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It seems that Julian Fellowes<\/strong> may have been listening to the viewers who have said, lovingly or not, that nothing really happens on The Gilded Age.<\/em> Season three of Fellowes\u2019s prim and elegant soap opera about late 19th-century New Yorkers\u2014which premieres on HBO on June 22\u2014features more scandal, more raw emotion, and even some death and mayhem. But Fellowes has not over-egged the series in the pursuit of intrigue; Gilded Age<\/em> remains mostly a pleasant, satisfying diversion.<\/p>\n As if to shake us from the stupor of expectation, Fellowes opens the season in an entirely surprising place: the wild west. A wagon charges across the deserts of Arizona, its vast orange expanse a far cry from the stately order of the Upper East Side. But this is where much of the era\u2019s money is being made before it is siphoned back to New York\u2014at least, most of the money made by George Russell (Morgan Spector<\/strong>), the railroad magnate whose nouveau riche family occupies the center of the series. As railways stretch to connect the coasts of America, men like Russell seize the enormous opportunity to develop their empire, betting their whole fortunes in the process.<\/p>\n Back home in the mansions, there\u2019s little sign of the dust and danger that pays for all that opulence. While her husband stakes his claim in the west, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon<\/strong>) turns east, toward the English aristocracy Bertha and her cohort so strenuously emulate. She has made a sort of backroom deal (or, really, opera box deal) to marry off her daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga<\/strong>), to a British duke in need of a cash transfusion. Bertha, who is of humble extraction, figures that yoking her family to British nobility will finally assert the Russells as international sophisticates, laundering their new money with ancient tradition.<\/p>\n But Gladys doesn\u2019t want to marry some random duke she barely knows. She\u2019s got a genuine love interest puppy-dogging around, a nice boy from a nice family whom Bertha nonetheless deems beneath her family\u2019s ambition. Her son, Larry (Harry Richardson<\/strong>), is also following his heart: he\u2019s smitten not with some wealthy debutante hand selected by his mother, but with his decidedly more humble across-the-street neighbor, Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson<\/strong>). Marian\u2019s aunts have had a reversal of fortunes: spinster turned widow Ada (Cynthia Nixon<\/strong>) is now the one with the money, while her imperious sister Agnes (Christine Baranski<\/strong>) has been left penniless after a conwoman fleeced her ne\u2019er-do-well son Oscar (Blake Ritson<\/strong>) out of their fortune. (Gay guys can\u2019t be trusted with money.) Much tension comes from this upending of domestic hierarchy.<\/p>\n Marian\u2019s friend (and Agnes\u2019s secretary) Peggy Scott (Den\u00e9e Benton<\/strong>) gets in on the mating game, too. She meets a suitable suitor, a handsome doctor from a prominent family, but must square off against his snobby and disapproving mother, played with regal menace by Phyllicia Rashad<\/strong>. This ultimately leads to Rashad having a showdown with her old Raisin in the Sun<\/em> costar Audra McDonald<\/strong>, as Peggy\u2019s mother Dorothy. It is, overall, a big season for the characters from the Black elite, with Peggy\u2019s love story at the center.<\/p>\n The Gilded Age<\/em> understands marriage as dynasty\u2019s path to a secured future, as it was for centuries upon centuries. But Fellowes keeps his show tuned to the thrum of progress, steadily gaining volume. Divorce is a hot topic, a scandal that will cast a woman from the upper echelons of society\u2014unless, of course, that society changes with the coaxing of a brash arriviste or two. Other supposed improprieties are discussed and rethought, specifically in a handful of scenes in which characters gingerly approach the topic of homosexuality with something like curiosity and compassion. A new century is rushing at these soon-to-be-dinosaurs, and maybe the old ways, like strategically arranged marriages and social shunning, will no longer do.<\/p>\n But real cultural shift is still a little ways off, and so The Gilded Age<\/em> stays mostly rooted in tradition. For the rich folks, anyway. Down under the floorboards in the basement kitchens, things are moving more swiftly. Last season, Agnes\u2019s footman Jack (Ben Ahlers<\/strong>) secured a patent for a new kind of alarm clock. That little journey of industry continues apace in season three, a sweet and wistful arc. Fellowes may have a strange attitude about the poor\u2014on this show and on Downton Abbey,<\/em> he routinely suggests a kind of happy poverty, the cozy pleasure of knowing one\u2019s station in life\u2014but he manages a convincingly complex evolution for Jack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n