Hana Chan

She was the only daughter of the Vanderbilt railroad tycoon and was forced by her mother to marry the Duke of Marlborough. She was the first of what was termed by the British as "dollar princesses" - American heiresses who married British aristocrats. Consuelo brought with her a huge dowery and was told by her husband that this was the only reason that he married her - in order to save his ancestral home. Her mother basically traded her daughter and a boatload of money for an aristocratic title, and it was not a happy marriage. Interestingly, she does look a bit like the actress playing Gladys...

To be fair, Agnes saw history repeating itself. Her brother squandered the family fortune, leaving her and Ada destitute and all but forcing Agnes into a terrible marriage. The one good thing that came out of her marriage was enough money to allow her and her sister to live in quiet lavish style for the rest of their lives and her idiot of a son pissed it all away. I don't blame her for going nuclear on his ass. I'm sure that Oscar was beating himself enough, but he destroyed everything that Agnes sacrificed to build. Gladys might be "out" and an adult in society, but Bertha keeps her on a very tight leash. She can't go out to social events without her mother's permission and Bertha has made it clear that she is focused on gaining an advantageous marriage for Gladys. The mistake that Bertha is making is that she thinks that Gladys will want the same thing that she does in the end (social advancement), while Gladys just isn't that mercenary. Which means that Gladys is going to be in for a miserable time if they are going to follow Consuelo Vanderbilt's life for the story.

Looks like I get to be the contrarian here because I found this episode yawningly predictable. The end of the opera wars was a given since we know historically that the Academy limped along for a bit after the Met opened, but didn't last too much longer. It was a given that Bertha was going to win this battle against Mrs. Astor so no surprises there. And we had tropes galore this week. Of course Luke would be leaving his widow of 15 minutes enough fortune to make up for what idiot Oscar lost. And of course Dashiell would make the idiot error, proving to everyone that he's not ready to marry Marion (as he's still mourning his wife). Was anyone doubting that Bertha would be pimping out her daughter to the Duke? And out of nowhere, we get Marion and Larry as a couple, with almost no build up beyond the occasional conversation on the sidewalk. I enjoy this show, but my biggest issue is that the Russels are always coming out on top, without much in the way of real challenges. Bertha bullies her way through life and everyone around her falls into line. Russell is a tyrant in the business world and never seems to put a foot wrong. I need to see them have some real conflicts where they have some risk of losing what is most important to them because right now, I find their stories rather tiresome. As for the change in fortune at the Van Rhijn household, I don't see Ada lording over her sister now that she wears the financial pants in the family. Agnes might have been imperious in how she treated everyone in her household (and seeing her knocked down a peg can be some interesting character development), but it wasn't as if she lost the fortune due to something she did beyond not seeing that her son was a moron. And she did suffer through a miserable marriage in order to save herself and her sister after their brother ruined them financially. Ada is too kind to let Agnes feel slighted and I would like to see them emerge as the old lady power couple of NYC. In all honesty, give how privileged these characters are, it's sometimes ridiculous how the show wants us to root for one set of appallingly wealthy characters against another set of appallingly wealthy characters. The Russells might be cute in how they love one another but they are awful people. George will financially crush anyone who gets in his way, and Bertha will stop at nothing to climb to the top of the social pecking order. But on the other side you have characters like Mrs. Astor and Agnes who are just the worst snobs because they only respect family connections and how far back you can trace the fortune that you inherited. The past seasons have had the old money crowd suffer some pretty humiliating defeats, but it's past time for the Russells to start really running into headwinds.

Marian might be "modern" by her era's standards, but she is still very much a pampered creature of her social status. Teaching pampered society children because you're bored and need something to fill up your day is very different than working a job because you won't have a roof over your head and food on your table if you don't. And in all seriousness, what else could she do if Agnes suddenly decided that feeding and lavishly clothing her wasn't worth her time? Unlike Peggy, she didn't finish with school with any readily employable skills. Her education is limited to that of the average wealthy woman who isn't expected to do more than manage a household and have all the social niceties of her class. I agree that Marian has been very lackadaisical about her future. She knows that she's right now dependent upon Agnes's good will and when her aunt dies, she would be dependent on Oscar. Her choices are 1) get married to someone capable of supporting her or 2) becoming a social outcast in wealthy society and giving up her fancy dresses and easy life by finding work that will actually support her. Women of her class do not hold jobs so her options are limited. Marrying a handsome, wealthy man who at least seems fond of her is hardly a fate worse than death. She is very fortunate to have this opportunity and if she ends up rejecting Dashiell, she needs to have some other prospects lined up. And that may well mean leaving Agnes's home and finding a way to support herself. I feel for Gladys and I think that she's got a pretty unvarnished view of what her mother wants for her. She knows that despite her father's promise that if Bertha wants to marry her off to some English duke for his social status, then she's not going to have any say in the matter. She's got very few real choices unless she decided to throw away her social standing and elope with someone that she truly loves.

