Just How Dramatic Is ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2: An Investigation

Proma Khosla
·4 min read

A gasp went around the world when viewers learned that Marian (Louisa Jacobsen) has been teaching children watercolors in “The Gilded Age” Season 2, Episode 1.

Less of a gasp and more of a chuckle, really, as “The Gilded Age” did what it arguably does best, delivering an extremely minor narrative development with the intensity of something much more significant. The show is filled with such petty inconveniences, as well as actual serious developments, all of it sold to full effect by the cast and setting. Teaching watercolor probably was a big deal for a high-society unmarried woman in the 19th-century, but it’s exacerbated on “The Gilded Age” by Aunt Agnes’ (Christine Baranski) reaction. Truly, watching characters on the show react to everything from the wrong napkin to a secret child is one of the joys of watching this series.

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To get some perspective, IndieWire picked a handful of major plot developments in Season 2 of “The Gilded Age” (so far). We then used an extremely scientific system to assess each one by shock value (how the characters react), reality (how big of a deal this actually is), and possible impact, adding those scores up to a total. So how dramatic is “The Gilded Age” Season 2 so far? Let us find out.

1. Marian’s secret

An unmarried, high-society woman teaches watercolors to children!

Shock Value: 3 (thanks to a previous scene teasing the secret)
Reality Check: 0
Potential Impact: 0
Total: 3

2. The truth about Peggy’s son

Peggy (Denée Benton) has been absolutely through it in a few short episodes; at the end of Season 1 viewers learned she had a son who died, but that he maybe didn’t, and now the death is confirmed. Poor Peggy.

Shock Value: 5
Reality Check: 5
Potential Impact: 5
Total: 15

3. Mr. Raikes (Thomas Cocquerel) gets married

In Season 1, Marian had a whirlwind romance with a lawyer from Pennsylvania, only for him to turn out to be kind of a Gilded Age f-boy. In Season 2, Episode 2, someone casually mentioned that Raikes has married and Marian has to process this.

Shock Value: 3
Reality Check: 3
Potential Impact: 1
Total: 7

4. Oscar (Blake Ritson) gets attacked

The young Mr. Van Rhijn goes to a bar to drown his sorrows after his marriage proposal gets rejected, and ends up leaving with a stranger who beats him bloody instead of the night Oscar likely had in mind. When he comes home and collapses, the women of his house scream and call for help and appear to be on the verge of tears.

Shock Value: 4
Reality Check: 4
Potential Impact: 2
Total: 10

5. Bertha wages war

Carrie Coon’s new money socialite will probably never be satisfied, but this season her mission is to get a box at the opera, because that’s where all of respectable society conducts their social affairs. When she’s denied a box at one venue, she goes all in on the other, hosting a dinner with a rival opera house curator as a guest, as well as an actual opera singer who has flown out to perform. She humiliates her rival Mrs. Astor and leaves no remains.

Shock Value: 3
Reality Check: 3
Potential Impact: 3
Total: 9

6. Oscar proposes to Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga)

She doesn’t want to marry him and it’s absolutely no issue; father George (Morgan Spector) is calm, they have a civil discussion, and he rejects Oscar on his daughter’s behalf

Shock Value: 3
Reality Check: 3
Potential Impact: 1
Total: 7

7. Peggy comes back to work

Some might say things have gone back to exactly how they were in Season 1!

Shock Value: 0
Reality Check: 1
Potential Impact: 1
Total: 2

8. Larry (Harry Richardson) kisses his employer

A married woman!…with a dead husband. Not the best choice of partner for Larry but certainly not the worst, but his mother is displeased nonetheless. Important to note this exchange between them:

Bertha: “Decent women don’t sleep with men young enough to be their son.”
Larry: “This one does!”

Shock Value: 2
Reality Check: 3
Potential Impact: 4
Total: 9

9. Watson’s (Michael Cerveris) family reunion

The handmaids, footmen, and other household workers don’t get much screen time on “The Gilded Age,” but when they do it’s stuff like Watson’s adult daughter turning up at a dinner with her husband and the poor man having to serve them and also keep a poker face. Ouch!

Shock Value: 4
Reality Check: 4
Potential Impact: 3
Total: 11

10. The Russells old ladies’ maid (Kelly Curran) returns

Remember the woman who tried to seduce George Russell by laying naked in his marital bed so he’d mistake her for his wife and then sleep with her? She’s back, baby! Only now she’s married a wealthy man and the Russells must rub elbows with her like nothing happened.

Shock Value: 4
Reality Check: 4
Potential Impact: 4
Total: 12

“The Gilded Age” Season 2 airs Sundays on HBO.

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