When I sat down to write a piece about TV’s hottest couple (happy Valentine’s Day!), I never anticipated that I’d be doing so for a pair of manipulative robber barons with Cheshire cat grins and ambitions as deep as their wallets. But isn’t that what they say about love, that it’ll find you when you least expect it? And so here I am, ready to declare my allegiance to Mr. and Mrs. George Russell (Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon), a marriage so hot that neither person involved need remove so much as a glove to set the screen ablaze.
On Julian Fellowes’ new HBO drama “The Gilded Age,” old money discretion battles new money glamour through tight smiles, strategic gowns, and preening power plays. All three come to a glorious, clashing head by the end of the second episode (“Money Isn’t Everything”), in which Bertha Russell’s attempts to elbow into…
