‘The Gilded Age’ season 3, episode 6 recap: Gladys cooks her omelettes
Plus, Larian is over, Peggy is back from Philly, and tragedy keeps following Oscar
By 
WHAT’S UP WITH HBO and omelettes? There is, of course, the endlessly quoted “You can’t make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs” from Succession. Now, The Gilded Age has its more elegant version in Bertha, imparting to Gladys about taking her new role as a duchess seriously. The eggs in this case? Lady Sarah. Yum.
As the season ramps up to its near end, this week’s episode had a lot to show for where the upstairs-downstairs drama is headed. First on the list, the show can’t give us nice things, so Marian has broken off her engagement with Larry. Peggy is back from Philly. Russell Industries is on the verge of collapse – “I’ll see it burn”, says the Railway King, rather than salvage it. John joins the upstairs society. And tragedy seems to follow Oscar around like a bad smell.
Below, we recap the happenings of our favourite late-19th-century New Yorkers.
Read last week’s recap on ‘The Gilded Age’ here.
Bertha goes to England
Mother Bertha to the rescue! She arrives to find Gladys being “trained like a puppy” by Lady Sarah, who assumed the role of duchess-mentor after her and Hector’s mother died when they were children. In other words, Sarah has mummied Hector into a himbo man-child. A pleasant one, though, as he tries to accomodate for his new wife and mother-in-law when she comes to stay. Bertha delivers an elegant metaphor about getting what you want to her daughter. “If you want to cook an omelette, you have to break a few eggs,” she says. “Says the woman who hasn’t cooked an omelette in 20 years,” retorts Gladys.
Staying in King William IV’s room – who died in it after failing to turn Sidmouth into a port (foreshadowing about George?) – Bertha’s French lady’s maid, André, gets some intel about how Gladys is being treated at Sidmouth. How glad the matriarch is that she has someone to fight her battles with. Back at Casa Russell downstairs, the Baz Luhrmann-looking chef and Mrs. Bruce have concluded that it’s André who’s leaking gossip to the press.
At dinner, Bertha verbally cooks Lady Sarah into an omelette at dinner as the Brit talks about how ridiculous it would be for women to have the vote. “Do we have a suffragette in our midst?” she says to Bertha. Bertha asks bluntly if Sarah thinks women are too stupid to have a say in who runs their government, a refreshing tone in this drab castle, to which Sarah believes that women should stay in their “proper sphere”. Adding some pepper to this omelette, Bertha asks if Queen Victoria was of sound mind to accept the throne. We shouldn’t talk about the choices our sovereign makes, Sarah says, as the table looks down at their food, defeated.
Gladys cooks some omelettes
With Sarah so used to being the highest-ranking woman in the room, she reflexively stands up to usher the women away for dessert (or to let the men talk business, because, again, women don’t belong in that sphere). Bertha gives her daughter the signal: crack this egg! The dollar princess gets her satisfying turn at the pan, essentially telling her sister-in-law to sit the f*ck down in the most backhanded way: “Are you not well?” I’m so using that.
Hector now realises the duchess Gladys was made to be; she’s interested in the running of the estate, which pleases him. With Bertha saving her daughter’s marriage, she now heads back to New York to her failing one. We ended last week’s episode with George threatening not to return home after his business trip. She’d better heat up another pan.
George is in near financial ruin
I am no business person. I am a recapper. So when George and his chummy business friends start throwing numbers around, my eyes glaze over and I start reaching for my phone. But what I did gather was George, JP Morgan, Merrick, and some of George’s competitors are battling out their railway dukedoms for dominance. Morgan tries to corral Edgar behind George, who is the only one who can bring his land, railway, and family legacy into the future. But as Clay and Sage head back to New York, they conspire against George that they know where “the bodies are buried”. Their salacious tidbit to the Tribune sends the Russell stock plummeting, and leaves George in a tailspin about his next move. The man’s biceps have been holding up the American economy for a while, so it stands to reason that he rests in ruin.
