'The Gilded Age' Could Be America's Premier Period Drama. Here's What It Needs.

The HBO series has so much potential, but it falls short when compared with popular period pieces of the past decade.

On Sunday night, as the Season 2 finale of “The Gilded Age” was set to stream on Max, I was shocked when I found myself watching the clock, waiting for the episode to drop, to see what would happen next in the battle between old and new money on New York’s Fifth Avenue in the 1880s. Who would win the season-long war of the opera houses between Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), the show’s embodiment of new money, and Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy), the gatekeeper of old-moneyed society? Would Bertha’s patronage of the Metropolitan Opera displace the historic prominence of the Academy of Music, where securing a box had historically cemented one’s social acceptance?

My investment in the outcome was a large departure from how I’d felt about the HBO show since its premiere almost two years ago. In fact, when the pilot first aired, I didn’t even finish it.

At the time, my inability to suffer through the show’s setup surprised me. I didn’t care about the Rockefeller-esque Russell family moving into their opulent mansion on Fifth Avenue and across the street from the old-moneyed Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and her spinster sister, Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon), who have agreed to take in niece Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) after her father dies and leaves her penniless.

What made this even more surprising is that I am a lifelong lover of period dramas. I was a middle school girl who used to spend entire Saturday afternoons rewatching the over-four-hour 1995 BBC version of “Pride and Prejudice” on DVD. In college, I was the only young millennial I knew tuning in to “Downton Abbey” (before it was popular). Now, I’m the only 32-year-old I know with a PBS Passport membership, subscribing monthly, so I get early access to shows like “Call the Midwife,” “All Creatures Great and Small” and my absolute favorite miniseries, “Sanditon,” which ended in the spring. And, yes, I also love more sensational and popular period dramas like Netflix’s “Bridgerton” and “Queen Charlotte.”

So, why did I find “The Gilded Age” so unwatchable? The intricate sets, accomplished cast and extravagant costumes didn’t compensate for the plot’s tedious pace or dull storylines, and I wasn’t alone in feeling this way. In its first season, “The Gilded Age” became a show to hate-watch. However, unlike those writing online about how “enthrallingly awful” the series was, I couldn’t bring myself to finish that first episode, let alone tune in to the rest of the season.