‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2 Episode 8 Recap: Ada Strikes It Rich

Prestige TV shows that air on premium cable don’t typically do the network-TV style post-Super Bowl episode: you know, the big ratings-grabbing, star-studded, plot-twisting episode that shakes things up. And prestige TV shows like The Gilded Age are not the kind of show that would air after the Super Bowl (though it’s fun to imagine that it could). But if The Gilded Age had a post-Super Bowl episode, this week’s would be it, because things are getting shaken.

Not only have we learned that Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) has essentially sold her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to a British duke so Bertha could win the opera war, but Ada (Cynthia Nixon) reveals that she’s unexpectedly come into a whole heap of money, saving her family from ruin (and, more scandalously, usurping the “head of household” title from her sister Agnes!). And then you’ve got your yadda yadda moments: Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) kissed her neighbor Larry, Peggy Scott (Deneé Benton) quit her job, and Jack’s (Ben Ahlers) clock gets a patent.

With all due respect to Carrie Coon, when it comes to outbursts about duke thievery, Kelley Curran has her beat. (Mrs. Winterton’s Episode 4 delivery of “I don’t want another duke! I want this duke! We found him, and he’s mine, but that witch has stolen him from me!” is now camp canon.) But this week, the Duke of Buckingham has been stolen once again: Mrs. Astor has taken him from Bertha and is planning to bring him to the Academy of Music’s season opener. Bertha is livid, and goes to tell George (Morgan Spector) how awful Mrs. Astor is. “She’s a thief! Mrs. Astor has taken my Duke of Buckingham!” she tells her husband. “Some people would say that you took him from Mrs. Winterton,” he reminds her, adding, “The fact remains that he’s been passed around like an old shoe.” While Bertha is completely unhinged, the real entertainment of the scene is watching George delight in his wife’s antics, smirking and sipping his coffee.

It turns out, Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane) was responsible for helping Mrs. Astor win over the Duke – Bertha confronts him, about both his disloyalty to her and what the Duke wants out of all of this. McAllister tells her that Mrs. Astor can help the Duke become a fixture in New York, which is more influential than any amount of money, and that sets Bertha’s wheels a-turning; she may not be able to outbid Mrs. Astor financially, but she has another bargaining chip she can use: Gladys.

As Bertha plots to win the Duke, the van Rhijn household is planning for their fall from grace. Now that Oscar (Blake Ritson) has lost the family fortune, Agnes (Christine Baranski), Aunt Ada, and Marian are preparing to downsize their lifestyle. Not only will they have to sell Agnes’s home on 61st Street, but they’re probably going to have to let their staff go, too. (Armstrong assumes she’ll be the only one of the bunch not to find work elsewhere, given her age. This leads Peggy to express concern to Agnes, who tells Armstrong Peggy’s been looking out for her, and Agnes asks Armstrong to stay on no matter what happens. I think Armstrong is touched by Peggy’s concern, but I don’t think she’s going to run out and march for equality any time soon.) Jack may not even have to search for new work, as his clock patent has been accepted. (Not gonna lie, the thought that maybe he would become a clock tycoon and save the family from ruin crossed my mind, and I’d be completely open to this show transitioning to a Jack-based series about his career trajectory in the time biz.)

Professionally, Peggy’s articles for The Globe have been making quite an impact and are helping spread the word about the possible closures of the Black schools in the city. Personally though, her too-close relationship with her boss, T. Thomas Fortune, is weighing on her. After a brief encounter with Fortune’s wife and baby, you can tell she’s flustered and confused about how to handle the situation. While she tries to figure out what to do, her father, Arthur, learns that the school board plans to meet in secret to determine the fate of the Black schools without telling any of the Black school representatives about it. Arthur races to tell Peggy, Sarah Garnet, and the rest of their group so that they can attend the meeting. They arrive just in time to make their case (to the chagrin of the white board members), and in the end, two of the three schools are saved and eventually integrated. If nothing else, this moment serves as Arthur’s redemption: after sending Peggy’s son away and contributing so much sadness and strife within his family, this was his way of making it up to them.

As for Peggy’s personal conundrum, ultimately she quits her job. “We can’t continue like this,” she tells her boss/crush. She’s sacrificing her ambitions to save her heart from being broken, but she tells him she plans to work on her novel, so at least there’s that. “Bad timing shapes our lives,” she says as she regretfully walks away from him and everything she’s worked for.

