TV Talk: ‘Watson’ season 2 expands; ‘Gilded Age’ offers late-season twists
Earlier this month we learned that CBS’s medical drama “Watson,” which CBS announced in May would not return until midway through the 2025-26 TV season, was moving up to a fall launch as CBS’s new “FBI” spinoff, “CIA,” originally announced for fall, changed showrunners and moved to midseason.
With that fall premiere date — “Watson” relocates from Sunday to 10 p.m. Monday beginning Oct. 13 — CBS also increased the season two “Watson” episode order from 13 to 20 episodes. That’s good news for the show but likely also creates more work, as showrunner Craig Sweeny and the “Watson” writers will surely have to revise some already planned season-long arcs to accommodate a larger episode order.
No word yet on if or when or how often “Watson” will return to film exterior scenes in Pittsburgh for season two, as the show did in June 2024 for its first season.
‘Gilded Age’ twists
Could the marriage of George (Morgan Spector) and Bertha (Carrie Coon) Russell on HBO’s “The Gilded Age” (9 p.m. Sunday) be on shaky ground?
Sunday’s episode ended with George’s declaration to Bertha, “Don’t expect me to be here when you get back” after Bertha forced daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) into a potentially loveless marriage to the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), part of Bertha’s ever-expanding gambit to gain power in New York high society.
But Spector and Coon offered a salient defense of Bertha’s actions in a virtual press conference before the season premiere.
“George can’t really understand the stakes for a woman,” Coon said. “The woman’s purview is very different. He doesn’t understand our instinct for survival, which is, in this case, through marriage. Bertha really believes what she’s doing is an existential question. She wants her daughter to be safe. She also wants her to be fulfilled and have a sense of purpose, because I think Bertha knows what it feels [like] to have that capacity thwarted. She’s hungry for her daughter to have a kind of power she didn’t have, which is why she’s elevating her above even New York society in this way. There’s a lack of psychological understanding between [Bertha and George] that’s really fundamental and quite sad. We should have a season four so we can figure it out.”
Spector has his own take on George’s chilly reaction to Bertha’s wedding scheme.
“I don’t think George can really let go of the fact that there’s an implicit critique of his own position in society that Bertha is making,” Spector added. “If you have to marry an English aristocrat to really feel like you’ve arrived, then the status that George has built for himself isn’t enough. I think that that’s another source of tension and unspoken friction between them.”
HBO’s “The Gilded Age” got off to a strong start in June with its third-season premiere, improving on its second season debut by 27%. The Gladys wedding episode on July 13 drew a season-high viewership of 3.8 million U.S. viewers, with HBO saying this third season is tracking 20% ahead of season two, per TheWrap.com. There are only three episodes remaining in the season with each one ratcheting up the drama. (HBO has yet to renew the show for a fourth season.)
When it comes to the new money Russells, series creator Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) said the show’s writers were conscious of parallels between robber barons of the Gilded Age and today’s tech moguls, particularly Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos jousting for leading roles in space exploration through Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin.
“They didn’t have rockets in the Gilded Age, but if they had, that’s exactly what they would have done,” Fellowes said. “We were conscious we were in another kind of ego world [today]. It was waiting just below the surface to come bouncing out again and I think we’re living in the middle of that now.”
Fellowes said it’s the job of a period drama to point out what’s the same despite many differences between period and contemporary eras.
“The rules of society are different … but there’s lot that’s the same,” Fellowes said. “And in terms of the way we hurt each other and the way we scheme and we care about our own prestige … I think there are many parallels between The Gilded Age and now.”
Fellowes cited the willingness of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick to “open fire on their own striking workers and kill them” but later in life wanting to be remembered for their charitable contributions.
“I don’t think we should confuse people trying to make us remember them differently from a real moral shift,” Fellowes said. “That panic at the end of those Gilded Age lives shouldn’t really be now interpreted as a proper spiritual conversion.”
Channel surfing
For the first time since season 16, Kelly Clarkson, John Legend and Adam Levine will be coaches on NBC’s “The Voice” in season 29 next spring following this fall’s season 28 with coaches Michael Bublé, Snoop Dogg, Niall Horan and Reba McEntire. … Starz ordered 18 episodes of prequel series “Power: Origins,” chronicling Ghost and Tommy as young entrepreneurs in New York City. … Ahead of its second season, debuting in two parts Aug. 6 and Sept. 3, Netflix renewed “Wednesday” for a third season.
You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow @RobOwenTV on Threads, X, Bluesky and Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.
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