Exactly. He's been courting her since they first met. Like at the casino when he won the bet on her advise and as a reward was going to get her "a treat". And how she's been using him to avoid her odious suitor. He's been courting her, and by all impressions, she's been accepting his courting. I can understand why he would be happy with his proposal. After all, he's wealthy, not terribly old, kind and not put off by the fact that she'd be coming into the marriage with no money of her own. Marian could and should have made it clear that she was not interested in him romantically, and set some boundaries if she wanted to avoid confusion. Being asked to join his daughter at the Mother/Daughter tea was making it very clear that Marian was being seen as more than just a friend and possibly a permanent addition to their family. And Marian isn't stupid and totally devoid of a backbone. She's stood up to her aunt who maintains her, so dismissing an unwanted suitor should be within her abilities. As far as the proposal being public and Marian being pressured, we need to keep in mind that for many women of her social class, marriages were not often just love matches. They were arrangements and nothing happened without the support of the parents/guardians. Women would usually find themselves pressured to accept marriages that their parents supported. Look at Gladys, who's likely to be pushed into relationship with the Duke in order to satisfy Bertha's social climbing ambitions. Agnes wants Marian to marry well because, in her perspective, that is the only way to secure her future. Marrying a distant cousin with a daughter who clearly adores and idolizes her is hardly the worst fate in the world. Not like what Agnes faced with her husband. And while I do not believe that Marian will go through with the marriage, it's hardly like she's going to be married off to some odious troll. Dashiell might be presumptuous, but that is pretty typical of even the most well mannered men of his era. And until Larry decides that he wants to seriously court Marian himself, Dashiell is the best option for her to avoid spinsterhood and being financially dependent upon her aunt for however long Agnes lives.

I'm going to be a little contrarian when it comes to the Marian/Dashiell engagement because I'm taking off my modern goggles and looking at it from the perspective of a woman from her era. While she might not be in passionate love with Dashiell, by the standards of their era, he's an absolute catch. Besides being wealthy and in the right social class, he seems like a better than average guy. He's not so much older than she is that a match would be uncomfortable (unlike the Wintertons). He's a doting father and seems at the very least fond of. if not in love, with Marian. I didn't take the comment about her teaching as being unimportant in the way that some on the board are, because Marian basically took up teaching as something to keep her busy. She enjoys it and seems to be finding a certain passion for the job but unlike other women in the profession, she doesn't need to teach in order to support herself. A woman of her social class doesn't hold outside jobs because they don't need it financially, so I don't blame Dashiell for seeing it as some kind of hobby for Marian. And while it does look like Agnes is pushing hard for this marriage, I get that from her perspective, she's doing what is necessary to make sure that her niece is set up for the rest of her life. After all, Marian arrived in New York absolutely penniless and was completely dependent upon her aunt for support. Ava, as a lifelong spinster up until now, was also dependent upon Agnes. And we have to remember that Ava had the luxury of waiting until "true love" arrived with Luke because Agnes was making sure that she was cared for. Finding love late in life (and it's pretty clear that she's going to lose it very soon) is romantic but if Agnes hasn't made the hard choices and basically sacrificed herself in a bad marriage to make sure that she and her sister weren't on the streets, she wouldn't have had that option. I get that Agnes doesn't want to see Marian in a similar position and Dashiell, for all his flaws, would treat her well. While I do enjoy seeing Marian and Larry and I like the idea of them as endgame, at this point what do they really know about one another beyond "Hey, you're cute"? They've run into one another between their houses, and at a few parties but it's not like they've spent that much time together that I buy a love story between them. The potential is there, but right now Larry was still smarting over losing his older lover and he's not exactly making any kind of play for Marian. Waiting too long runs the risk of Marian becoming an "old maid". Larry would have to make some kind of real pitch for her, because their pairing would make sense with their storyline of joining the old wealth with the new. But they haven't reached that stage just yet.

Yup. They totally wimped out here. Historically, the robber barons were absolutely brutal in trying to crush the strikers and many people lost their lives as a result. And it's not as if we didn't watch George in the past season go out of his way to absolutely ruin people who crossed him, including driving a man to suicide. Hell, he built an entire rail line just to fuck over someone who was playing a little too hardball for his liking. But ordering troops to fire on strikers was the bridge too far for him? They might have come from modest backgrounds, but I haven't seen anything in their behavior that indicates some real sympathy for the plight of the working man. Bertha can't even respect that her former lady's maid managed to claw her way to the wealthy class and looks down upon her because she'd started out as a servant.

