This installment of The Vulgarian belongs to a Creative Underworld series devoted to unmasking the machinery beneath high society’s surface. Here, restraint is not reverence—it’s rot control. With clarity like a cleaver and no time for social fictions, we expose the difference between reputation and reality. Gossip is gospel, civility a costume. Let’s pull at the hem.
The Vulgarian Reviews:
The Gilded Age Season 3, Episode 2: “What the Papers Say”
If Episode One was a corseted coup, Episode Two is the fallout—less a ballroom waltz than a slow-motion carriage crash, with Bertha Russell gripping the reins and dragging everyone behind her into the wreckage of her ambition. The title may ask what the papers say, but the real question is: who planted the story, and who’s about to get buried under it?
Bertha’s Paper-Cut Empire
Bertha doesn’t just manipulate the press—she weaponizes it. The planted engagement announcement between Gladys and the Duke of Buckingham isn’t a leak; it’s a siege. She’s not matchmaking—she’s maneuvering. And when George returns home to find his daughter’s future already printed in ink, he doesn’t rage. He reasons. Which is somehow worse. Because Bertha’s not just winning—she’s normalizing the win.
Gladys and the Ghost of Autonomy
Gladys, poor Gladys, is learning that love in the Gilded Age is a luxury item—like lace, or agency. Her heartbreak isn’t operatic; it’s surgical. Billy Carlton, faced with Bertha’s velvet-gloved threats, folds like a monogrammed napkin. And Gladys? She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t faint. She absorbs. That’s the tragedy. Not that she loses Billy—but that she learns how to lose with grace. A woman in training for a life of beautiful concessions.
Aurora’s Awakening
Meanwhile, Aurora Fane is living through a divorce plotline so brutal it could’ve been ghostwritten by Edith Wharton on a bender. Her husband wants to marry his mistress. Aurora didn’t even know he had one. And yet, she’s the one expected to maintain composure while society sharpens its knives. Kelli O’Hara plays her unraveling like a symphony in silk—every note controlled, every glance a plea for dignity in a world that offers none.
Downstairs, the Realists Whisper
Even the servants are catching on. Mrs. Bruce, the housekeeper, delivers a line about marriage so bleak it could double as a thesis: “It’s not always what it seems.” And in that moment, the show reminds us that the gilding isn’t just on the chandeliers—it’s on the lies, the compromises, the futures bought and sold like opera tickets.
What the Papers Don’t Say
They don’t say that Bertha’s empire is built on fear. They don’t say that Gladys is being groomed for a life she doesn’t want. They don’t say that love, in this world, is a liability. But The Gilded Age says it—quietly, devastatingly, in every glance, every gown, every headline that reads like a verdict.
And so we ask again: who’s in charge here? The answer is still layered. But this week, it’s clear who’s not. ♦