I don’t think Mrs Winterton would sleep with Larry; she’s too smart to risk her [del]livelihood[/del] marriage like that. I’m happy for Ada; I wasn’t expecting a proposal this soon. And it was shocking to see her and Mr Forte making out afterward in a church! Did brides and grooms even kiss during the wedding then?
Yeah I don’t think he’s a real person, he’s probably/possibly just the stand in for the real life duke who married the real life Vanderbilt daughter.
I’m glad Agnes came around to Ada’s marriage in the end. And as brutal as that was Peggy got off easy; at leastvshe didn’t half to actually witness a lynching.
I appreciated the portrayal of Emily Warren Roebling. And that was a true story; her husband was Washington Roebling, son of John Roebling, but Washington became disabled and confined to bed with what we call “the bends” but people then called caisson disease. (The foundations for the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge were built on large boxes, called caissons, sitting on the riverbed.)
As a result of Washington’s disability, Emily took over as chief engineer and supervisor of the bridge construction.
Not that it’s uncharted territory for Fellowes, but did he have to rip off so many Downton Abbey plot points in one episode?
• Someone spiking food or drink at a dinner party only to be undone because someone else just happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time and immediately knows something is up
• a young female writer getting it on with her married editor
• cousins flirting with each other
• a wealthy man about to lose his fortune over a railroad (I’m assuming Oscar is Mr. Crowther’s mark)
• Servants worried how a marriage means redundancies
• A respected valet coerced into leaving his employer
Seriously, are the streets of Downton littered with horse shit, too, and I just never noticed?
Dowton was a small country village and automobiles were coming to fashion so there was much less shit.
Apparently awkward public proposals aren’t a modern invention. 
I almost thought Marion was going to pretend to faint. And was it just me or did Mrs Winterton’s hat resemble the Sydney Opera House?
That felt really Julian Fellowes to me and not something I could ever imagine happening in the real high society of the time - saving public face was just too important to people (plus it’s really tacky).
As you may remember, in Downton Abbey (Julian Fellowes’ previous show), the Crawley family seemed to be more familiar with their household servants than people might have been at the time. My impression (and I may be wrong) is that real people in the position of the Crawleys might not even have known the first names of their staff.
Similarly in this episode, George Russell stands down the troops ready to fire on the striking workers, though in reality, strikes and the response of manaegement and the government were extremely violent and lots of people died.
According to the Official HBO Gilded Age Podcast, the Russell vs labor stuff was loosely based off of the Haymarket Massacre of 1886. But to keep us from hating George Russell, he stopped the shooting before it got as far as Haymarket.
I’m not familiar with Downton but lots of people accuse Fellowes of being very soft and generous with his portrayal of rich people. Someone pointed out on Reddit that it’s like, whatever - there’s so much shit going on in the world today that if the TV has people being kind, it’s ok. We deserve a little respite.
If anything, that scene with the Pinkertons (or was it the National Guard?) and the workers was a great intense piece of television! Not just because we didn’t want to see the workers die but we also really wanted to keep being able to like George Russell.
Well, I think if you had been more familiar with Downton Abbey, you wouldn’t have thought it was great or intense because you probably would have been able to predict exactly what was going to happen.
I mean, I’m not trying to shit on a scene you liked, but a bloodbath of innocents on the hands of an upperclass main character on a Julian Fellowes TV show? I’d love for him to take a page from Game of Thrones and go the I-can’t-believe-they-just-fucking-did-that route, but I doubt it’s ever going to happen. I had a little higher hopes in season 1 when George didn’t seem to care much about that one alderman dude who killed himself after trying to get the better of George, but scenes like the standoff usually go exactly like you think they are going to go.
The piles of horse shit in the streets are about as dirty as this show is ever going to get.
But Fellowes also likes the have his cake and eat it too (Marian got to keep her word about teaching but also made it to the garden party), so considering how out of place George bowing to the workers was in that historical context, and considering how disgusted his man Clay was with the workers (and maybe even George himself), I’m wondering if Clay eventually orders the troops to fire on the workers without George’s knowledge. That allows Fellowes to again have it both ways — George can stay a nice guy to the audience and Fellowes can say he’s not completely abandoning history.
What defied belief for me here is that the troops were operating under instruction from Russell - surely the troops operate under instruction from the Government, they don’t just hand over troops to a businessman to do his will. Or am I wrong in this period?
I’ve been looking out for the horse shit on the basis of this thread. It still looks too clean for me!
I’ve been musing on the introduction of a Duke into the story. This time period would gel well with the time the Earl of Grantham (from Downton) would have met his American wife. I’m half surprised Fellowes didn’t consider inserting Lord Grantham into the story instead of the Duke.
I think timeline-wise, Robert and Cora meeting up is still five-ish years away. Also, I think they meet when she travels to London, or not in New York anyway.
Seems like most people are betting on the duke being set up with Gladys. So it’s like a parallel to the Crawley’s story, which I guess wasn’t exactly uncommon in that day and age.
But yeah, I think everybody is just waiting for the first confirmed Downton crossover, or at least some evidence that the 2 shows take place in the same universe.
well, this was the start of the “dollar princess” phenomenon where the Nouveau riches were selling off their offspring to whatever European nobility they could get and a lot of the nobility were going broke so it was a seller’s market…
Indeed, including Winston Churchill’s parents.
George Russell seems to be modeled on Commodore Vanderbilt, and his daughter Consuelo married the Duke of Marlborough, though they did not love each other, and it was entirely about tthe dowry. As suggested, Fellowes is unlikely to go that route because she would be unhappy, and also either she would need to be written out or the show would need to also focus on her life in England.
I’d say at least 5 confirmed piles of horse shit this week.
Sorry, I hope that spoiler doesn’t ruin it for anyone who hasn’t caught up to the latest episode yet.
The lack of horseshit makes sense - the street we see the most is lined with incredibly wealthy peolle. You don’t think that street would get cleaned more than average?
Much ink was spilled at the time over Downton Abbey’s being something of a sop for liberal consciences in this regard. Of course and unfortunately, a real family like that likely wouldn’t be quite so concerned for the happiness of the lowliest of their servants. (I speak as a liberal who loved the show and really cared whether Daisy got to keep her typewriter or whatever.)
Maybe not quite so happy as on Downton Abney, but the treatment of servants and their closeness to the family varied widely, and was also dependent on the type of job and the size/wealth of the house. Nannies, butlers and ladies’ maids were sometimes considered quasi-family to an extent, but if you were a scullery maid or other lower help, you were probably invisible.
Lower help in the kitchens, gardens etc were somewhat like a trade crew working your house today - you saw them around, but you wouldn’t interact with them. Thise people were likely temporary anyway. It was common for young women to join a household as a servant in part to learn skills for their own future family, then they would leave in a few years to get married.
But the ones who stayed and advanced and trained and made the household their career would often be well treated by the family. And many of them were not. Like today, some people are decent and some are bastards.