Summary
A change of scenery livens up Palm Royale Season 2, with “Maxine Hits the Slopes” delivering big laughs and bigger twists.
Most shows benefit from a change of scenery, but Palm Royale benefits pretty considerably in “Maxine Hits the Slopes”. It isn’t that Season 2 was flagging beforehand, since it very much wasn’t, but there’s something about the vibe of Episode 8 – an exaggerated pastiche of European post-war sentiment and wintry chic – that really leans into everything this show does so well. The previous episode was a superb comedic outing, and this one confidently rivals it, with an even more dramatic cliffhanger ending for good measure.
We’re in the Swiss Alps, as you’ll probably recall, since all of the Palm Beach regulars have a more or less valid reason to be travelling there. But the vibes are still off. Evelyn is shaky about having cheated on Eduardo and is still trying to ruin Maxine, and Mitzi is furious about Maxine “haunting” her (and thus is trying to ruin Maxine). It feels like the only person who isn’t trying to ruin our heroine is Douglas, but that’s also because he’s trying to sleep with her after his tryst with her twin sister. He thinks he and Maxine can resume their marriage after his baby is born, which is perhaps why he has promised her half of the money Mitzi was supposedly entitled to. Evelyn is also trying to claim that money, threatening Mitzi with exposing the fact that her bun in the oven was put there by Jed, not Douglas. It’s all rather a lot.
A funny joke is that Palm Beach infidelity is so common, and its denizens so thoughtlessly materialistic, that Evelyn having bought Eduardo an expensive new watch apropos of seemingly nothing immediately tips everyone off to the fact she cheated on him. I laughed, anyway.
Maxine thinks there’s a noble contour to this expedition, namely to save Robert from whatever grim fate Norma has in store for him, but that turns out to be remarkably far from the reality. In fact, Norma has legally adopted Robert, making him the heir to the Dellacorte family fortune. And he not technically being a Dellacorte doesn’t seem to be of any real concern, since “Norma” isn’t technically a Dellacorte either, but has played the role of one for so long now that nobody can realistically tell the difference.
This is all part of the capital-T Theme backdropping “Maxine Hits the Slopes”, which is appropriately how women are scapegoated for men’s mistakes, handily reinforced by repeated mentions of a local legend involving Frampus, the wife of Krampus, Switzerland’s Santa Claus. Even Father Christmas couldn’t keep it in his big red pants, not that anyone cared, so there’s little hope for idiots like Douglas. But this plays as a funny gag because it’s the women in this show who seem to be doing all the cheating and scheming. And there’s a lot of cheating and scheming going on, including Jed instructing Mitzi to kill Evelyn since she has figured out what he’s up to.
One of the bigger developments in Palm Royale Season 2, Episode 8 is that Maxine can’t sign the paperwork at the bank, since she was never listed as a beneficiary, so the gang has to get Linda over to Switzerland to do so. Another is that Dinah comes into possession of some letters that prove Norma killed Axel, but then gives them to Douglas, who puts them in his jacket pocket, but, in a convoluted string of circumstances, ends up swapping the jacket with Robert.
And thus we enter the extremely eventful back half of “Maxine Hits the Slopes”. The show keeps doing this, spending half an episode or so on a fun setup premise and then throwing in a bunch of revelations towards the end to keep everyone on their toes. You’ve got Dinah telling Eduardo that the watch gift was an apology, and then Perry assuming Dinah is cheating with Eduardo. You’ve got Mitzi trying to kill Evelyn, and Lotte, the woman looking after them while they’re in Switzerland, revealing that she’s “Norma’s” mother and that Norma has plans for Mitzi’s baby contingent on her marrying Robert – which Robert agrees to. And, finally, we have Maxine and Doug breaking into Robert’s room to try and steal those letters back, and inadvertently discovering Agnes’s grave – in other words, the resting place of the real Norma, alongside the grace of Charlotte Moriarty, aka Lotte.
Phew! With all this going on, it’s a small wonder that anything else can be squeezed in, but we also get a major cliffhanger for good measure. After being regaled with a story about how Frampus was thrown into a fire by Krampus, Doug takes some schnapps from Lotte, but after a swig or two, he falls to the ground clutching his chest, his fate left uncertain as Maxine screams over him.
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