In a state like NY where we have no fault divorce, property acquired during a marriage (even if only one person's name is on the title) is considered martial property. It's not as if Steve had only lived in the brownstone for a few months (where Miranda might be able to argue that he had no real attachment to the home), but he's lived there for nearly two decades. He can document making material improvements that increased the value of the brownstone. He can also document that even if his name was not on the mortgage that he contributed financially to the family with his own income. In an event like this, generally the house would be sold and the proceeds divided equally or one partner can buy out the other for their half of the market value of the home. What Miranda does not have the right to do is to unilaterally evict Steve or claim that he has no right to equal ownership. And since Miranda was the one that left the marital home for around a year to live with someone else, Steve has grounds to claim that Miranda's attachment to the home is not as great as his and that if one person had a right to live there, it would be him. Again, the most equitable thing would be to sell the home and split to proceeds, but Miranda's argument that Steve should leave because she decided to return home after a year would be thrown out of any divorce negotiations pretty quickly. I don't get why Miranda wants to push Steve out when he has always been more attached to their home than her except to throw her weight around and put herself in the dominant position despite the fact that she was the one who is choosing to end their marriage. There was a recent TikTok posting that noted that Miranda always seemed most comfortable in relationships where she was seen to be in a better social or financial position than her partner (Steve & Skipper), but struggles when she and her partner are more equals. She was an emotional mess when dating Robert, and ended up going back to Steve. And she had always been the one who treated her sexual relationship with Steve as something that could be put on the back burner when she had something that she felt was more important to focus on. Like in the first movie when after not having had sex with her husband for months and finally getting overcome with a moment of passion, she told Steve to hurry up because she had to be at the office early the next day. The more I look at their relationship, the more Team Steve I become.

I believe that's due to Dave Eigenberg's real life hearing loss. It's not unusual for speech patterns to change because he's sometimes struggling to hear himself. I loved his wrath too, and I wish that he hadn't tried to walk back his barbs just because Miranda started crying. She certainly deserved to have him venting at her after everything she's pulled.

I agree that Miranda is trying to act like a penitent, at least as far as how she's treating Brady. Steve, on the other hand, she still wants out and this is not a reasonable expectation on her part. As others have pointed out, NYS is a no fault state and even though Miranda's name is the only one on the mortgage (WTF?), Steve would have more than ample proof that he was a more than equal partner in the maintenance of the home. In fact, I would argue that Miranda might have bought the house, but it was Steve that turned it into a home. And there are plenty of reasons why Miranda might be the only one on the mortgage (maybe having a stellar credit score), but that doesn't mean that Steve is not a fully equal partner in owning it. And given that Miranda was the one who left (to chase after Che), it's rather ridiculous for her to return to NY and then try to force Steve out of the home after he had been living there alone for going on a year. I'm glad that he's finally standing up for himself. The biggest issue I had with this whole storyline (outside of the fact that it came out of the blue, is poorly written and there is zero real chemistry between Miranda and Che) is that Miranda put the entirety of the blame for their marriage not being a ball of excitement on Steve. If Miranda was a man chasing after a younger partner, berating his wife for letting herself go and not being young and exciting anymore, it would be a cliché. She never expressed at any point that she was dissatisfied with their marriage to Steve, or wanted to work at fixing things. She put all the blame on him and never did any kind of self-reflection on how she might have contributed to things going so badly between them. She is selfish because she sees a relationship with Steve as him satisfying her needs and when he didn't (clearly because she wasn't communicating that her needs were changing), she dumped him. Let's remember that Steve cheated because Miranda was cutting him off sexually, so she had been in near total control of their relationship for a very long time. I think back to the scene where Miranda was talking about cutting up carrots for her child and comparing it to Che's very active and diverse sex life, and seeming to feel like this was time that she was wasting. This is so clearly a mid-life crisis and Miranda doesn't need a lesbian relationship to feel fulfilled; she needs a therapist! Maybe her marriage to Steve is irrevocably broken and can never be fixed, but she can take ownership over her role in how it played out and repair things between them enough that the can properly be parents to Brady without wanting to gouge one another's eyes out if in the same room. As for Steve sleeping with other women in the house, I highly doubt that he's doing it while Brady is around. He's not that much of an idiot.

But why should she have any reason to expect or even hope that Steve was not sleeping with other people? Carrie might be right that he still loved her and was still wearing his ring, but Miranda didn't just abandon her husband. Before she ran off to chase Che to LA, she told Steve that she never really loved him, that their relationship was never what Steve thought it had been and that she was miserable with him. She didn't just leave him - she destroyed him in the process. She made him feel worthless and undeserving of her concern. Her behavior wasn't just selfish. It was cruel. So if Steve had a few one night stands to try to salvage his self-esteem and prove that he was desirable to women, that was part of his healing process. At this point, he doesn't owe Miranda that kind of consideration, because she certainly didn't show it to him. She has never expressed any kind of regret for hurting him, so if Steve is replacing her in their bed, she has no one to blame but herself.

