Palm Royale recap: Were these plot developments drawn from a hat?

I thought that maybe Palm Royale was finally gelling after last week. Everyone was in one location, the humor was clicking, and the reveals felt like payoffs. Alas, it was short lived, as the wheels came off this week in a big way.

True to its established structure, we open with another flashback. In 1950, Robert (Ricky Martin) was in Korea, skinny dipping with a guy who’s clearly a little more than a war buddy. This flashback, and the later implication that said buddy did not make it home from Korea, sets the tone for Robert’s brooding over the first half of the episode. He’s gloomily playing his trumpet on the beach (Douglas [Josh Lucas]: “Did someone leave the sad jazz station on?”) and really spiraling in his emotions to Maxine (Kristen Wiig) about how he always screws things up and is paying for past mistakes.

Robert, my guy, didn’t you just meet this man? He shouldn’t inspire this kind of meltdown. Maxine, meanwhile, is racked with guilt that she’s the reason Robert isn’t with his “prince.” Okay, this is so contrived. Clearly, the show wanted to create conflict between Robert and Maxine, but this one makes no sense. Maxine turned into a genuine scammer, and could have easily told Robert immediately what had happened because he was not a prince and he was not going to take Robert to his place in Spain! Instead, Maxine sits on this information like she’s done something wrong. Later, when Robert finds out about this development from a cop in a bar, he is outraged and confronts her at the house. None of this adds up.

But Maxine has bigger fish to fry this week—excuse me, not fish, a mammal, as the animal service guy keeps telling her. A whale has washed up on the Dellacorte beach just three days before the Beach Ball, and if Maxine doesn’t get him back out to sea, he’ll die and ruin her party—that is, if someone else doesn’t ruin it first. Norma (Carol Burnett) is quite literally murderous (if you turn closed captions on, her slurring answer to Ann [Mindy Cohn] at the start of the episode is, “Kill Maxine so things get back to normal”), and Evelyn (Allison Janney) and Dinah (Leslie Bibb) are making calls to her vendors telling them to replace the Dom Perignon with Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, or the prime rib with sloppy joes (“No buns, just the slop”).

Dinah is throwing a party of her own for one Axel Rosenhips (Paul Sand), the old man she met at Skeet’s funeral. With Perry in jail and most of their assets frozen, she needs to plan for her future. This does not thrill Eddie (Jason Canela), her tennis-pro lover, who wants her to finally commit to him, but when he gives her an ultimatum, she sends him on his way. While Ann is digging around Norma’s old stuff, she finds letters between Axel and Norma, who were apparently once in love. Determined to make up for her bad Robert karma, Maxine wheels Norma to Axel’s birthday party and tries to get them to reconnect. This obviously infuriates Dinah, who says Maxine one-ups her at every turn. “I cannot tell if you’re a country bumpkin or the most ruthless woman in Palm Beach!” Neither can the show, Dinah!

Evelyn is also having a tough time of it. She once again pitches to Douglas that if he sides with her and says Linda (Laura Dern) murdered her father, she’ll cut him in on a percentage of the estate. Of course, Douglas takes this information (and a prompting from Pinky [Roberto Sanchez] to find $2 million so they can open their own club) straight to Linda to essentially blackmail her into handing over $3 million from her new inheritance. Glad this guy has become a better person since their failed wedding.

Maxine, despite her own problems, cannot stand the thought of Evelyn down on her luck. Linda has bequeathed Evelyn Skeet’s old trailer and $500 per week, and life as she knows it is clearly unraveling. Maxine offers to let her co-host the Beach Ball after all. (“Every pageant queen knows she has to reach back and hug her runner-up.”) Maybe Maxine is just hoping Evelyn can solve her whale problem, but when the two get to the beach, she is overcome by what the whale guy calls “cetacean jubilation.” She’s…in love with the whale? And spends most of the rest of the episode singing to him dreamily on the beach. Even if the whale is a convoluted metaphor and Allison Janney’s gaga eyes are funny for a second, the whole development feels certifiably insane and neuters Janney at a time when she should be shooting off zingers all episode. (Before the whale mania sets in: “What are you doing crouching on the floor like an incontinent Pomeranian?”)

In an effort to better understand the whale, Maxine listens to three minutes of the 1969 version of a whale podcast and also becomes very into them. She learns about whale calls, and this comes in handy when she’s on Dinah’s yacht. Taking the microphone that was meant for toasts to Axel, she bellows out some whale calls of her own, luring the beached whale back into the ocean. Maxine is triumphant, and Evelyn is devastated—again. That is, until Eddie comes along on the beach and calls her the saddest and most beautiful woman in the world. And then they kiss. They kiss?! Were plot developments for this episode drawn from a hat? Everything feels so random and manufactured.

At least one thing tracks: After several episodes of trying to kill Maxine (including a poisoned grasshopper that Ann drinks instead—is she a goner?), Norma finally succeeds in pushing her overboard on Dinah’s yacht. Obviously Maxine is not going to die with two episodes left, but will she be aware of Norma’s intentions going forward?

Stray observations

• Adding to the list of things that felt random this week: Mary (Julia Duffy) is suddenly a leader of the bookstore women as they seek to help more men draft dodge by running away to Canada. “I didn’t know this was your scene,” Maxine says uncertainly as she finds Mary among the feminists. “I go where I’m needed,” Mary says by way of clunky explanation. “I’ve been enlightened.” Like, sure, okay. Why not? The plot and character development haven’t exactly been cohesive thus far.
• Robert realizes Mitzi (Kaia Gerber) is not Perry’s affair but Douglas’! They hooked up at the casino night, and he’s been trying to figure out how to deal with her ever since. Now he’s gotten her a job as a stewardess. I really thought this girl was going to end up being someone’s daughter. Douglas pleads with Robert to keep his secret, but at episode’s end, they both get arrested in a raid of the gay bar where they’re talking.
• Best laugh of the episode, hands down, is this exchange between Maxine and Evelyn. “You sure have a lot of birds.” / “You should see my bird room.” Runner up is Robert’s “You and your spoiled baby husband in those pink pants.”