Marian breaks off the proposal
Ah, we spoke too soon. I said earlier this season that the only person to stop the engagement would be Marian herself. Indeed, after finding out from Oscar and John that Larry had lied about being at “Del Monico’s” with his Harvard old boys, she can’t trust him. Haymarket as “a house of ill repute” she said to her cousin (god, I love florid Gilded Age language). After telling her aunts about it, too, Marian has now broken off the engagement. You should let him speak for himself, said her Aunt Ada. To hell with the vulgar Russells! said Aunt Agnes. I’m with Ada on this one.
Larry strikes copper in Arizona
While the Russell heir can’t exactly speak for himself for lying to his fiancée, his mission in the desert is paying off. He learns that his father’s mines and railways have found a bounty in copper, “enough to last a century”. As all hope seems lost for George, he might find yet another windfall in the copper industry. And enough to last the Russell name for a century, something most Gilded Age families have failed to do IRL.
Peggy is back from Philly
Our girl Peggy is back from interviewing the suffragette Mrs. (long name) Harper in Philadelphia. Her boyfriend, Dr. Kirkland, greets her on arrival, and he asks if his racist mother can come along to Peggy’s suffrage meeting. As the monster-in-law shows up, she’s blind-sided by the progressive discussion. It doesn’t exactly help sway her to seeing Peggy’s ambitions and career as positives. As Peggy observes, Mrs. Kirkland thinks she’s “too busy, too ambitious, and not the right colour”. With only two episodes left, the ball’s in Dr. Kirkland’s court to fight for Peggy from her ex-beau Mr. Fortune and from his mother.
John joins the Gilded Age upstairs class
After being paid $300,000 (about $10 million in today’s money) for his half of the clock patent, John thought he could keep on living with his downstairs family at the Van Rhijn/Forte household. But the other staff feel uneasy around their newly-minted co-worker. Sweetly enough, the young lad admits that he doesn’t have family outside of his work one.
Armstrong was the one to tell Agnes and Ada just how much John earned. Agnes won’t have “a Rockefeller in livery” serve her breakfast. Since it’s her sister’s household now, Ada has a sit-down with John, telling him that he needs to occupy his new position upstairs. As he’s sent off, he gives back everyone’s investment that he loaned for his patent. Maybe it’s the halo effect of receiving a 20 per cent ROI, but even the pessimistic Armstrong got a slice. “I’m bursting with pride!” shouted Bauer.
Meanwhile, Ada called BS on her psychic that Luke was talking from beyond the grave. It’s tragic to see her disbelief. But Agnes, being the older sister that she is, comforts her sister, saying simply that he will always be in Ada’s heart.
Tragedy follows Oscar around like a bad smell
I was kind of hoping for a messy showdown between Oscar and Maude Beaton. Where is my money, you charlatan! I wanted him to say. Oscar is, of course, pissed when he confronts Maude at Haymarket. She ushers him away to Room 12 to avoid a scene, where she reveals her own tragic backstory. We learn her father gave her away after losing a bet, and that her marketable elegance at Haymarket is reserved only for the top-paying clients. She also reveals that she was also conned out of the Van Rhijn money, that a man named Crauther took off with it. How she wishes her story of a mythical fortune were true, that she and Oscar just married.
Oscar, a new man, gives her a train ticket to some armpit of a town in Ohio and $100. He tells this to his confidant/ex-beau John Adams at the men’s club, and he’s impressed at how far Oscar has come. Oscar is also a working man now. Of course, we can’t have nice things. So the episode ends with John Adams getting hit by a carriage horse out of control. How it was brought to screen was a violent piece of CGI, I must say, as the camera followed his body flying through the air.
Related:
The best TV series, movies and documentaries to stream in July
All of the JFK Jr outfits from the set of Ryan Murphy’s ‘American Love Story’
