turns out to be the death of him. Ada tries to put on a good face for Luke, but when Agnes comes to offer her support (aww) she falls apart. Why can’t Ada be allowed her happiness?!

Do you now have the hots for George Russell because he seems like a good and decent rich guy who doesn’t want people to die after all? Because I sure might. During a visit with Henderson, the leader of the steel mill strike in Pittsburgh, George meets his wife and family and starts to question whether or not a violent uprising is the way to go with his workers. George looks out of place, with his top hat and walking stick, and after failing to resolve their issues, he walks out the the Henderson home and through a crowd of, you know, beggars, indigents and hobbledehoys, and the juxtaposition of his wealth and status next to their squalor is not lost on anyone. When George asks his right-hand man, Clay, whether the town where Henderson lives even has a school, Clay, who is definitely a ghoulish, heartless Dick Cheney type, answers, “I neither know nor care,” but George is moved by what he’s seen. The next day, with the strikers blocking the scabs’ entry into the mills, he’s terrified of a bloody, violent standoff.

As he watches Henderson use his own body as a human shield to protect his son, he tells the militia who is ready to shoot at the strikers to stand down. Only time will tell whether that decision is good for business.

Stray Thoughts:

• Oscar is still trying to weasel his way into investing in Jay Gould’s new railroad, which he found out about from Maud Beaton. When he’s told his money is no good here, he ups his initial investment to prove that he’s a worthy investor. Is this just a get-rich-quick scheme, or is Oscar truly just trying to be able to provide for Maud Beaton? I’m still not entirely sure of his motives.

• Proving that it’s always been hard to find a good hairstylist in the city, Church and Mrs. Bruce interview several women to be Mrs. Russell’s new ladies’ maid and almost all of them are trash. In a show as dense as this, I’m curious why we spent this much time on a scene that feels so inconsequential. Unless the woman they hired was Mrs. Winterton’s former hairstylist and she’s going to put Nair in Bertha’s shampoo.
• Will Mr. McAllister (Nathan Lane) actually double-cross Mrs. Russell and woo the Duke to the Academy’s opening night?! Seems like Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy) is forcing him to do just that.
• Bannister’s rivalry with Church has been an undercurrent on the show ever since the flatware fiasco of season one where Church tried to get Bannister in trouble for helping the Russells with their fancy lunch service. Bannister has been looking for a way to get back at Church, and when he spies a drunken Church stumbling home from the bar, this is his chance, so he sends a letter to Mr. Russell outing Church as a drunk. But it turns out, Church was only getting drunk because it was the anniversary of his wife’s death from smallpox, so Bannister intercepts his own letter and the two men make up. Butler Buddies!

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.