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PORTSIDE CULTURE

PALM ROYALE IS A WEAK CRITIQUE OF THE “BUBBLE” OF THE RICH  
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Eileen Jones
March 29, 2024
Jacobin [[link removed]]

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_ Showing that rich women in 1969 are “living in a bubble” is
like demonstrating that, as ever, water is wet. But even if Palm
Royale was meant to deliver messages of great satirical significance,
it’s too weak to carry them. _

Kristen Wiig as Maxine Simmons in Palm Royale. , (Apple TV+)

 

I've been trying to stick with _Palm Royale_. There’s a lot of
talent involved, and the ten-episode Apple TV+ series always seems
like it’s just about to take off and become something more than a
brightly colored, blandly satirical take on the absurd ultrarich of
Palm Beach, Florida, and the people who long to crash the gates of
their tacky fiefdoms.

Kristen Wiig stars as Maxine Simmons, a former pageant queen who
literally breaks into the exclusive club, the Palm Royale, by climbing
the flower-covered wall. From there, she finds endless ways to worm
her way into a position of social acceptance and then social
prominence among the territorial elite.

Her only assets in this stupid quest are her unquenchably chirpy,
delusional optimism, her high-haired blonde-bouffant and overall good
looks, and the assets of her husband’s wealthy great aunt, Norma
Dellacorte (Carol Burnett, still game at ninety), who’s in a
long-term coma. Her condition allows Maxine to borrow her somewhat
outdated designer clothes and pawn her jewelry and knickknacks for
ready rolls of cash.

But standing in Maxine’s way are the guardians of the gates of
wealth, the rich group of women who run the biggest charities and wear
the fanciest duds and lunch, dine, swim, and play tennis at the Palm
Royale. They’re led by formidable dragon lady Evelyn Rollins
(Allison Janney), though her hold on the top spot is slipping, giving
opportunities to younger, possibly deadlier up-and-coming socialites.

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Allison Janney in Palm Royale. (Apple TV+)

Orbiting the women is Ricky Martin’s character of Robert, hot-bodied
waiter at the Palm Royale who also lives as a caretaker at the
Dellacorte mansion, where he’s soon up against Maxine claiming
squatters’ rights there. That’s on the strength of the shaky
inheritance claims of her indulgent husband, Douglas (Josh Lucas), an
airline pilot who was contentedly estranged from his family till
Maxine began her quest to become one of the rich Dellacortes.

Mindy Cohn plays Ann Holiday, reporter for the _Shiny Sheet_, a
gossip rag reporting on the doings of the wealthy. She gets invested
in Maxine’s unlikely long-shot attempts to join the rarified Palm
Royale set. So does Evelyn’s daughter Linda (Laura Dern), who’s
rejected her mother’s lifestyle to live as a hippie feminist running
consciousness-raising teach-ins at a leftist bookstore, which Maxine
is always crashing in order to ask for favors.

 

But oddly enough, given this promisingly funny setup, it’s rarely
more than pallidly amusing. Even the performances, full of pratfalls
and ludicrous behaviors, seem oddly subdued. Janney delivers
gimlet-eyed menace, but she’s been so much more inspired and
memorable in other roles. Never has Dern given a weaker performance,
which is downright alarming to witness. And Burnett’s big laugh line
so far, used in the previews for the show, involves her character
calling for Robert to ask for another drink and announcing, “And we
will be playing doctor.”

Created by Abe Sylvia (_Eyes of Tammy Faye_), the series seems to ask
us to truly empathize with the ridiculous lengths Maxine is going to
in reaching her goal to become a Palm Royale player. This is tough to
sustain over ten strangely slow-paced episodes, including regular
dramatic interludes. There’s always another crisis requiring Maxine
to come up with an insane amount of money immediately, or to
demonstrate that she lives like a rich person though she’s just been
evicted from her seedy residential hotel room for nonpayment of rent,
or to persuade another reluctant rich woman to back her membership in
the club before they throw her out. She always pulls it off in the
nick of time. But these plot developments have a sameness to them that
gets steadily duller over several episodes.

At least our eyes are dazzled by the costume designs of Alix
Friedberg, a parade of late-1960s fashions in outrageous pinks,
oranges, greens, and yellows. But even that palls in time, and we have
to start wondering what experience this series is trying to give us if
not screwball hilarity with an edge of social commentary.

It’s loosely based on the 2018 novel _Mr and Mrs American Pie_ by
Juliet McDaniel, which is much more the raucous comedy one might
expect, judging by the author’s description
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Maxine is a picture perfect, pill-popping, haughty society lady in
1969 Palm Springs until the Thanksgiving her husband walks out on her.
Fueled by her rage and buckets of DGAF, Maxine decides to reclaim what
marriage stole from her. She joins forces with her favorite bartender,
“confirmed bachelor” Robert, and together they craft a fake family
to help Maxie enter the ultimate beauty queen contest for housewives
— Mrs American Pie. But is she here to win or just out to destroy?

In writing her book, McDaniel was also concerned with representing how
the turbulent era of the 1960s allowed marginalized people to come to
the fore, such as Robert in the early years of the gay rights
movement. This earnest goal seems to be informing the series to a
significant extent, according to
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actor and executive producer Wiig:

I don’t think you can tell a story, especially in 1969, about a
bunch of wealthy people at a country club without acknowledging all of
the things that were going on with women’s rights and the Vietnam
War. I think story-wise, too, to have the feminists at the bookstore,
just completely the other side of the coin to the women that are at
the Palm Royale, but they do exist in the same world, and some of them
do know each other — to have both of those things happening at the
same time was such a reminder that the women in the club are just
living in a bubble. . . . I think we felt it was really important to
shine the light on how ridiculous they look, because they’re not
acknowledging it, and to just really say what’s going on in the
world that’s actually important.

Extraordinary how this interview stuff writes itself by now. The
much-mocked online phrase “This is honestly so important right
now” never comes close to mocking the pious attitude behind it out
of existence. Practically every movie and TV series is publicized by
establishing its bona fides in terms of airing the “important”
issues of our day, and if they aren’t demonstrably “shining a
light” on something culturally praiseworthy or culturally
deplorable, and either way requiring our solemn consideration, critics
are up and demanding why they exist at all.

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Still from Palm Royale. (Apple TV+)

Showing that rich women in 1969 are “living in a bubble” is like
demonstrating that, as ever, water is wet. But even if _Palm
Royale_ was meant to deliver messages of great satirical
significance_,_ it’s too weak to carry them.

Hell, skits on the old Carol Burnett Show back in the 1970s were
stronger vehicles. Remember those old recurring sketches featuring
that backward, battling, working-class Southern family, with Burnett
as Eunice Higgins, a mass of histrionic social climbing fantasies
turned toxic with failure and resentment? Makes me shudder to remember
them, they cut so close to the bone. That was a detailed portrait of
American dreams thrashing around in American reality that I still
remember cringingly from childhood.

Nobody seeing _Palm Royale_ in childhood — or adulthood — is
likely to remember it. Which is too bad because Carol Burnett deserves
better.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of
the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.

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