Summary
The usually stellar pacing of Palm Royale Season 2 flags a little in “Maxine Finds Herself”, but there are still plenty of upsides, including a double helping of physical comedy.
For the first time in Palm Royale Season 2, the pacing begins to flag in Episode 6. Don’t get me wrong, “Maxine Finds Herself” – a double entendre title that’ll become clear – has its fair share of upsides, including a lot of slapstick-y physical comedy and a great drunk performance from Kristen Wiig. But it also feels a bit languorous, devotes much of its runtime to a plot turn introduced literally out of nowhere, and seems to short-change some other, more compelling aspects of the narrative as a result. It’s not bad by any stretch; it’s just a bit of a step back after what has come before this season.
I do like the gimmick, introduced last week, of using Linda’s fortunes abroad as a counterpoint to Maxine’s waning luck at home. For what it’s worth, she has now made her way to Russia with a new man and an old fortune, and things seem to be working out pretty well for her. For Maxine, though, not so much. Virginia thinks – or at least J. Edgar Hoover thinks, and is relaying it through Virginia – that Palm Beach is rife with Russian mobsters connected to Pinky, and thus to the Palm Royale. She also learns, rather suddenly, that she has a twin sister.
This is less-than-ideal time for such a revelation. Maxine gets home to find herself sleeping on the couch, and the strung-out reflection revealing herself to be a long-lost twin named Mirabelle gives Wiig a great opportunity to offer a ridiculous new mode of performance, but creates all kinds of new problems for Maxine. Naturally, she wants to know everything she can about her relative, who apparently lived with their parents and clearly likes a drink (among other things), but their attempted bonding sessions are continually interrupted by problems.
And the problems are everywhere. Evelyn has made Maxine persona non grata, Dinah is receiving death threats after her political speech, Mitzi is throwing a combined baby and bridal shower, and Robert manages to torpedo his love life – and Tom’s entire life, potentially – in about five minutes after accidentally letting it slip to lifelong conman Reginald that Tom is gay. He also kissed Reginald, though admittedly his heart isn’t in it, but Tom sees them anyway.
This isn’t all. On account of Doug’s disappearing act, Pinky requires some form of recompense and decides that being made godfather of his unborn child would suffice, something that he agrees to and then has to reveal to Mitzi at the “Braby” shower. It’s a mess for everyone, and you can tell he’s had just about enough of his circumstances. This is what striving for more gets you, I suppose. He’d arguably have been better off with Maxine, who still can’t quite seem to divorce herself from him mentally, even if the papers have been signed physically.
This “relationship” gets properly potty in Palm Royale Season 2, Episode 6, on account of Douglas running into Mirabelle, cosplaying Maxine, and you can sort of imagine how it all goes. But everything involving Mirabelle is very funny, full of exaggerated pratfalls and physical comedy of a kind that the show sometimes indulges in but can’t always contrive an excuse for. Mirabelle is the perfect excuse. She’s also a neat way of allowing Maxine to have some lightbulb moments – like going after Pinky for tax evasion, something that requires stealing his ledger – and having Wiig get into confrontations – like a brilliantly funny house-tour fight with a Russian-speaking Raquel – that wouldn’t quite work plot-wise for Maxine.
Of course, Mirabelle is a conwoman, which is discovered by Robert (via Tom) and passed on to Virginia. But it isn’t that her motives are necessarily impure as regards Maxine. She was apparently just told by a handsome gay conman – I think we know who – that she had a twin and wanted to meet her. But her looking exactly like Maxine has upsides and downsides, obviously. One of the downsides is that she has slept with Doug while still pretending to be Maxine. But the upside is that she has the ledger, presumably from Raquel, which she hands over.
But “Maxine Finds Herself” ends by revealing – or at the very least implying – Evelyn’s true colours. The final image of the episode is one of Mirabelle having been shot, floating face down in the pool, with Evelyn standing over her. The implication is pretty clear. Is Evelyn so desperate to profit for herself that she was willing to shoot Maxine in the back? We’ll have to wait and see, but stranger things have happened.
