'Palm Royale' Episode 9 recap: Maxine bags an astronaut and Nixon as Norma schemes

Welcome back to Shiny Sheet recaps "Palm Royale," our rundown of the new Apple TV+ series set in Palm Beach.

Each week, we look at five Palm Beach-related or key moments in that week's episode of the series that premiered March 20.

Watch out: There are spoilers ahead, so if you don't want to know, stop reading right now and come back after you've watched.

We're on Episode 9, "Maxine Makes a Splash."

Buckle in. This the second to last episode before the season finale premieres May 8, and as Bette Davis said in "All About Eve," it's going to be a bumpy night.

Two nights, actually, as we approach the Beach Ball.

To refresh your memory: Maxine Dellacorte (Kristen Wiig) is a perky, eager social climber who hopes to build a life for herself and her husband, Douglas (Josh Lucas), while breaking into Palm Beach's high society.

When we last saw Maxine, she was adrift in the ocean after being knocked overboard by Norma (Carol Burnett). How will she make it back to dry land? And what does her sudden soggy status mean for the Beach Ball?

Norma thinks Maxine is chiffon-wrapped fish food. What is Norma’s next step?

Robert (Ricky Martin) and Douglas are in jail after being rounded up during a raid at a gay bar, where they met for Robert to tell Douglas that he knew about Douglas' affair with Mitzi (Kaia Gerber). Will they be honest with Maxine about what happened and why? And how will they get out of jail?

Oh, and in the last episode, Douglas mentioned that he was funding a new social club. What’s happening with that?

It seems Evelyn (Allison Janney) has taken up with the Palm Royale club’s tennis pro, Eddie (Jason Canela), who had been sleeping with Dinah (Leslie Bibb). Will Dinah find out? And if she does, what does that mean for her marriage to her incarcerated husband Perry (Jordan Bridges) or her pursuit of the nonagenarian Axel Rosenhips (Paul Sand)?

What happened to Ann (Mindy Cohn) after she drank the spiked grasshopper that Norma hoped would take out Maxine?

More: Timeless: Mindy Cohn on 'Palm Royale,' Palm Beach, Ann Holiday and hitting her stride

In the last episode, the Women’s Circle looked for more ways to help men dodge the Vietnam War draft. Will Linda (Laura Dern) come out of hiding and help Virginia (Amber Chardae Robinson) break the law, using Linda’s recent inheritance?

Finally, will Mitzi tell Maxine that she slept with Douglas? (Maxine apparently wasn’t kidding when she said Douglas is everyone’s type. Yikes!)

Let's go!

Season 1, Episode 9: 'Maxine Makes a Splash'

1. Maxine finally gets her big guest.

And boy, do things get complicated.

When we first see Maxine in this episode, she's floating in the ocean, clinging to a piece of driftwood and opining on her betrayal.

As she does so, we get a glimpse of a few of our other "Palm Royale" favorites: Evelyn and Eddie are in bed together.

Axel proposes to Dinah, and she accepts. (Though as far as we know, she's still married.)

And Maxine is chatting with a seagull she's named Bernadette. "Don't they know a forgotten woman is the most dangerous woman of all?" Maxine laments. "Because a forgotten woman has nothing to lose."

Who should come to her rescue?

An astronaut!

No, really.

As Bernadette flies away, Maxine looks to the sky and spots a capsule, held aloft by three red-and-white striped parachutes, drifting toward the sea near her. An astronaut emerges — this is the lunar mission we saw launch earlier in the season, returning to terra firma, kind of.

Even as Maxine is being rescued by this newly returned NASA craft and what appears to be its sole occupant, she can't stop thinking about the Beach Ball, and invites the astronaut to the soiree that will take place in just 48 hours.

This turns out to be a huge deal. And if you sense palpable chemistry between Maxine and astronaut Grant Herkimer, there's a very good reason for that: Grant is played by Avi Rothman — Wiig's real-life husband.

Maxine and the astronaut certainly hit it off, and he accepts her invitation. Of course, her rescue via astronaut makes headlines, and Maxine and the astronaut get some TV time. That's Maxine's opportunity to invite President Richard Nixon — who accepts.

This turns out to be fortuitous, because, if you recall, Dinah and Evelyn called Maxine's vendors and swapped out one of her requests for cottage cheese, one of Nixon's favorite foods.

In addition to attending the party, the astronaut agrees to help Maxine prepare, playing the piano and openly flirting with her in front of Douglas as Maxine, in a leotard and tights, talks through her song and dance number.

