‘Palm Royale’ Season 2, Episode 9 Recap – Vacation Is Over

In case you didn’t know there was a finale coming up, Episode 9 of Palm Royale Season 2 makes it pretty clear. “Maxine Hears a Confession” is the quintessential penultimate episode, delivering big on significant plot swerves for several characters that redefine their relationships and what we thought we knew about the plot, and building to a massive cliffhanger ending that adds another mark to the Palm Beach murder tally. This one was pretty warranted, though.

This is also the episode that loops Linda back into the main plot, after spending most of the season having sexy adventures with Latin American communists. The cold open, in fact, finds her travelling to Switzerland on a plane being piloted by Ulla and Beullah through a snowstorm. That same snowstorm, we later learn, has grounded all the flights out of the country, leaving Mitzi and Eduardo, who both want to leave for different reasons, stranded with everyone else. It’s the perfect setup for a hefty amount of drama (but, disappointingly, a bit less comedy than usual).

After the previous episode, nobody is feeling especially jovial. Robert is feeling deeply conflicted, and now that the word is out about his having a son, he can confide in Maxine a little. Over the years, Norma has kept him safe, hidden from his family, but when he took a bullet for Nixon, his face was printed on every newspaper in the land. His son saw him and has been reaching out to him. He imagines Robert as a hero, which is terrifying for Robert, since he assumes that his being gay will disappoint his child.

Since Robert burned the letters proving that Norma wasn’t Norma, Maxine’s on the back foot, and Norma must know this, since she decides now is the opportune time to reach out to Evelyn, who is taken by Lotte through a Frampus painting to Norma’s hidden lair. She has a proposition for Evelyn, which occurs off-screen, but it’s pretty obvious from the jump that Evelyn agreed to it, even though she tells Maxine she didn’t. In fact, she rushes Maxine and the others to the hidden room to convince them she’s on-side, revealing that Norma will be at the Hall of Dellacortes at 2 pm to marry Mitzi off to Robert. Maxine figures that’ll be the perfect time to snatch her.

Before that, though, Linda’s name is still on the baby trust, so Maxine gets Evelyn to impersonate her in an effort to withdraw the money. Allison Janney is hilarious here, even though it’s pretty miserable that the security question that foils her is Linda’s birthday. As it happens, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since the bank clerk is a big fan of Linda, who is something of a local revolutionary hero in Fulm, so he knew all along that Evelyn wasn’t her. It seems like the baby trust is going to the country of Switzerland until Ulla and Beullah arrive with Linda, just in time.

Elsewhere in Palm Royale Season 2, Episode 9, Douglas is alive. But his heart is weak. This, it turns out, has nothing to do with poisoning, but instead a congenital heart defect. The doctor can scarcely believe he has survived this long. But he also reveals to Maxine that the condition makes him unable to conceive children, which means that Mitzi must be pregnant by another man. This development also turns out to be key in proving that Norma isn’t really a Dellacorte. When Maxine arrives at the Hall of Dellacortes to interrupt the nuptials, she realizes that all the Dellacorte family died young from the same inherited defect. Norma’s survival proves she isn’t who she says she is.

This is where it’s revealed that Evelyn was playing Maxine. The wedding isn’t at the Hall of Dellacortes — it’s at the church. Norma offered Evelyn money to facilitate the distraction, and she took it. But it hasn’t made much of a difference, since Robert decided not to marry Mitzi anyway (there are only so many “boys like you” lectures a man can take). Instead, Norma takes the opportunity at the church to tell Linda the truth about who she is — and who she is to her. “Norma”, aka Agnes, is Linda’s mother; she conceived her with Skeet as part of a years-long affair. But given the social norms of the time, her getting knocked up by a married man would have ruined them both, so she gave birth to Linda in secret in Switzerland and had Skeet adopt her. That’s why she arranged to have Linda married off to Douglas, to secure both the Dellacorte and Rollins fortunes (and hence Linda’s name on the baby trust). But then Maxine came along, ruining everything.

This revelatory conversation is interrupted by Perry, who has spent most of “Maxine Hears a Confession” roaming across the snowy mountains, sulking about Dinah’s supposed infidelity. But he’s led by a vision of a reindeer to Linda, whom he tries to turn in to the authorities on behalf of the U.S. government. But Lotte hits him over the head with a shovel and escapes with Linda and Norma.

All this, and Mitzi decided not to marry Robert anyway. When she told Jed that she wasn’t able to kill Evelyn, he demanded she get the next flight home, though the snowstorm kept her waiting. Jed spent his time trying to force Mary into adding him to her will, but that situation turned violent. While it happened off-screen, it was pretty clear that Mary had clubbed him over the head, presumably fatally, with the family orb. But when Mitzi called to check in with him and Mary answered the phone, Jed took the opportunity to vanish.

Palm Royale Season 2, Episode 9 ends with Jed settling on his next victim — Evelyn. He bursts into her house and opens fire on her with a revolver, but she’s saved at the last moment by Maxine, who had just been told by Mitzi that it was Jed who killed Mirabelle and was planning to kill Evelyn. Maxine kills Jed, and at the same time, to make things even more dramatic, Robert’s son, Rafael, turns up at his door to meet him.