Review: The Gilded Age, "Warning Shots"
After last week’s happy wedding and successful Newport dinner, we all should have known there was nothing but trouble ahead. The predictable trouble is the strike which has been looming for several episodes. And we get right into it, with the mill workers chanting Eight eight eight! and vowing to meet the guns of the militia with weapons of their own. “Warning Shots” builds from that beginning to the final moment, when George Russell blinks.
But the other trouble disrupts something far more important to me, the viewer, than labor politics: Ada’s happiness. Not that I’m saying labor politics aren’t important—on a utilitarian calculus, they’re orders of magnitude more important than the emotional health of one woman and those who care for her. The structure of that narrative, though, has not engaged us as a personal relationship. Yes, this week we meet the workers and their families, and see where they live—but it’s not really “we” but George who must negotiate a relationship w…
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