The Gilded Age Season 2: Teaser Time
It’s telling that the official teaser for The Gilded Age’s second season, set to air its first episode on October 29th, focuses almost entirely on the show’s one compelling conflict: the struggle between Old Money New York society and the “new people,” beneficiaries of rampant industrialism gripping the United States in the late 19th century. In the first part of this series, I focused on this central conflict and hardly touched on the other plot lines the show set in motion. These included the commercial battles in which Mr. Russell engaged against rival business owners and other men of power, the romantic situation of the ostensible main character and egalitarian outsider Marian, and the various relationships between the servants living in the Van Rhijn and Russell households (though the inter-butler strife was a decent comedic addition). I neglected to focus more than glancingly on these storylines for the simple reason that they are not very interesting, a fact which the creators of the second season’s initial teaser seem to understand. I paid some attention to Peggy Scott’s storyline but did not call attention to the fact that despite its limited connectivity with the rest of the intertwined plot lines, it successfully depicts a storyline centered on a black community that doesn’t perpetually depict them as downtrodden victims of the times.
Having aired its first season in early 2022, The Gilded Age returns to screen after more than a year-and-a-half, providing plenty of time for Julian Fellowes and his creative team to gauge public opinion before delving further into the development of its next installment. As evidenced by the teaser’s almost complete focus on the central conflict between old and new money. Reviewers also noted how insignificant the show’s other storylines are; As NPR puts it, “the engine of the show is not that tension [between “upstairs” and “downstairs”], but Bertha Russell's passionate desire to be accepted into New York's old money society.” The teaser, linked above, leans into this by highlighting that Bertha Russell’s quest for acceptance from Mrs. Astor and the rest of New York society is far from over. The last season concluded with Mrs. Russell’s temporary victory over Mrs. Astor, the ruler of New York’s old money crowd. It also concluded with various other wins and losses for characters who are all featured in the second season’s teaser, but can’t be considered memorable parts of the show.
It’s almost cruel how Fellowes’s rabid commitment to egalitarianism allows the servant population to be portrayed in the show. Compared with the large-scale implications of the societal squabbles between the old and new people that the show spends so much time on, the travails of the servants’ lives seem markedly less significant than if they hadn’t been shown at all. When Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Astor spar, the show frames these conflicts as evidence of sweeping socioeconomic change, perhaps rightly so. Against the backdrop of Thomas Edison’s electrical achievements and Clara Barton’s founding of the Red Cross, we see the show’s wealthiest characters do battle over seemingly trivial matters. Meanwhile, the conflicts and events in which the downstairs staff are embroiled simply occur. The symbolism, itself limited when it comes to the servants’ lives since most of their stories constitute feeble attempts at comedy, is only that the world is supposedly changing for them and that they will soon be more equal with the people whom they serve than ever before. Viewers know that equality and equity elude the lower classes of these United States for many more decades after the era in which the show is set. By the time major improvements in quality of life and civil rights come for America’s poor, most of these servant characters will be dead. Change is coming swiftly for Mrs. Russell, much to Mrs. Astor’s chagrin, yet despite Julian Fellowes’s valiant attempts to speed his beloved servant population along to more equal pastures, The Gilded Age will likely be unable to use the historical realities of progress to do justice to its servant characters in the way that it so actively seeks to. This begs the central question: why does the series devote between a quarter and a third of its long episodes to a population that feels even more siloed than that which Peggy Scott represents? The short answer might be simply to service Fellowes’s desire to present a well-rounded image of the times, one that offers its working poor more dignity than that offered by the likes of Edith Wharton and others who depicted the historical Gilded Age in media. The shorter answer might be that the servants help pad the episodes’ significant run times. This is, of course, just the teaser, the trailer is yet to come and will likely highlight Marian’s and Peggy’s respective plotlines. I doubt that it will highlight servant plotlines but nurse the hope that my accusations of false advertising are disproven.
Stare Down
Courtesy of Town & Country Magazine