Douglas rolls his eyes as the astronaut tells Maxine that he was a foster child in Tennessee, and Maxine reacts with surprise.

"I don't like that guy," Douglas tells Maxine. She's surprised to hear it, but Douglas insists that Grant is bad news.

"You're too naive, Maxine," Douglas says. "You don't see what's right in front of your face sometimes. I know astronauts. I was a pilot, remember?"

We, of course, know these words are loaded. Maxine just seems to thinks Douglas is jealous she's getting attention from another man.

But Douglas isn't wrong. Later, a heartbroken Maxine sits next to Grant as he plays the piano. He shows her a few chords, and then proceeds to try to kiss her.

Folks, this kiss will not win any awards from MTV. It's awkward and uncomfortable and Maxine is definitely not into it.

"I'm sorry, did I read the signals wrong?" he asks.

Maxine asks him what he means by signals, and he refers to her calling him her hero, inviting him to the Beach Ball and singing the song "Is That All There Is?"

"Isn't this a metaphor for your dying marriage?" Grant asks Maxine.

"This song is about accepting your fate, for better or worse," she says, insisting she loves her husband.

Still, heartbreak is written all over her face after her argument with Douglas. Grant walks away and leaves Maxine sitting at the piano, alone.

2. Douglas continues to give us the ick.

First, a quick note: Major kudos to Josh Lucas. He might be one of my new favorite actors. His portrayal of Douglas is very good at making you hate him one moment, and love him the next.

Now, let's start with the affair. We can just take it right from the top.

Douglas and Robert agree not to tell Maxine about Douglas' affair with Mitzi. And they almost get away with Maxine staying oblivious to their jailtime — until the arrival of the Secret Service.

As they prepare for Nixon's visit to the Beach Ball, Secret Service agents Clune and Stevens (Richard Whiten and Adam Harrington, respectively) question Maxine and Douglas about suspicious incidents in their past.

For Maxine, they question the anti-Nixon petition she signed when she first met Linda. Maxine dismisses it as nothing.

"I can assure you, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be a feminist," Maxine says.

The agents then turn to Douglas, and ask him about his most recent arrest. When Douglas asks how they know about that, one of the agents replies, "We're the Secret Service, sir. It's our job to know the secrets."

For the sake of having Nixon come to the Beach Ball, Maxine supports Douglas when he tells the agents that it's all a big misunderstanding.

But she practically explodes when the agents and Tom leave, asking Douglas and Robert to explain themselves.

Douglas is quick to find an excuse, telling Maxine that he and Robert met at the bar to discuss a surprise they planned for her at the Beach Ball.

"You were thinking of me?" she asks.

"You were the topic of conversation the entire time, Max," Douglas says. While he's not technically wrong, this line gives me the ick.

We can see why Robert earlier in the episode called out Douglas for being a good liar.

Later, when Maxine goes to the Ceil Chapman boutique to announce Nixon's Beach Ball attendance to the society ladies gathered there — we see the original four Palm Royale ladies: Evelyn, Dinah, Mary (Julia Duffy) and Raquel (Claudia Ferri) — Raquel suggests that maybe Nixon will be the first member of their new club.

Maxine is shocked. This is the first she's heard of the club. Raquel tells her that Douglas and her husband, Pinky (Roberto Sanchez), are working on the project together — and that it will be at the Dellacorte mansion.

When Maxine gets home, she — AGAIN — has to confront Douglas about something he did without telling her. As he starts to make excuses, she cuts him off.

We learn a lot more about their relationship here. Maxine tells Douglas that once again, he messed up — AGAIN? — and now she has to deal with him promising the Dellacorte estate to Pinky for this new club.

It's important to remember that throughout the series, Maxine has said that everything she does is to "save the Dellacortes." She's lied and cheated throughout the entire season so far, all to serve that goal.

Now, Douglas has taken everything for which she's worked so hard, and promised it to someone else.

"I actually thought if I gave you all of this that maybe, maybe you'd change," she says.

Douglas tells her that he did it for them, and that Maxine deserves to be the queen of Palm Beach.

"Says the man who made sure I wasn't Miss Chattanooga," Maxine practically spits at him.

Meanwhile, Mitzi was about to skip town, but instead bailed out Robert and Douglas and then gets pulled into Beach Ball prep by Maxine, who continues to be oblivious to the recently ended affair between her husband and Mitzi.

There's a great moment between Douglas and Mitzi as Mitzi gives Douglas a clear coat of nail polish, per Maxine's instructions, to stop him from biting his nails. Douglas tries to blame his behavior on being back in Palm Beach, but Mitzi has none of that.

