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The Gilded Age<\/a><\/p>\n If You Want to Cook an Omelette<\/p>\n \n Season 3<\/p>\n Episode 6\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 4 stars<\/p>\n ****\n <\/p>\n \n George\u2019s meeting with the shady businessmen elicits a lot of intense emotions. This season has really stepped it up. Remember when everyone was just sitting in circles having tea and talking about nothing? (Sometimes Peggy would take notes.) Now we have transatlantic showdowns and covert meetings of industrial titans, Peggy is organizing suffrage meetings for Black women, and Phylicia Rashad is there. What a time to be alive. I mean, the world is in many ways terrible, but also \u2026\u00a0Carrie Coon.<\/p>\n There is so much action this week: Bertha travels to England to help Gladys, George tries to buy a railroad, Jack\u2019s clock fortune<\/a> is discovered, Marian reacts to Larry going to the Haymarket<\/a>, Oscar talks to Maud Beaton, Peggy tells William Kirkland about T. Thomas Fortune, Ada has a crisis with her medium, and two of the servants think they know who has been leaking all the gossip to the papers. (They\u2019re definitely wrong.)<\/p>\n When we left George, he was dramatically proclaiming to Bertha that she should not expect him to be there when she returns from England. Okay, George. You\u2019re dealing with some big feelings right now. We next see him at JP Morgan\u2019s house. Love JP. He has summoned Russell, the Merricks, and Risley Sage. Sage\u2019s first name is Russell, so I think they\u2019re avoiding that entirely and sticking to his two other names. Sage also seems to be a real asshole, historically speaking, as when someone threw a bomb into his office, he used an employee as a HUMAN SHIELD<\/a> and refused to pay any damages to the then-disabled employee. The New York Times headline<\/a> said \u201cSage Must Prove that Laidlaw Would Have Been Injured to the Same Extent Had He Not Been Used As a Defense Against Norcross\u2019s Bomb.\u201d So Sage literally didn\u2019t even claim he didn\u2019t do it. His defense was, \u201cWell, he would\u2019ve gotten just as maimed anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n So Russell is with that guy and then the Merricks, who currently hold a significant number of shares in the coveted Illinois Central Railroad. Morgan says that he has isolated them there at his house, cut off from their horses, and no one is leaving until someone owns 51 percent of this railroad. Also, George\u2019s erstwhile bestie, Clay, is there! Working for Sage. Betrayal! George and Morgan work to convince the Merricks that Sage sucks, and it works, only it\u2019s a handshake deal, so nothing is legally binding. A gamble, George! Sage and Clay conspire to float the idea to the newspapers that Russell Industries is in trouble, causing the stock to fall and the Merricks to pull out of the deal. Oh no! But also, George, what did you expect Clay to do? You very unceremoniously fired him. This is what he does best, so of course he\u2019s out there working for some shifty guy. George needs to find more money, but no one is lending. What they need is a British heiress for Larry. Then it\u2019s like a cross-cultural exchange, but instead of culture, it\u2019s just money. George says that if he can\u2019t save his company, he\u2019ll let it burn. A lot of intense energy is coming from this one lately.<\/p>\n After the Great Shoving of last week between T. Thomas Fortune and Dr. Kirkland, Peggy feels awkward. Marian encourages her to be honest with William, so she goes for it, which is very brave! It\u2019s men in the 1880s (1890s? Which decade are we in now?), so who knows how they\u2019ll react to women doing literally anything. Peggy tells William that when she worked for Fortune, they became something \u201cmore\u201d to each other. William says we all have a past. Peggy wants to go on and, one assumes, tell him about her baby, but he says he cares about only the present. I\u2019ve got my eye on you, William, especially because every engaged man on this show turns out to be sus. Not that they\u2019re engaged. YET. Peggy tells him about F.E.W. Harper and how she is hosting a small tea-based gathering to talk about women\u2019s suffrage. He asks her to invite his mother. Hmmm.<\/p>\n Peggy invites Mrs. Kirkland, who then obviously hates it because it has to do with progress. She thinks the women there should leave the vote to the next generation. Peggy says she is the next generation (wooooooo). Mrs. Kirkland thought they were going to share recipes and talk about their children, because William had not told her this was a suffrage meeting. WILLIAM. When Peggy talks to him about this, he says his mother wouldn\u2019t have come if she knew it was about suffrage. Sir!!! When Mrs. Kirkland and William leave, she asks if he can see Peggy running a house and taking care of the children. William replies that he would be proud of a wife who fights for reform and equality, and his mother tells him that he would be proud of a woman who does that. A wise distinction, Mrs. Kirkland! And if that\u2019s true, then William, you\u2019d better get out of here right now and stop trifling with Peggy\u2019s affections. She has been through TOO MUCH.<\/p>\n Larry is in Arizona trying to make money from copper mines, and Oscar lets it slip that Larry was with him at the Haymarket, which throughout the episode is referred to as a \u201chouse of ill repute,\u201d \u201cdisorderly house,\u201d and a \u201chouse of ill fame.