Summary
Palm Royale Season 2 hits a rollicking pace in “Maxine Serves A Swerve”, delivering great physical comedy, a brilliant escape sequence, and some near-perfect line readings.
All the gonzo merits of Palm Royale are very evident in “Maxine Serves A Swerve”. Season 2’s psychedelic opening might have been a bit of a mixed bag, but Episode 2 is firing on all cylinders, delivering an hour full of brilliant physical comedy, boundless energy, and pitch-perfect line readings that also has enough commitment to ongoing melodrama to end on a major soapy cliffhanger. It’s fine work across the board.
The crux of this outing is a plan to spring Linda from custody, which is warranted since her interrogation – about specifically not attempting to assassinate President Nixon, but being scapegoated for it because she’s a radical feminist – is clipped into a confession, which kind of proves her point. In short, the break-out is warranted since Linda’s innocence is irrelevant to the powers that be. Not that everyone agrees about freeing her, obviously.
But Maxine is adamant. This is the episode that really helps to position Maxine as the leader of the pack, I feel, even though it’s kind of her whole thing that she isn’t in the same clique as Evelyn, Dinah, and co. Evelyn might have gotten Maxine out of her own custody, but she still advises that she just disappear and return in a few months with a new face and husband, since that’s the de facto way of dealing with Palm Beach problems. She’s also still feeding Mary, who is still hiding out in the bootlegger tunnels, and she’s getting married, albeit in a transactional union of convenience.
But Maxine isn’t taking no for an answer, and proposes to Linda that they form a Rolodex of kompromat on high-ranking government officials that can be used to blackmail them. Linda makes Maxine the conservator of the Rollins estate, annoying Evelyn, and a plan really does seem to be coming together. Predictably, though, it all goes wrong when Maxine decides she’s going to claim half of Norma’s substantial family fortune by divorcing Douglas, but hands him the Rolodex instead of the divorce documents. Douglas passes them on to Perry without even realising, and in a convoluted turn of events, he’s armed with a pistol and giving the instruction to kill Linda to keep her quiet and stop anything else she knows from being made public.
Realising this error, Maxine has to take matters into her own hands and come up with a more outside-the-box solution, which doesn’t involve the authorities, with the possible exception of Virginia, who could be an ally if she weren’t so worried about ruining her own career by siding with “radical” forces. In the process, Maxine discovers Mary hiding in the tunnels and finds a way back into the Dellacorte house, where she has been firmly supplanted by Mitzi. Mitzi is at this point kind of the anti-Maxine; someone who wants the same cosy, glamorous life that Maxine once did – and perhaps still does – but lacks the moral fortitude to stand up for herself and others. She’s much easier for Norma to groom and manipulate than Maxine would have been, that’s for certain.
Linda’s breakout is the clear highlight of Palm Beach Season 2, Episode 2. It really is very good, full of funny details like Axel’s corpse being used as a stand-in for Linda, Dinah wheeling Linda out hidden in a body bag, the radical feminists running interference, Linda being snuck into the Dellacorte house disguised in a model rocket, and Maxine doing the worm across the foyer. But comedy aside, it’s also an enjoyable moment of togetherness and sisterhood that works well with the show’s underlying themes, especially in stuff like Virginia agreeing to help save the day. If nothing else, this season seems to have a much clearer grasp of who the good guys and bad guys are, which gives it a more distinct vibe from the freshman effort.
Douglas finally comes through for Maxine and agrees to spirit Linda away in exchange for Maxine leaving Palm Beach so that he can marry Mitzi. When she disappears back into the tunnels, though, they lead her to a new revelation – a portrait of Douglas’s mother which looks a little familiar. The camera naturally cuts back to Norma, who, as we know, isn’t really Norma, but she’s a little preoccupied with the syringe she’s hiding that she plans to kill Robert with. Surely not, so early in the season? We’ll have to wait and see.
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