i watched the new one from the Downton Abbey guy on HBO, The Guilded Age, which takes place in the US (NYC BABY WE GOT BODEGAS!) in something like the 1880s. i do not know why, but for some reason i expected it to have some kind of critique, however minor, about the inequality present in the system... and not just be about the conflict between New Money and Old Money while painting New Money as being kinda virtuous because of assumed meritocracy. whoops, turns out it's the latter.

anyway, it's total trash and somehow even less self-aware that Downton. after an episode or two, i realized it was just about socialite bullshit infighting between the capitalist class so i just started watching it, rooting for everyone to be scandalized by each other and ruin each others' good times. at one point, some new money guy ruins an old money guy so hard, the old money guy kills himself. we're supposed to be like, "oh that's awful", but i was like "lol, lmao."

i also kept imagining some ultraviolent, off-the-rails union enforcers or insurrectionary partisans would burst into the scene and just start lighting people up, but that never happens. instead, the two big arcs are like some engenue almost getting seduced by a rakish cad and a new money mother leveraging her daughters debutante social event to catapult herself into high society.

honestly, if someone re-imagined either of these shows and caught people off guard with a sudden turn mid-season into an accurate portrayal of working conditions and abuse, it might traumatize the audience. like do eps 1-3 just how they currently do them, side step anything showing the workers and focus on some b.s. with the elites. then a subplot opens up and we finally follow a house worker for like half an episode, into the fields and factories that extract the wealth. overseas onto the plantations. it becomes clear in the next episode that our Great Men are, in fact, fully aware of precisely how it all works, hiring sadistic goons and cutting wages, disappearing organizers, and generally abusing their staff etc.

like a Breaking Bad type of arc, where the protagonist becomes the antagonist, but accelerated and driven by the expanding perspective.