Last week Marian was backed into a corner, forced to accept a proposal from Dashiell Montgomery (David Furr) despite the fact that she clearly wasn’t feeling it. I wrote that despite him being “good on paper” she was just not that into him, but now I’d like to retract that statement because even on paper, this guy su-huuucks. He has repeatedly belittled Marian’s job (this week telling her she’ll never have to work again, despite the fact that she likes to work), and he clearly can’t read any social cues – if he could, he’d notice that she visibly winces any time he’s around. Oh, and he referred to her as Harriet, the name of his dead wife. That detail doesn’t go unnoticed by Marian, Agnes and Ada.

Luckily for all of us, Marian breaks off the engagement before things go too far. Aunt Ada is relieved, having sensed all along that Marian and Dashiell weren’t right together, (“You knew it, and so did I,” Ada says) and even Agnes offers a kind word when she learns the engagement has been broken, telling Marian, “Even I don’t expect you to marry in order to please me.” She warns Marian though, that she now has two strikes against her. Two broken engagements. There can’t be a third.

And as for the big culmination of the opera war, well, at this point, despite the fact that the no one knows which opera house the Duke is going to show up at, everyone else has taken sides. The Russells (sitting in the center box, per George’s orders), the Wintertons (sitting in a not-so-central box, to Mrs. Winterton’s dismay), Marian (on the arm of Larry Russell, who she’ll actually kiss, at last!), and even Aurora and Charles Fane, are attending the Met.

Mrs. Astor’s loyal friend, Aunt Agnes, is at the Academy, along with Ward McAllister and Mamie Fish, but the rest of the crowd there is thin. (Mamie ultimately abandons them for the Met, as her only loyalty lies in whatever the majority is doing.) But where is that damn Duke? It’s like both of these theaters are showing Red, White and Blaine, and he is Mort Guffman.

Gladys is hoping that her newest suitor, Billy Carlton, can sit in her family box, and Bertha shuts that idea down right quick. That’s because Bertha knows something no one else does: the Duke of Buckingham will be joining them because Bertha may have promised him the ultimate key to the city, something not even Mrs. Astor could offer: a marriage to a wealthy American daughter. And poor Gladys has no idea. (In fact, George also doesn’t know… considering the big stink he raised earlier this season about how Gladys should marry for love.) The Duke, sorry, Hector, takes a seat next to Gladys, Bertha reveals to George that she’s the reason Mrs. Winterton was thrown out of the Academy, and Mrs. Winterton snarls in her box seats. In less than a minute, a season’s worth of disgruntled drama is set up. Where George once seemed to delight in his wife’s machinations, now his brow has furrowed a little as he realizes the Real Housewives-level mess she’s starting.

When Marian returns home after an all-night dinner at the Russells, Ada and Agnes have been waiting for her. While everyone else was out at the opera, Ada was going through Luke’s paperwork, and came across a startling discovery: despite his meager minister’s salary, the guy was loaded. His family fortune will go to his sole heir, Ada, and none of them will have to move. Aunt Agnes tells Bannister the news with glee, their money problems are solved and the servants’ jobs are safe. Bannister complies, but then quickly adds, “Miss Ada… is that your wish?” Because now that Ada’s bankrolling the household, Agnes is no longer the Alpha.

“Things may be a little different in the future, Agnes. But I’m sure we’ll work it out,” Ada smiles at her big sister, who is not happy at all about her demotion.

Fade to black and cue the commercial for Tostitos, because the Super Bowl episode has ended and the game has changed for everyone.

Stray Thoughts:

• What’s the story with Miss Andre, Bertha’s new French ladies maid? Nothing on this show feels unintentional, so I’m assuming that season three (?) will lead to some big reveal, although the reveal can’t be that she’s not French, since we’ve already been there, done that.
• Larry Russell wants to go into the clock business with Jack. I don’t have reason to dislike Larry, but if he tries to swindle Jack, so help me…
• Bertha sucks as a mother sometimes, but she’s been a very nice boss all season, and kindly gives Mrs. Bruce and Chef Borden tickets to the Met, where they have a glorious date.
• Watson (Michael Cerveris) is actually leaving to go live life as a retired banker and father to his daughter Flora! Is this really the last we’ll see of him?

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.