George Russell (Morgan Spector) is a railroad company owner who wants to grow his business and his influence. His wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon), is tired of her old upper middle class friends. They build and move into a new house in the fashionable part of Fifth Avenue as Bertha is determined to be accepted as part of the highest echelons of society. Bertha also hopes her children Larry (Harry Richardson) and Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) may make some of the connections necessary to join the Four Hundred.
Across the street from the Russells are two representatives of the old money elites. Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon) and Agnes Van Rijin (Christine Baranski), often referred to as ”the Aunts,” are sisters whose family tree goes back to the days of Dutch control of the city. Agnes’ son Oscar (Blake Ritson) has a very busy social calendar and isn’t always home. Ada and Agnes are definitely not in favor of Bertha’s plans to infiltrate their social circle.
Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) has to move in with her aunts Agnes and Ada after her fathers’ death. Adjusting to a new life depending on their financial generosity and the social norms of the elite is difficult. On the platform waiting for the train that will take her to the city she meets Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), a young Black woman who is also traveling to the city for a fresh start. She wants to be a writer but first needs to find work to pay the rent in the meantime.
Both the aunts and the Russells employ servants to cook, clean and serve. Some view their jobs as just a way to pay the rent while others want to move up in the world. These scenes in the kitchen and servants quarters are not just for sharing gossip. These workers are at the core of the scoial inequality that existed in the 1880’s.
The Gilded Age Story
Bertha’s attempt to show off the new house and ingratiate herself with society, along with Marian adjusting to living with her previously estranged aunts, forms the bulk of the episodes’ action. Peggy’s new job as a secretary to a wealthy white woman places her on a trajectory where she has to balance the world she comes from while navigating a space where there is sure to be racial and sexist hostility. These are the plotlines sure to drive the engine of drama in future episodes.
The comparisons between the Crawleys and the Russells are inevitable especially as Fellowes initially pitched The Gilded Age to networks as Robert and Cora Crawley’s backstory during this era. However, many of these comparisons are predicated on the notion that similarities are either bad or unoriginal. Reusing tropes and having a signature style of storytelling is not always a bad thing. First of all, period drama as a genre thrives on adapting many of the same stories with subtle or bold changes each time. Upstairs, Downstairs (both the 1970’s series and the 2010 sequel series) was the period drama that established the dynamic of exploring both the elite classes and the lives of their servants simultaneously. Fellowes and other screenwriters have used that format since to flesh out new characters and shift that formula to different eras in time.