‘The Gilded Age’: Empires Rise & Empires Fall But Dinner with the President Is Forever

“Everyone wants to go where they’re not invited,” says Oscar van Rhijn in the second episode of the deliciously good fourth season of HBO’s The Gilded Age. For three delectable seasons, the Julian Fellowes corseted drama has pitted the old and the new ways of life of New York City society against one another, but this new outing offers a covert perspective ready to infiltrate every coveted lavish dinner and soiree. With our favorite families and figures of society duking it out for prominence, perhaps no one notices the new ambitious partnership forming right under their noses. With each passing season, The Gilded Age finds even more ample, juicy drama as its characters confront more treacherous social territory. It is a crowning achievement.

Has Carrie Coon’s face at the end of season three’s finale haunted you since last year? It can’t just be me, right? The Russell household has been thrown into disarray since Morgan Spector’s George and Coon’s Bertha sparred over their daughter’s path to happiness, but season four begins with the birth of Gladys Russell’s first child to the Duke of Buckingham. Even though Bertha was unyielding in the ambitions for her daughter, that sea has seemed to calm now that Gladys has found her footing in her own life across the Pacific. Maybe Bertha assumed that some time apart from her beloved husband would soften the edges of their unexpectedly deep disagreements, but that charge between them has gone from understood devotion to frustrated squabbles to something, perhaps, something seismic. Someone give Mom and Dad a talking to! I hate to see them fighting!

It appears, also, that George Russell is off-kilter. After nearly dying from an assassination attempt from an unknown assailant, the beginning of this new seasons finds George seeking vengeance once the perpetrator has been caught in the form of Will Morris, the son of a beleaguered business partner who took their own life in season one. It appears that the incident between Will and George has shaken something to George’s literal core and it has disrupted everything in his life. Spector has always brought a stern, masterly focus to his portrayal of one of New York’s most historically ruthless businessmen, but this new season allows the actor unexpected shades to play as the season’s stakes weight heavily on the success of Russell Industries and the drama unfolding upon itself at home. In earlier seasons, he was able to rely on the sturdiness of his home life if work was causing him grief, but can you picture it…George Russell, adrift and desperate?

Across the street, Cynthia Nixon’s Ada continues to find her own voice as head of the household, much to the chagrin of her sister, Christine Baranski’s Agnes van Rhijn. As a new member of the Heritage Society, Agnes finds a welcome distraction to salvage her dignity and her name when she is selected to host President Grover Cleveland on his upcoming trip to New York, but she finds frustrations when her sister refuses loosen the purse strings in order to spruce up the house. Ada insists that she will not follow anyone else’s example but rather discover her own way, and that cannot be more clear than in the hiring a new footman to replace Clock Twink, also known as the plucky, sensitive Jack Trotter, who might be giving KitchenAid a run for its money as we learn that he is working on perfecting the design of a new mixer for the kitchen. His replacement, Oliver (played by Tony nominee Taylor Trensch) is eager and somewhat doe-eyed, but his youth hasn’t fully understood the ways of tradition. When he serves tea with the milk already poured in during an important interview for Agnes, it causes a tiny, homemade scandal, and when Ada learns of Oliver’s blunder, her “Why?” is spoken with such breathless offense.

The restraint of The Gilded Age has always been a mixture of amusing and decadent, but season four adds a particularly agile and savory perspective in the chemistry found between Oscar van Rhijn and his new bride, Enid–née Turner, previously Winterton. Thank goodness that Fellowes allows characters to return whether they are shunned, climbing the social ladder or rejected to squalor (Mr. Fellowes, I think you for the return of Katie Finneran, even if it is brief). Enid and Oscar entered a marriage of convenience, but they set their sights not just to return to society but to transform it on their own terms. While some women battle it out at the opera house (we thank you for your service, season two), Enid and Oscar want to create salons to celebrate art, conversation, and creativity as they welcome allies and keep tabs on the gossip around town. Kelley Curran and Blake Ritson make for a seductive pair, their eyes askance at the right moment and their voices soft and sweet. Carriage rides become post-party debriefing sessions and every line drips with near-Machiavellian pleasure.

And what of Mr. President? While women like Bertha Russell and Agnes van Rhijn spar for dominance and a place in history, episode five might go down as the season’s, and maybe the series’, finest hour. There is a difference between that restraint and tension, but director Jennifer Getzinger rotates between the two as problems arise and the script utilizes almost the entire ensemble on a night that can make (and break) the most sterling of reputations. This is what we mean when we say that The Gilded Age is thrilling–it’s a fantastic hour.

The hushed control found in every character’s voice remains one of the drama’s best assets. It helps that the radiant ensemble is packed with theater luminaries, and they know how to use their tone and their volume to pitch-perfect effect even as marriages face hurdles and the giants of New York City redraw their plans for domination. It doesn’t matter if you are a railroad tycoon, a humble chambermaid, or even John D. Rockefeller himself. No one can hide from history hurtling forward. Season four proves once and for all that a deep hunger for status knows no bounds. Can you live with yourself and the choices you made?

The Gilded Age airs weekly on Sunday nights on HBO.