‘The Gilded Age’ Provided TV’s Simplest, Smoothest-Brained Pleasures, Lifted by Carrie Coon
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticMonday night brings the end of what has been one of 2022’s most indulgent pleasures — and one that calls to mind the TV of a decade prior.
HBO’s “The Gilded Age” has made a strong argument for the efficacy of series creator Julian Fellowes’ method as a deliverer of narrative delight.Every episode has been an hourlong fantasia in which the mind, unbothered by a plot that seems at best ornamental, is free to roam — a pleasant, happy state of what Gen Z might call “smooth-brained” experience, untroubled and uncomplicated by the firing of synapses or the development of nuance.
The series is about the struggle to rise in a sclerotic, class-obsessed society, with Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector playing arriviste society newbies whose ambition is only matched by their devotion to one another.
We root for them to succeed, both because their frank self-belief is more of our own time than of their own and because their continued emergence will deploy more of Coon’s big, bold, endlessly watchable performance.
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