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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 4547489, member: 833"] I get that I am not the target audience of this show. It is definitely targeting middle-aged and older women who are jonesing for their Downton Abbey fix. I think Downton Abbey is so soapy and contrived that it is unwatchable, so Gilded Age is a significant upgrade, but it is also pretty soapy. Everyone being terrified of Christine Baranski's character, who is basically a shut in, is fantasy pron for middle-aged women. Also, Carrie Coon's character's ability to completely control her daughter's life is something many middle-aged women would love to do. It is not quite fan service, but there is definitely a fair amount of chumming the waters for the target audience that goes on in this show. That said, it was an interesting time in American and human history, and I think the show does a pretty good job of portraying a rapidly changing society. The original American aristocracy, as portrayed by Baranski and her group, did not have a lot of time in the sun before the merchant class swamped them. The European aristocracy had over a 1,000 year run. The American landed gentry got maybe 200 years, and most families got quite a bit less than that. The scene where Edison lights up the building in New York (which happened in real life) is a really stark illustration of the new and the old New York society, and how quickly the old were fading to irrelevance. [/QUOTE]