In the current season of HBO’s Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That…, Carrie Bradshaw is fixated on the past.
More specifically, she can’t stop thinking about the generations of New York City women who once called her lavish new townhouse home—so much so that her latest writing project centers on the lives and loves of 19th century Manhattanites.
In other words, she’s basically writing a crossover-in-the-making with the streamer’s tentpole historical drama The Gilded Age, just in time for its Season 3 premiere Sunday night. While the two series share a star in Cynthia Nixon, The Gilded Age’s enjoyable yet scattered latest season could desperately use some of Carrie’s punchy trademark voiceovers to tie everything together.
Apart from tracking how many Tony nominees it can cram into a soundstage in any given shot, the real joy of The Gilded Age is watching creator Julian Fellowes, co-showrunner Sonja Warfield, and co. put so much lavish fuss into storylines with some of the most nonexistent stakes in narrative television history. Remember, this is a show where opera attendance and Christine Baranski’s decision to cross the street are treated with earth-shaking importance. At any given moment, there are seemingly ten minute things happening and also nothing at all.
Rest assured, there’s plenty more where that came from in Season 3—texting my friends about Nathan Lane’s 1880s mustache or a servant’s quest to get his alarm clock patented is a delight that I wish everyone could experience. It’s when the writers half-heartedly attempt to manufacture more traditional dramatic stakes for the characters that The Gilded Age’s gently campy rhythms get thrown out of whack.
Kindly, charisma-free debutante Marion Brook (Louisa Jacobson) is still the series’ ostensible protagonist. Yet anyone who’s even half-watched an episode while folding laundry knows that the new money Russell family are what really makes The Gilded Age worth tuning into every Sunday night.
Scheming railroad tycoon George (Morgan Spector) and his even more ambitious wife Bertha’s (Carrie Coon) uncharacteristically modern, borderline steamy partnership sends a jolt of energy into the otherwise-languid narrative whenever they appear on screen. As much as Manhattan’s upper crust old money elites might grouse about Bertha’s ostentatious grabs for social power, there’s a reason why her newly established stewardship of the Metropolitan Opera puts their stuffy counterpart to shame—the Russells simply make for better TV.
That’s why it’s particularly disappointing to watch them get shunted into an isolated, overwhelmingly predictable storyline this year. At the end of Season 2, Bertha was poised to raise her family’s standing exponentially by arranging a marriage between her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) and the posh Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb).
The trouble is, Gladys is already in love with a local boy, and George has promised her that she can marry for love! Fellowes has made no secret of his fondness for pulling from real Gilded Age history, and without giving away spoilers, the Russells’ conflict over Gladys’ marriage prospects is instantly reminiscent of real-life American socialite Conseulo Vanderbilt.
“Happiness as a by-product of a well-ordered life may last,” Bertha scoffs during one argument. “As a goal, it is doomed to failure.”
George and Bertha’s power couple being threatened by their drastically different visions for success makes for an interesting relationship study on paper. The trouble is, no matter how effectively Spector and Coon sell their characters’ marital discord, The Gilded Age’s writers barely allow either of them to evolve past their initial stances on the matter.
When they’re not acting out their own chamber drama, George is often away attempting to build a robust transcontinental railroad that transports visitors between America’s cities “without ten stops along the way.” (He doesn’t know that the oil and gas lobbyists will someday tear that possibility to shreds, but it’s a nice idea!) That unfortunately means that Bertha’s society-ruffling flair is largely reserved for her own household, and the rest of the show’s setpieces suffer as a result.
Across 61st Street, the power dynamics between grand dame Agnes van Rhijn (Baranski) and her sister Ada Forte (Nixon) have been upended after Ada conveniently discovered that her late husband had left her his family fortune… mere months after Agnes’ son Oscar got scammed out of their family fortune.
Ada mainly wields her newfound power by attempting to convince the household staff to give up alcohol and promote temperance in tribute to her late husband. By the end of the season, she even works up the courage to sit at the head of the table during dinner—the perfect Gilded Age climax!
Meanwhile, Marion is inching closer to her third consecutive engagement after reconnecting with her sweetheart, Larry Russell (Harry Richardson). Since they’re part of the show’s two main families, watching their will-they-won’t-they flirtations has all the intrigue of watching paint dry. But they’re both lovely to look at in the meantime!
At least Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) finally gets to have some fun. Thanks to creatives like Warfield and the show’s historian and co-executive producer, Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, The Gilded Age at its best has offered illuminating looks at upper-class Black Brooklyn society and Black journalism in the late 19th century.
But the show often struggles to organically incorporate its Black characters, resorting to didactic monologues about racial inequities and disproportionately putting Peggy through the emotional wringer. This time around, she gets to enjoy the romantic highs of the season, as sparks fly between her and young doctor William Kirkland (Jordan Donica).
While Peggy’s journalistic endeavors are sadly put on the back burner for now—she interviews famed Black suffragette Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Lisagay Hamilton) offscreen!—it’s lovely to watch Benton imbue Peggy with the romantic luminosity she so memorably brought to her breakout role in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.
So yes, The Gilded Age does make some odd stabs at dramatic tension this time around—most notably in two bizarre, life-threatening episode cliffhangers that feel jarringly out of step with the show’s generally mild tone. And characters are split up far more than they should be in a society where one person’s absence at a luncheon inspires weeks’ worth of gossip.
But if you already loved it in all its ridiculous, opulent glory, there’s still plenty to enjoy this time around. Fellowes recently told Vulture that he dreams of viewers getting sucked into historical Wikipedia rabbit holes. Throw in some sleepy time tea and a few check-ins on the gay and theater internets, and you’re golden!
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