Palm Royale Character’s Darkest History Actually Makes Her Better Than Anyone Else
She has all the reasons to hate the main character, but instead becomes her friend.
Summary:
- Palm Royale follows the American high society of the 1960s and focuses primarily on Maxine who paves her way to the top, but the series also features another character whose dreadful fate lets her stand out among all.
- The show’s plot suggests that the character should become Maxine’s biggest rival, but instead they form nothing but a good friendship.
- Despite their tremendous differences, they eventually realize that they have a lot of things in common.
Apple TV ’s Palm Royale has been around for a while, taking the viewer back to the 1960s where high society seems to have much more skeletons in its closet than it wants to show.
Though it’s Maxine, portrayed by Kristen Wiig, who gets the whole show’s attention, there’s another character whose evolution throughout the plot is much more compelling.
At first introduced as a minor character, Linda Shaw, played by Laura Dern, takes up a more significant role over the course of her relationships with Maxine. Being Maxine’s husband’s ex-fiancee, Linda, in the viewers’ eyes, appears to be the main villain of the story who should detest Maxine for ruining her marriage.
On top of that, she’s the main character’s exact antithesis — while Maxine is building her way up to the top of society, Linda was born into it, though soon got tired and preferred not having to deal with it at all.
Yet the women’s relationships evolve over the time as both get to realize that they in fact have much more in common than anyone else. Despite Linda’s seemingly impeccable look, behind it there are also sinister secrets that she wouldn’t want to resurface.
What’s even more striking in this regard is that both experienced a disheartening feeling of being forgotten by their husband — only one, as Maxine’s husband Douglas becomes quite cold towards her now while he also used to be the same with Linda who he was cheating on with Maxine.
Even though she has a million reasons to hate Maxine and spite her whenever it’s possible, Linda instead makes a step towards her ex-competitor and even gives her a helping hand in paying her membership at the club or preparing food for Maxine’s party — the kind gestures that Maxine may have never even expected given Linda’s unfairly cruel story.