“Another Period” didn’t charm me quite as much with its third installment, which focused on the faux funerals of “the husbands,” Lillian and Beatrice’s spouses, Victor and Albert — who have been paid off with a tidy sum to go keep house together far away, and let their ladies prowl for new billionaires.
The gag was a great chance for Leggero to really shine as a Bravo-style Princess of Rhode Island, bitchy and manipulative to the extreme. Her would-be seduction of a horny billionaire at her own husband’s funeral was only topped by her gruesome eulogy, which focused not on the way he lived, but how he died. Mark Twain was also in the audience, for some reason, heckling her.
Not to be outdone by her sister, Beatrice offered a wordless funeral dance for her own husband, Albert:
And, of course, back at the mansion, things remained as difficult as ever for the servants, who had to contend with multiple ringings of the “life-or-death bell,” as well as the “custard bell,” as well as the possibility of having their names be changed.
Bored quickly by humdrum domestic life, the husbands ended the episode with an inopportune appearance at their own funeral — which suddenly makes the Mark Twain reference seem a lot more clever and wink-wink than it was when he first showed up, doesn’t it?