Palm Royale recap: Thank god Carol Burnett has more to do now

Carol Burnett is awake! Granted, her character’s speech is impaired so she’s not getting real dialogue, but Burnett can do more with slurred syllables and facial expressions than other comedic actors can do with whole monologues. All of Norma’s reactions to Maxine’s (Kristen Wiig) antics this episode almost made it worth the watch. Almost. I hate to beat a dead horse week after week, but this show is a mess. The humor isn’t landing, the tone is all over the place, the characters are cartoonish, the stakes are nonexistent, and the plot is often moved along by decisions that otherwise make no sense.

We once again open in 1949, with Douglas (Josh Lucas) taking Maxine up in a plane. They’re gushing about their adoration for each other, and when Douglas turns the plane upside down, she confesses that she’s pregnant—news that thrills him. If you recall, the wedding between Douglas and Penelope Rollins/Linda (Laura Dern) also took place in 1949. So what exactly is the timeline here?

In the present, Maxine’s voiceover narration debates confronting Douglas about the wedding invitation. She’s worried about who else knows about it, as if this information is going to impact her pristine social standing in Palm Beach. After expressing this to newly awake Norma, she decides to chase Dougie down at the golf course and get to the bottom of the situation. “You hungry? No? Okay, we can wait for dinner,” Maxine plows through her charge’s clear indications that she’d like to eat.

I think the most difficult part of Palm Royale is that Maxine is the least funny character on the show, but of course so much of it revolves around her. This episode illustrates that perfectly because every Maxine scene that features Norma turns fun, but when Burnett’s character is stashed elsewhere, Maxine’s humor flails randomly.

On the golf course, Douglas admits he was set to marry Penelope/Linda, but that it was the worst day of his life and that she shot her father. The only explanation he has is that she was crazy, and none of this matters because it was 20 years ago. His deflections send Maxine to Our Bodies, Our Shelves to confront Linda, who is hiding out in the back, but eavesdrops as Maxine unloads on Virgina (Amber Chardae Robinson). Maxine realizes now that Linda knew who she was all along and befriended her with hidden motives, something she considers a betrayal of their friendship. What friendship? Everything Maxine does is a maneuver to get her closer to what she wants. She’s an obvious schemer, and yet often Wiig—and the show—present her as a striver with a heart of gold. The whiplash makes it hard to stay onboard this ride.

Meanwhile, Virginia and the feminist circle of the bookstore are hellbent on using Norma’s rolodex to exercise some power. Linda is uncomfortable with this, but she suggests Perry Donahue (Jordan Bridges), whom the rolodex reveals paid off inspectors before a condo collapsed. There’s a lot going on with Perry: He’s trying to get Dougie to invest some of Norma’s fortune in his business, his wife’s tennis pro lover wants to kill him, the feminist women want to out him as corrupt, and he’s clearly got a side thing going with Maxine’s manicurist Mitzi (Kaia Gerber). And while we’re on Mitzi, so far she has absolutely no purpose in this show, but as the plot becomes more and more wrapped up in what transpired in 1949, it seems pretty obvious that she’ll be revealed as someone’s daughter, right?

More information drips out over the course of the episode. Evelyn (Allison Janney) tells Maxine that she believes Linda was trying to kill her on the day of her wedding but accidentally shot her father. The gun was never recovered, but Maxine takes it out of the security deposit box and carries it in her purse. “That gun is insurance against a lot of things going out of balance around here,” Evelyn warns ominously. She admits that Norma’s rolodex is her great source of power, as she uses its secrets to blackmail her way to the top.

Linda shows up to the club to lightly threaten Douglas as he takes a piss: “If memory serves, you made a deal, and it still stands, right?” They bicker about who was the bigger problem in their relationship, and frankly it seems like Laura Dern and Josh Lucas are acting in completely different shows. He’s dialed up to 10 as a total clown, and she’s clearly trying to give Linda a little dimension.

The only other character with some depth is Ricky Martin’s Robert. He continues to show up whenever it’s convenient for the plot (he’s just a roaming golf course bartender now?), but his relationship with Norma seems to be a genuine connection. When Maxine complains to Dinah (Leslie Bibb) about Douglas’ history, she advises Maxine take a lover at the club, and for some reason Maxine zeroes in on Robert?! Whom she hates and had arrested last week? In this very episode, he asks, “I’m the only person you’re rude to—why?” And honestly, he’s completely right, but as we’ve discussed, Maxine’s motivations are so all over the place, I hadn’t even clocked that inconsistency.

The episode ends with Linda finally coming over to the Dellacorte mansion to have a conversation with Maxine. She reveals that she shot her father on accident, instead meaning to shoot Douglas, whom she was convinced was having an affair. Though he denied it and called her crazy, by that point, he had gotten Maxine pregnant. After the shooting, Norma swept in. Douglas would take some hush money and go to Tennessee to be with his “gutter slut,” Skeet (Bruce Dern) would finally marry Evelyn, and Penelope/Linda would stay out of jail.

“I’m the gutter slut?” Maxine asks in Wiig’s best delivery of the episode. Indeed. Linda burns the rolodex in front of Norma, who shrieks her outrage hilariously, and Maxine throws the gun in the ocean. Which…why? Why not just put it back in the security-deposit box if you want to dispose of the problem? Chekhov’s gun is just going to wash back up on this beach!

Stray observations

• Some version of Palm Royale could have been successful camp, and I have to think that’s what Josh Lucas is aiming for. Two of my favorite lines: “I personally hated it!” and “I guess there was something blonde I liked about her.”
• Ann (Mindy Cohn), the Shiny Sheet writer, is doggedly fact checking Maxine’s supposed pageant wins. Seems like this will be important later.
• What was the point of the alligator on the golf course?
• Ricky Martin is a sneaky ace on this show. “Why do you have a gun?!” was the funniest non-Carol Burnett moment.
• It really seems like Dinah and Evelyn accepted Maxine overnight. They’re both so chummy with her this episode, which doesn’t feel especially earned.