Resolving Edwards and Gallinger with the crippling sucker punch (destroying Edward’s sight for good) is perfect for the “they who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them for their blindness” metaphor of how oppression is facilitated. The way Gallinger basically trades in his wife for her sister is the epitome of how these disloyal power worshippers think. He also inadvertently explains why he’s so obsessed with race when he admits to Thackery that he has nothing left after his life has fallen apart. Gallinger still isn’t an entirely unsympathetic character considering what he went through and his part in rehabilitating Thackery, which is great. Although it sucks that this waspy fuck probably would have lived a really good life touring Europe as a eugenics spokesmen, which was such a thing in the early 20th century that even the United States sterilized tens of thousands of people without their consent.
Well off people who have things going for them, whether its finances, an interesting/creative career, love, or whatever makes one happy, don't need racism in order to carve out a place for themselves in the world. Bertie, Cornelia, and Thackery occupy themselves with these more noble pursuits whereas the rest of the Robertsons aren't racist because they feel fulfilled through their economic class distinction, hence their kindness to the Edwards family and Henry being the main, non-racist, capitalist villain of the story. Thackery's histrionic, "circus", performer tendencies still leave him feeling threatened by an ethnic group known for excelling to the top of society so having Zinberg as the ostensible antagonist was also great for the race conflict since a lot of "regular" white people have always envied the success of Jewish people and have masked their fear towards them by conflating Jewish aptitude with verminous qualities.
Portraying Typhoid Mary as a raunchy troll is so emblematic of how people are morally degraded when you deprive them of their health, dignity, and opportunity. The kind of misfortunes that charlatans rely on to reel in credulous people desperate for something. Watching Nurse Elkins’ preacher father give his sermon was like watching a Jordan Peterson YouTube video. All of the white and black nationalist stuff, that even doctors like Gallinger and Edwards fall prey to, along with the snake oil salesmen were also uncomfortably familiar. When backed into a corner people feel compelled to rally behind something e.g. race, religion, nonsense self help products and unfortunately theres no shortage of clever opportunists who, whether cynical or sincere, know how take advantage of this.
The best shows are able to morally mangle their protagonists while still keeping them sympathetic overall e.g. Breaking Bad, so watching Thackery fall off of his high horse and crawl back to that snake oil salesmen's vulgar business proposition when he was in a desperate situation was another case of how poverty/deprivation tends to degrade one's character, just like Walter White turning to depravity in order to fund his cancer therapies. Its easy to be "moral" when things are never really bad and there are no serious issues/pressures to deal with whereas if you're bombarded with tough circumstances you're much more likely to head down a dissolute path where the first step leaves you crashing down that road, making it much harder to go any other direction. As a physician who works at a hospital that primarily takes the poor Thackery eventually fails the moral test of conducting ethical research when he tries to outdo his Jewish rival that he's so threatened by. As in the cases of Typhoid Mary, Thackery’s addiction and Cleary’s desperate/appalling way of getting Harriet to love him, when stressed and deprived people resort to the craziest things just to be able to make it through the day.
The Chinatown-esque ending between the Robertson siblings was eh but Elkins becoming some kind of overwoman, unbounded by society's norms as she has some kind power over powerful men like Ping Wu and Henry, capped off that scene nicely considering how her father’s Christianity, Thackery’s love, and the restrictions towards women's careers in early 1900s society had failed her. I'm glad good guy Bertie emerged as the most well off character in the end after being taken for granted/mistreated for being a nice guy in a nasty world. It was really amusing to watch Barrow, the bootlicking spirit of capitalism, scratch and climb up his way into elite society. His new whore wife and the cancer that he gets from his excessive/capricious use of the X-ray machine are almost as symbolic as the scene where he sells his soul by cremating that pig and passing the ashes off as the guy whose corpse he sold. Thackery’s “this is it, this is all we are” as he touches his poorly functioning/degraded viscera during his surgery/suicide is a recognition of the flawed physiology that hampers all of us and dooms so many of us. One of my favorite last words.