\u201d What it means is people have sex there. Marian is stunned and immediately tells her aunts. Agnes thinks she should call it off and refers to Larry as \u201ca tenor in the opera,\u201d which is pretty apropos, while Ada asks Marian to give Larry the chance to speak for himself. But no! Marian is too distraught and thinks nothing could possibly fix this between them. Marian, he didn\u2019t even do anything. She calls it \u201ca shadow between them.\u201d She writes a breakup letter and gives it to Church to give to Larry in about a month. Church is confused and like, \u201cYou know you could send him a wire,\u201d but Marian\u2019s heart cannot be conveyed via wire.<\/p>\n Speaking of Ada and Agnes, Armstrong tells Agnes how much Jack made from his clock, and her reaction is Christine Baranski\u2013level grandiose. She refers to him as their Croesus-like footman and \u201ca Rockefeller in livery\u201d and tells Ada that this is her house and she must handle it. When Ada goes to the medium to find out what Luke thinks, Madame Dashkova has his spirit speaking Italian, as a misprint in the paper had his name as Luca Forte. Ada is crushed as she realizes none of this is real, and she tells Dashkova she should be ashamed of her existence. C\u2019mon, Ada. It\u2019s a service.<\/p>\n Ada ends up telling Jack it\u2019s time he made his way in the world. He tells her that this house is the closest thing to a home he\u2019s ever known, and she says the staff will keep being his family. Not really, Ada! You can tell your co-workers you\u2019ll be in one another\u2019s lives forever, but how often does that really happen? I mean, do I have a group chat with six people from my old job whom I text daily? Yes, but Jack doesn\u2019t have texting technology! But he can\u2019t argue with Ada, so he moves out immediately and gives everyone (including Agnes and Ada) money because he is a good egg.<\/p>\n Bertha and Lady Sarah. I\u2019ve been waiting for this since last week. Lady Sarah exerts a Mrs. Danvers quality that, as a lesbian, I find very compelling, but that doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t want her forcefully put in her place by Bertha. Bertha sits down with Gladys and finds out that Hector and Sarah\u2019s parents died when Hector was young, and Sarah has been bossing him around ever since. Bertha tells Gladys that she needs to remind Hector who gave him piles of cash and that he should behave accordingly. Then Bertha\u2019s maid, Andr\u00e9, tells her that the scuttlebutt is that Sarah is trying to wear Gladys down and train her like a puppy. That\u2019s it. The gloves are off \u2014 unless they\u2019re needed for a social event, in which case they\u2019ll stay on.<\/p>\n At dinner, the English are talking about Mr. Gladstone\u2019s reform bill<\/a> (\u201cBut do we want a bunch of vagabonds and farm laborers to decide how we are governed?\u201d), which means we now know that we are in 1884. Bertha introduces the topic of suffrage for women, and when Sarah dissents, Bertha inquires if Sarah thinks women are stupider than men or unequipped for important decisions. Should the queen have stuck to her proper sphere and refused the crown, Bertha asks? Sarah mumbles some nonsense and changes the subject. Gladys sees Bertha\u2019s value! A triumph! Gladys later tells her that she learned how to manage things from Bertha. Considering her life is falling apart, Bertha is doing a truly amazing job here. And she\u2019s not putting anything on Gladys. She\u2019s handling things the Mulaney way<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gladys steps her shit up at the next dinner when Sarah stands up to lead the women away, and Gladys asks her if she\u2019s quite well: \u201cI thought, when you stood without waiting for me, that you must be ill.\u201d Sarah sits back down. YEEEEEAH. YEEEEEAH, GLADYS. YOU DID IT. YOU are Mrs. de Winter now!<\/a> The next day (I think?), Bertha and Gladys say good-bye, and Bertha tells her how proud she is of her. Then she stares into the middle distance, trying not to cry. It\u2019s okay, Bertha! You said you would fix it, and you did!<\/p>\n We end with Oscar and John Adams. I didn\u2019t want to talk about it, but I will because it\u2019s a shocking ending, but also is it<\/a>? They\u2019re chatting because Oscar has sent off Maud Beaton with a train ticket to Ohio and $100, and John is happy with the person Oscar is becoming<\/a>. Oscar tells John that he\u2019s his savior. In the words of my in-the-moment notes, \u201cAwwww, he wanted to kiss him. Oh fuck, John gets hit by a horse and cart.\u201d<\/p>\n THAT\u2019S RIGHT. Half of our gay characters just got Regina George\u2019d in the street by a massive horse. Is John alive?<\/a> I don\u2019t know! Did another gay character get traumatized on TV by watching their partner\/ex-partner get gravely injured and possibly die? Yes! There are so many people who could have gotten run over by that horse. There are so many characters on this show that I still don\u2019t know all of their names. Stop! Running over! Gay characters! With! Horses! One star deducted from this episode rating for contributing to a shitty trope.<\/p>\n \u2022 That copper-mine guy \u2026 Is he for real, or is this one of those classic mining scams?<\/p>\n \u2022 So Lady Sarah \u2026 Is she, like, available or \u2026?<\/p>\n \u2022 We all know that Bertha is the one sending gossip to the papers, right?<\/p>\n VULTURE NEWSLETTER<\/p>\n Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Karolina Wojtasik\/HBO\n <\/p>\n