Summary
Palm Royale tries to get political and romantic in “Maxine Is Ready to Single Mingle”, and hilariously, entertainingly fails at both.
You can describe Palm Royale as many things, but romantic isn’t one of them. There are lots of romances, sure, but they’re always silly, or scandalous, or transactional, which has been as true in Season 2 as it was in the first outing. But Episode 5, fittingly titled “Maxine Is Ready to Single Mingle”, raises an interesting idea. What happens when one of these characters actually tries to be romantic? What happens when someone like Maxine, who has been unlucky in love, to put it mildly, wants to earnestly move on and pursue a connection with someone?
This isn’t the only question being asked here, but it’s one of the main ones. A version of it applies to Robert, too, who is also trying to find a meaningful connection in a world that is utterly intolerant of the kind of connections he’s into. Everything is so facile that the idea is authenticity is alien. It isn’t exactly fertile territory for romance.
But it’s Linda we start with. After being spirited away by Douglas, Linda has taken up the revolutionary cause in Cuba, teaming up with Che Guevara’s half-brother to teach the children of Sierra Madre how to read. But such charitable endeavours require funding, and for that, Linda turns to Maxine back in Palm Beach. She sends a message via the radio – which Mary initially confuses as a missive from the spirit world – with instructions for Maxine to meet a courier and hand over $100,000, using a dopey code phrase to confirm she’s dealing with the right guy.
But Maxine’s busy. Following on from the previous episode, she’s dating Dr. Dusty Magic, but she’s oddly reluctant to reciprocate his advances. She’s also technically broke. The Rollins estate, which she’s the conservator of, has been frozen, and she and Evelyn are still trying to purchase the Palm Royale. Robert won’t write her a check, and she can’t turn to Doug for help since he has been kidnapped. Thanks to the Nazis – those guys again! – the Rollins’ gold reserves are no good, and then the estate gets cleared out. The cruel irony is that the combined value of everything present wouldn’t have scratched the surface of the $100K anyway, at least according to the FBI’s valuation.
I should mention Doug’s kidnapping, since there’s a funny misapprehension around all this. Dinah, thanks to a rudimentary grasp of Spanish, thinks he’s being held by Pinky and Raquel and is due to be imminently slaughtered like a pig. Perry comes up with the idea of using an upcoming square dance at Madge Post’s – anyone who’s anyone will be there – to create a distraction and give someone enough time to sneak in and free Doug. Maxine and Dusty will also be there, since Madge is the only person who will buy gold.
This isn’t the only thing she can get her hands on, it turns out – she’s also in possession of 11 of the 12 Romanov Fabergé eggs and, thanks to a deal with the Feds, the entire purloined Rollins estate. She uses the desperation of Maxine and Evelyn to undercut them on the gold, but even the bad deal gets them enough money to buy the Palm Royale and send Linda a hundred grand. And Pinky and Raquel are indeed distracted, giving Perry enough time to sneak off and try to free Doug, who turns out not to be their captive after all. Earlier, Raquel was talking about a literal pig being slaughtered. Doug has been with the FBI the whole time.
Palm Royale Season 2, Episode 5 is more of a social satire than a political one, but while Perry is busying himself with the above, Dinah is forced to excuse his absence at the dance to a mob of enthusiastic Republicans. Tricky Richard Nixon has enlisted Dinah with convincing Perry to run for mayor as a useless Democrat to ensure a Republican victory, and so Dinah has to establish Perry’s Democratic bona fides by getting on stage and saying things like “Perry supports women’s rights!” to the baying crowd. It’s very funny in real time.
The Doug kidnapping thing also causes confusion for Maxine and Evelyn, since the former, after hearing about it from Robert, who was trying to enjoy a nice evening with Tom in the empty FBI offices, offers Pinky and Raquel the Dellacorte mansion in exchange for his release, not realizing they don’t even have him. After a falling out with Evelyn over who’s at fault for the seizure of her assets, Maxine at least discovers that Dusty is Linda’s elusive courier, and she decides to celebrate by sleeping with him – the first time, we learn, that she will have ever slept with anyone other than Doug. But, of course, Doug himself arrives to ruin the tryst, fresh from his interrogation at the hands of the Feds. Even though Maxine is trying to get rid of Doug, Dusty mistakes their being together for a sign that he should make his excuses and leave, ruining Maxine’s romantic ambitions.
Speaking of which – while things seem to be going about as well as they can be for Robert and Tom, Palm Royale Season 2, Episode 5 ends by throwing a further spanner in the works with the last-minute appearance of Reginald, the fake Prince of Luxembourg Robert had earlier mentioned as the man he had almost run away with before Tom arrested him. I’m sure that’ll go well.
