‘The Gilded Age’ Recap: Season 3, Episode 7

We open on Cassell & Co. books. I want books. Gimme books. In a real Truman Capote move, Mrs. Astor’s sidekick, Ward McAllister, has written about the upper echelons of New York in his book, Society As I Have Found It, and society is not happy. Mamie Fish is furious. Bertha Russell is shocked. When Mrs. Astor’s daughter Charlotte asks her mother what is wrong, Mrs. Astor replies, “Everything.” Maybe Ward has a self-destructive streak, who knows, but society’s doyennes gather at the van Rhijn household (the Forte household now??) and decide to freeze him out. The tea party where it happened. Can I still make Hamilton references in 2025, or are we supersaturated on those? Whatever, it’s happening. “Ambiguously refer to me in your book one more time!” is probably what Mrs. Astor would say if she were really cool.

Did anyone else forget that John Adams was horrifically run over by a horse-and-cart because of the focus on this gossip book? We don’t hear anything about it for so long! And then we find out that John is dead?? The show genuinely murdered 50 percent of its canon queer characters?? BOOOOOOO. BOOOOOOOOOO. Yeah, let’s give gay people more to be sad about in the year 2025. There are 31 recurring characters on this show, and 6 percent of them are gay. So 94 percent are straight, and we can’t run over one of them for our drama? No, let’s use Oscar for trauma porn. BOOOOOOOOOOOOO. If you weren’t here last week and missed learning about the “bury your gays” trope, here you go. This is the laziest of writing, and whoever thought of this subplot should be embarrassed.

Because of John’s death, Oscar plunges into depression. Kate Baldwin pops in as John’s sister and gives Oscar his summer home in upstate New York. She gives Oscar a letter from John and tells him, “What happiness he knew, you gave him.” Oscar comes home and loses his shit at Agnes, saying that at the funeral, he sat at the back of the church like a stranger instead of taking what should have been his rightful place. Agnes is stunned, and Ada and Marian step in to cover for him. After, Marian visits Oscar in his room and basically says, “Hi, I know you’re gay, and I support you.” Oscar is heartened by this. Okay. Let’s leave this story line.

Even though Bertha literally took a ship to England, fixed things like she said she would, and came back, George is still living at the club. He comes home to get some papers, and Bertha tells him about Ward McAllister’s book and says they are not shown in the best light and need to have a unified front at the Astor ball in Newport (I do love that kind of statement). George is very How can you not see that I am in crisis at this time?, which is indeed a very upsetting thing. But also you’re not sharing jack shit with her, George. He vaguely mentions their money troubles seeming very bad and then he escorts Bertha out of his office. Wow, we’re not getting any banging between them this season, are we? My friend thinks we still have the possibility of angry sex, but I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Mrs. Astor tells Bertha that she is going to cancel her Newport ball, which obviously will not fly with Bertha. But Mrs. Astor would have to invite her daughter if she hosted it, and Charlotte is still on the verge of divorce. How will Bertha possibly save … oh, Mrs. Astor asks her to host it instead. Nice. This is after Ward McAllister barges into Mrs. Astor’s after being denied entry and tells her he is society. That’ll fix it, Ward. When she is unmoved by this compelling argument, he reminds her that when they met, she was a sad rich lady whose husband preferred showgirls on his yacht to spending time with her. Aren’t you supposed to be good at conversation, sir?? He visits Bertha, who says “no,” he cannot come to the Newport ball as everyone hates him.

George’s financial instability seems, for a moment, as though it will impact Gladys’s marriage. George tells Hector that he has to delay his payment that month — and possibly not pay it at all. Hector informs Gladys that the money doesn’t matter, but she does. Hector! That’s so weirdly nice. The England story line is probably my favorite right now, and we not only get so little time with it this week, but also Hector and Gladys have been invited to the Newport ball and are leaving Sarah behind. Who’s going to stare unnervingly at everything if she’s not there?? And now Hector is trying to get her to move into her own house in London? What, I’m supposed to just imagine a cartoonish Mrs. Danvers lurking in every corner of the estate now? I’d say “justice for Sarah,” but justice is her moving out, so “fun, continued story line for Sarah.”

Amid all this chaos in the Russell house, Church and his two accomplices (I have zero idea what their names are, but they’re played by musical-theater gems Douglas Sills and Celia Keenan-Bolger) are trying to winkle out the spy who’s leaking gossip to the papers. I know last week I was very positive it was Bertha, but this is because her historical inspiration, Alva Vanderbilt, did this. And yet no!! It was Bertha’s maid, André, all along! Church lays a trap, and André stumbles right into it. She says for every item the newspapers print, she gets $40. Church is very judgy of this, but the random website I plugged it into said $40 in the 1880s is approximately $1,300 today, which is nothing to be judgmental of, Church!

Peggy is helping Frances Ellen Watkins Harper with her American Woman Suffrage Association (Ada refers to it as “AWSA”) event, which Ada and Agnes host at their home. Ada and Agnes chat with Harper after and then Agnes is approached by Mrs. Foster, who has been hounding her via letter for weeks about the New York Heritage Society … or the Heritage Society of New York — I don’t know. What I do know is that Mrs. Foster is played by KATHY GEISS (Marceline Hugot, I love your work). Clearly, something is going to happen here with Agnes, Oscar, and Livingston Manor, but we don’t have to worry about that this week, so let’s move on. Peggy and William are bopping along in their relationship and then his mother’s friend tells her about Peggy’s “past” and how she gave up a child for adoption (reminder: Arthur did this). Mrs. Kirkland says, “My son would never have wanted a tainted woman,” and she immediately leaves for New York. Her friend sips tea.

But what about Marian and Larry? Larrian. LaMar. Lamy. Larry is back from Arizona and now owns some copper mines. He reads Marian’s note, which apparently breaks off their engagement without offering a reason (why, Marian!!). After being denied entry to her home, he intrudes on her at her job. Larry! She has chalkboards to write on! Marian finally tells him how mad she is about him visiting a disorderly house when he said he was going to Delmonico’s (fair), and Larry apologizes. Marian is unmoved. Until!! She is touring Jack’s new stately home (get it, Jack!!) and he confirms that he was with Larry all night and nothing happened at the club.

Speaking of those copper mines, I really thought something shifty was happening there, but instead they’re just amazing, successful copper mines that George now owns. Larry paid to have a new survey done after Clay’s survey showed there was nothing. George is delighted that his son is Business Son and that they can leverage the future copper earnings to buy the railroad. He and Larry are less delighted with Bertha and how they feel she has been behaving lately, and Larry is now also going to live at the club. “Now you’re both at the club and I’m alone,” she says. That could be a dance track. They ignore her and talk about copper, which is a dick move. But I guess so is marrying off your crying daughter to someone she doesn’t know.

George lords his winning of the railway over Sage and Clay. The mines have tens of millions of dollars of untapped copper deposits in them. Sage calls Clay a fool and fires him. George tells Clay he’s finished in New York, to which Clay retorts that he’s like a cockroach with a thousand lives. Is that a brag? That doesn’t sound like a good thing, Clay.

So Marian knows that Larry didn’t do anything at the club. William comes to Peggy’s to ask her about her baby. And then someone comes into George’s office, shoots one of his staff, and then fires on George. End of episode. Shocking if he actually dies. I mean, it’s not as if he’s gay.

• Mrs. Foster = CEO

• What if Bertha holds up a boom box outside George’s club? Would that work?

• I’ll untap your copper deposits, if you know what I mean.