How did The Gilded Age, with its talented cast, end up so flat?

Slate

"The Gilded Age’s first season wrapped up its razor-thin plots with a finale so pretty and uncathartic that I thought it was surely a filler episode," says Lili Loofbourow. "Julian Fellowes’ new show, which gave every sign of being another soap opera in the luxe spirit of Downton Abbey, could not rise to that melodramatic genre’s heady heights. It suffered instead from a peculiar if relaxing commitment to anticlimax, a determination to let crisis collapse and resolve into inconsequentiality. Pumpkin the dog may have run into the street—multiple times, perhaps plagued by boredom, or a death wish—but he is more than fine in the end and everyone has forgotten it happened. His storyline is not unique. The Gilded Age is a little like those podcasts people listen to if they’re having trouble sleeping." Loofbourow adds: "Here’s the worst thing about The Gilded Age: It isn’t gilded! The title implies social dishonesty—people trying to pass off gilding for gold. But there’s virtually no deception in this show, not even (forgive me) a surface attempt."

ALSO:

• Morgan Spector doesn't see his Gilded Age character as a villain: "I see him as a really relatable human being who does things I think he’s sort of responding reasonably to, given the circumstances in which he lives on a moment to moment basis," he says.
• Nathan Lane on his Gilded Age character: "He was an odd little figure"
• Read about the real-life ball that inspired the season finale