I'm sorry, but Miranda has absolutely zero right to be upset that Steve was moving on from her. She was the one who left him for someone else and they have been separated for going on a year at this point. All the while, Miranda has been living with and having sex with Che (including threesomes with Che's sort-of-ex-husband). I'm sure that her ego would love the idea that Steve was going to be her devoted puppy for the rest of their lives, hanging on the hope that she might come back to him. He had every right to move on and try to find some kind of happiness for himself (even if only temporary) the instant that Miranda took off to LA. The fact that it took him time to do so is just evidence of how much he loved her and how much her leaving damaged him. Steve might still love Miranda, but his anger at her actions is more than understandable. As was his moving on to find new partners to share his bed, if only to prove to himself that while his wife might not want him sexually that other women would. His feelings are just as valid as Miranda's. Oh, we certainly did see that. Him and his amazing one testicle.

And that could have been interesting in the hands of the right writers. But what we got here was so haphazard that they squandered a huge amount of possible good will. There would have been a way to tell this kind of story without totally destroying Miranda's character in the process. I look back to a man my mom worked with who came out late in life to his wife (after both their daughters were born). It was difficult at first, but they divorced amicably and remained good enough friends that eventually they were in one another's wedding parties to their new partners. He also made a career change late in life, going from being a dentist to a lawyer and model. What Miranda did was just utterly obliterate her family without any thought except that Che excited her in a way that Steve no longer did (or as she now claims, never did). She showed no caring or respect for her husband or her son, ran off with Che and now acts like she has a right to be the injured party when Steve lashes out at her. She acted without any thought or care for her family, her own career (whatever she wanted it to be) or anything outside of servicing Che's needs. It's not too much of a surprise that so much of the audience didn't find this as enthralling as CN did.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... the show made a huge mistake by giving her this kind of wealth following Big's death. She's got nothing outside of landing a new man that has any kind of real relevance in her life. If she takes on a "job" like the podcast, it's more of a hobby than a way to make a living. It would have been so much more interesting of she and Big's divorced or he died and didn't leave her enough that she'd ben independently wealthy for the rest of her life. A fifty-something women having to start over again when the job she'd worked at before her marriage is no longer relevant could make for an interesting storyline. But right now she's just drifting and wearing a lot of outlandish costumes. There's no meat to her story. I would normally agree. And showing that this is the other side of regret - that maybe Miranda would have been happier and more fulfilled if she'd had that abortion and never married Steve could be told in a way that is respectful to all the characters. But these are not good writers and the story is being told in such a careless manner that it's hard to feel sympathy for Miranda. Steve has bent over backwards to give Miranda what she needed to be happy. If she bent in the slightest way to accommodate Steve and Brady, Steve would be turning handsprings to make up for that. It was such a one-sided relationship - as if Steve was trying to make up for any regrets that Miranda had by not having that abortion. And we saw Miranda embracing being a wife and mother, finding a happiness that she hadn't considered possible for herself. She could certainly be torn by the "what ifs" and go through a mid-life crisis, but it was handled so badly that I find it nearly impossible to sympathize with her. She's become so unwaveringly selfish that she doesn't seem to care that she hurt Steve and Brady so deeply. It's all about her wants at this point.

So let me get this straight... for a year since Miranda dumped her husband and child, she been living with Che and not only getting finger banged on a regular basis, but having threesomes and playing around with strap ons, but I'm supposed to feel bad for her because Steve clearly had sex with someone else? Fuck her. At least our long nightmare as over, as she and Che have broken up but that ugly fight with Steve was entertaining as all hell. I get that the show wants us to be on Miranda's side because Steve gave Miranda some harshly spoken truths, then they are worse hacks that we already assumed. Miranda was, at best, ambivalent about having Brady and while she did care for Steve, certainly didn't put a fraction of the effort into their relationship that she did with Che. She'd bitched endlessly about moving to Brooklyn since in her eyes, NYC ended at the Williamsburg Bridge but thought nothing about running off to LA to be Che's housewife. Steve has been taken for granted over his near devotion to Miranda for far too long and I'm glad that he's standing up for himself. Carrie's story continues to be a yawn festival and the lack of any kind of real stakes in her life just bores me. Of course Aiden is conveniently available and still carrying a torch for her, which is kind of pathetic, After all, she is widowed by the man that she cheated on Aiden with and then went on to marry. Why he's even entertain the idea of being with her is beyond me. I'm trying to find a redeeming quality for this pile of burning garbage, but... nope. It all sucks. The story sucks, the characters suck, the writings sucks... it just sucks.