[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 5.]
It’s all new terrain halfway through The Gilded Age Season 3. In Episode 5, which aired Sunday, July 20, on HBO, Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) was living in England on the estate surrounding the fictional Sidmouth Castle, and being the Duchess of Buckingham won’t be easy with her new husband’s sister, Sara (Hattie Morahan), criticizing her every move. As Gladys struggled with Sara, Hector (Ben Lamb) revealed just how much he’s let his sister run their lives.
At home in New York, George Russell (Morgan Spector) was bitter and resentful in Gladys’ absence. This was only compounded by the stresses of work, which prompted him to take drastic action in this installment. Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) hardly had any time to revel in the victory (as she would call it) of her daughter’s nuptials before she started to receive the emotional blowback of the arranged marriage from her husband and son Larry (Harry Richardson). So of course, in came another big change to shake up the family. But this time, it’s one that Bertha is being forced to accept instead of the other way around. Here, Harry Richardson teases what’s to come after another fateful episode, Carrie Coon gives insight into how Bertha will cope with her loss of control in her family’s life, and Morgan Spector gives a glimpse into George’s emotional struggles that’s causing him to go scored-earth on his professional relationships and his marriage.
After a sorrowful wedding last week, one Russell sibling got to have some true romance. Larry proposed to Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) early in the episode, and she said yes through tears of joy. They went to the Forte home to share the happy news, and Aunts Ada (Cynthia Nixon) and Agnes (Christine Baranski) were happy for their niece, but revealing they sold the clock — and that footman Jack (Ben Ahlers) is now a man of means — in the same conversation soured the announcement for poor Agnes. And Marian’s parade was rained on by her own fiancé, who revealed that not only was he leaving for a month on a work trip for his father the very next day, but he also couldn’t celebrate with her that night because he already had plans. Larry planned to propose to Marian that day before George asked him to go to Arizona in place of the newly fired Clay (Patrick Page), and his dinner plans were also already in place. The fact that Larry didn’t have the foresight to prioritize dinner with his bride-to-be that night is a concerning sign, especially considering the fact that Marian is rather insecure when it comes to marriage. After two failed engagements, she wants to get it right. Richardson explains why their union will work.
“Larry needs someone who is quite sure of themselves and an equal partner to face up against. They’re very, very much — by the the complexities and the things that’s making them suffer and struggle — exactly what he needs because he needs this equal partner,” Richardson tells TV Insider. “He’s very attracted to the fact that she speaks up for herself and she does her own thing. That’s the thing that he’s trying to do in his life, so he’s very drawn to her. He’s not drawn to someone who might be playing the game as much or going through the societal should-ness. They’re very drawn to each other because they’re both rebellious and that also brings up their complexity.”
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George let Larry propose to Marian without Bertha’s knowledge as payback for Bertha doing the same with Gladys. As said in Episode 4, Bertha didn’t think Marian had enough status to be a bridesmaid in Gladys’ wedding, and the underlying message there was that she felt Marian wasn’t a high-profile match for her son, Larry and Marian’s romantic feelings for each other be damned. But Bertha was convinced to let Marian into the bridal party, and now she’s being forced to be OK with having no say in her son’s engagement. But can Bertha really be content with that lack of control? Coon says that despite what it may seem, Bertha “really respects” her neighbor and “feels like Marian has good taste.” But you can see the discomfort clear as day when Bertha learns the news of the engagement (and Larry going to Arizona) in front of a dinner guest, Alfred Merrick (Paul Alexander Nolan), a dashing, wealthy New York businessman whom George asked Bertha to help charm into a business deal with Russell Industries.
Speaking of the engagement, Coon tells TV Insider, “I was really curious to see what the writers would do with that plot point because for me with Marian, I’ve always felt that Marian is so much more a Bertha than Gladys is, that Bertha would have a lot of respect for Marian’s desire for freedom. She’s very plucky and she does things on her own and she breaks the rules, which Bertha also does. And yet it was a bridge too far for Bertha, like she didn’t have enough status for her son ultimately.”
Richardson says Larry doesn’t realize that he’s looking to recreate what his parents have, but he certainly sees power-couple potential with Marian and that’s part of the attraction.
“I don’t know if he’s conscious that he’s going up to someone who might be like his mother, but I think he does really love their dynamic of being equals and being a really powerful union together,” Richardson explains. “He’s really aspiring to that. He’s not going after someone particularly submissive or a different power dynamic to him. He really wants someone to meet him head-on and to be in a harmonious, mature, and respectful communication.”
That respect would include making sure your schedule is free on the night of your engagement. Moving forward, how does this season’s tagline, “Love conquers all, or costs you everything,” apply to Larry and Marian? Richardson teases that, “By its nature, that’s the way of love. It is overcoming and also you’ve got to give everything away to truly be in the frequency of love.”
“That’s the exploration for every character,” he continues. “They’re all struggling with what to hold on to, and they try to have power over each other, but really they’ll only really have power when they give up the power, and when they fall into this love and in this heart space and then that in turn conquers what complexity they’re coming up against.”
That would be sage advice for George and Bertha, who ended the episode on the worst terms we’ve ever seen them. After receiving word from Gladys confirming his fears that she’s miserable in England, George threatened to leave Bertha at the end of the episode. She promised to go to England to help Gladys and “make everything right.” George said he wasn’t convinced that she could and not to expect him to be home when she gets back.
Karolina Wojtasik / HBO
Morgan Spector tells TV Insider that feeling like he’s losing power is affecting all of his most important relationships. When it comes to Bertha, the power he refers to is the strength of their bond, the one thing each of them could always return to to feel reset, recharged, and ready to take on the world. But as shared after Episode 4, George “has a sense that maybe they’re not speaking the same language” anymore.
“As his life begins to unravel and he’s feeling actually quite vulnerable, he just doesn’t feel like they can talk about it,” Spector says of George’s anger. “Clay, for instance, who he sort of banishes from his life, it’s Clay’s lack of confidence in George’s judgment, which is really the final straw, and that’s precisely what’s at issue between George and Bertha. It’s interesting the way that one conflict and one relationship can create a sensitivity that can play into another another relationship, which is what happens with Clay.”
Coon comes to Bertha’s defense, saying, “To be fair, George isn’t operating at full disclosure, so she doesn’t know exactly the stakes that he’s dealing with because he’s not really telling her. He doesn’t even tell her that he fires Clay, which is startling.”
“The cost” of Bertha’s success with Gladys’ marriage “is great,” Coon says, and part of that cost is George no longer sharing the depths of his true feelings until they explode. Coon assures that while things look dire for George and Bertha right now, “the train hasn’t left the station.”
The Gilded Age, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO
