Palm Royale recap: President Nixon has entered the chat

Carol Burnett’s hour has arrived! After three episodes in a coma and six ones slurring minimal dialogue, Palm Royale is finally setting her up to make a splash in the finale. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have to recap this penultimate episode first.

It’s a flashback to the not-so-distant past, Norma (Carol Burnett) asks Robert (Ricky Martin) to tell a little more about himself after he has been nameless waiting on her during a previous season. “Tell me about the man behind the martini,” she prompts him. She needs someone to “perform certain tasks” with “complete discretion.” Robert understandably wants to know what tasks. She’ll tell him in good time, she says, and he agrees to this arrangement, even though it’s verifiably insane.

Back in the present, we find Maxine (Kristen Wiig) where we left her: floating in the ocean. She’s clinging to a piece of driftwood, monologuing to a bird while we’re treated to a montage of Evelyn (Allison Janney) boinking tennis pro Eddie (Jason Canela) and Axel (Paul Sand) proposing to Dinah (Leslie Bibb). The writing is atrocious here. “Don’t they know that a forgotten woman is the most dangerous woman of all?” I know it’s on purpose, but, man, this show is tired. Also, is Dinah still married to Perry? You don’t get automatically divorced when your husband gets arrested. It would take her a while to be able to legally marry Axel, which is important if she’s hoping to inherit his fortune.

Douglas (Josh Lucas) and Robert are stuck in jail after being arrested during a raid of a gay bar, but obviously they can’t get ahold of Maxine to bail them out. Luckily, the Apollo 12 comes back to Earth right by Maxine, meaning she’s saved by the handsome group of astronauts she was once eager to invite to the Beach Ball. So now she’s on the news as a rescued damsel and a cute astronaut is attending her party. It’s all coming up Maxine.

Evelyn’s encounter with Eddie also seems to have snapped her back to her natural state: spewing the bitchiest one-liners at everyone. Thank god. They bang in the condo that Dinah pays for, and, naturally, Dinah shows up at the door the next morning to try to make things right with Eddie after the whole Axel ultimatum. Eddie isn’t having it, but this is somehow the first Evelyn is learning about Eddie and Dinah’s relationship. They’ve had multiple open-air conflicts at the club, and Evelyn never picked up on it?

Eddie sends Dinah away and then offers to make Evelyn dinner, but it might have to be at her place since Dinah is threatening to evict him from the condo. Evelyn, whose only property is Skeet’s trailer, says she’ll have to get back to him. Then, of course, she marches over to the Rollins estate and bellows, “Pack up your beanbags and get out of my house, hippies!” Attagirl. Unfortunately, Linda (Laura Dern) informs her that she no longer has any blackmail leverage, since she bought Douglas out. “Sorry, Evelyn,” says Mary (Julia Duffy), and Janney delivers a perfect “FUCK OFF, MARY” in response.

Back at the Dellacorte place, Maxine is livid at Douglas (bailed out by Mitzi [Kaia Gerber]) for not knowing she was lost at sea and sending help, although I’m kind of with Douglas on this one. How was he supposed to know? Robert has forgotten all about his gripes from last episode because now he feels guilty about keeping the Douglas-Mitzi affair from Maxine, so I guess they’re cool. Maxine discovers an unconscious Ann (Mindy Cohn) upstairs among Norma’s things. She’s alive! They rush her to the hospital, and while Maxine is sitting by her bedside, who walks in but Astronaut Herkimer (played by Avi Rothman, Kristen Wiig’s real-life husband), the guy who saved her. Not only is he going to come to the party, but he offers to accompany her on the piano for her opening number. Sure, why not?

Douglas doesn’t like the astronaut hanging around, convinced he’s sweet on Maxine, but she brushes him off. They’re rehearsing her song, “Is That All There Is?” when the secret service shows up because, surprise! President Nixon is coming to the party because he wants to meet the astronaut. They have to clear up some security issues, however: firstly, that Maxine signed the feminist petition in Linda’s bookstore, and secondly, Douglas’s recent arrest. The first one is easy to explain away as Maxine insists she did not know what she was signing and would never call herself a feminist (“Not much of a reader?” / “No.”), but she’s irate that Douglas and Robert didn’t tell her about the arrest. Douglas covers their tracks, saying they had met up to plan a surprise for her. Now he just has to figure out what that is.

But regardless, Nixon is coming! Maxine waltzes into Garmond’s, on top of the world and ready to share the news with the girls. Dinah can’t believe she’s upstaging her engagement. Newly feminist Mary is unsure: “Nixon’s bad, right? He’s a bad man.” Evelyn snaps: “Mary, you have a shoelace around your brain.” But Evelyn, wanting to regain some financial stability to secure Eddie (is this guy just amazing in the sack or what?), corners Maxine in her dressing room and demands to co-host the Beach Ball and get half the profits. “Over my dead body,” Maxine replies. Wait wait wait. Didn’t Maxine explicitly offer this to Evelyn last episode?? This whole conversation makes no sense. Palm Royale can’t keep its characterizations or developments consistent even week to week, and it’s so maddening. Evelyn gets her way because if Maxine doesn’t cut her in, she’ll call in a bomb threat, and Nixon won’t come.

Another wrinkle for Maxine: Raquel (Claudia Ferri) tells her their husbands are opening up a new club…at her house? Maxine storms home to confront Douglas. Did he give away their house without telling her? He tries to defend himself, but she won’t hear it, saying their pattern is he fucks up and she cleans up. It feels like there’s important context missing here of what happened between them in the first 20 years of their marriage.

Maxine takes her sorrows into the Beach Ball tent, where she and the astronaut play piano together and he tries to kiss her. Maxine freezes as he makes out with her face. He wants to know if he misread the signs. Isn’t the song about her dying marriage? Maxine says, no, “this song is about accepting your fate for better or worse.” Either way, what a fun way to open a party.

It’s finally Beach Ball time. Evelyn shows up at Eddie’s door in her dress, ready to take him out in society in a way Dinah never did (again: okay?). Douglas gives Maxine a tiara and tells her he’s nothing without her (indeed, he can’t even sign over the house, because only Max can as Norma’s conservator). Robert finds Norma standing, sipping a martini, no hint of slur to her speech. “Tell no one,” she says. “I have a little special something planned for the ball tonight.”

But! Across town, Ann is waking up in her hotel bed. Her body was flooded with insulin, and they want to do more tests to see if she has a tumor. “There’s no fucking tumor!” Ann says as she disentangles herself from the medical equipment. “I’m on deadline! I’ve got to put my pants on.” Someone has been putting things together all season. Looks like it’s going to be a battle royale for the season finale of Palm Royale—Norma v. Ann—and my money is on Ann.

Stray observations

• Laura Dern, what are you doing in this show? Her character has consistently felt so out of place with the rest of the deranged world building here. In this week’s episode, she’s decided she’s moving to Peru and even gives Robert and impassioned, heartfelt speech about how this town is about hiding, and hiding doesn’t make you safe, blah blah blah. This scene is also crucially when Robert reveals that Norma is diabetic and gets insulin shots.
• Of course, Linda doesn’t go anywhere, because she has a bizarre run-in with Mary. The police have arrested their feminist circle, and Mary is suddenly on a mission to—let me just check my notes here—kill Richard Nixon. Linda tells her she’s being crazy, and Mary doubles down on that, knocking Linda unconscious with the stone cat she swiped from Norma’s house to cover that damn fibs check. Julia Duffy does commit to her character’s weirdness.
• I’m curious to see if Mitzi plays a big role in the finale because thus far she has been the most utterly pointless character on the show.