"Palm Beach didn't invite me into the coat closet, Doug," she says. Insert applause here!

As Maxine and Douglas get ready for the Beach Ball at the episode's end, Douglas tells Maxine that she's right, that he has been selfish, and he should have told her about Pinky.

"I was just trying to make good," he tells her, before admitting that he can't sign the mansion away — because only Maxine, as Norma's conservator, can do that.

"I can't do anything without you," he says.

That's when Douglas surprises Maxine with a crown to wear for the ball.

"This is something I should have given you in Chattanooga 20 years ago," he says.

3. Richard Nixon did, in fact, visit Palm Beach.

More than once!

Nixon had a compound on Key Biscayne and he and his wife Pat were known to come to Palm Beach for politics and pleasure.

In 1967, he attended Florida Gov. Claude Kirk's wedding to Erika Mattfield Kirk at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea.

And in 1974, just weeks before he resigned, Nixon visited Mar-a-Lago. The massive estate, now owned by former President Donald Trump, was bequeathed to the U.S. government by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. She hoped it would be a Camp David of the South for presidents and visiting dignitaries.

More: Nixon checked out Mar-a-Lago to be southern Camp David when U.S. owned the property

Nixon himself signed the order to accept ownership of the property.

In July of 1974, Nixon took a helicopter from Key Biscayne to Mar-a-Lago to survey the property "to determine its potential use for U.S. presidents for foreign dignitaries," according to Nixon's official presidential diary entry from that day.

Just a month later, Nixon would resign in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

4. Norma clearly has something wild up her designer sleeve, but Robert remains loyal to her.

Norma's big reveal doesn't find us until the end of this episode.

Before that, we do learn the fallout of Ann's imbibing a poisoned grasshopper in last Episode 8.

When Maxine finally makes it back to the Dellacorte mansion and goes upstairs to change her clothes, she finds Ann on the ground, unconscious and surrounded by Norma's keepsakes. Robert checks Ann's pulse, as Douglas calls for an ambulance.

Maxine goes with Ann to the hospital, and realizes that she doesn't know Ann at all.

"How about you tell me everything there is to know about you when you wake up, deal?" Maxine says to a still-knocked out Ann.

When Ann wakes up later, she comes to with a start, trying to get her bearings. A nurse tells her that she has to stay in the hospital, because she may have a tumor on her pancreas.

"Your body was flooded with insulin," the nurse says.

But Ann has no time for that. She obviously discovered something huge before she succumbed to what we now know was an insulin-spiked grasshopper.

"Get these damn things off," she says, pulling sensors from her body. "I'm on deadline."

We also learn in this episode that Robert blames himself for Norma's embolism. He tells Linda that he and Norma fought because Robert had a date, and Norma didn't want him to go.

Robert left Norma, and when he returned, she was unconscious on the floor. While Robert was gone, Norma tried to give herself a shot of insulin, but there was an air bubble in the syringe, he says.

"She doesn't want anyone to know she's weak," Robert says of Norma.

Robert tells Linda that he doesn't want to leave Norma, saying he owes her for offering him "a simple and protected, safe life."

"It's beautiful in Palm Beach, and you think you feel safe here with Norma," Linda tells him. "But this town's all about hiding. And the hiding doesn't make you safer. The outside world always has a way of finding us."

Later at the Dellacorte mansion, everyone is getting dressed for the Beach Ball. Robert, in a tuxedo and looking very sharp, walks in to find Norma resplendent in a white gown and her crown, standing next to the mansion's fireplace and sipping a martini.

"Norma, you're standing," Robert says, shocked.

"Tell no one," Norma replies, shushing him. "I have a little something special planning for the ball tonight."

Robert asks Norma what she's planning, but she won't tell him quite yet.

"In good time, my boy," she says. "In good time."

5. Evelyn is back as Beach Ball co-host, and Mary is off the rails.

As Dinah seems occupied by her newfound polygamy, Evelyn is enjoying her time with Eddie, the Palm Royale's tennis pro and Dinah's former lover.

After Eddie offers to make Evelyn dinner, Evelyn begins trying to figure out a way to get back into the Rollins mansion, which her husband, Skeet (Bruce Dern), willed to his daughter Linda.

Mary was the one who took Norma home after Maxine went missing, and as she leaves Norma the morning after the party, she spots the cat that Maxine bid on Mary's fundraiser earlier in the season.

Before confirming with Norma that the cat is worth $75,000, Mary slips the small statue into her purse, in lieu of Maxine's still-unreceived donation. "If your niece isn't going to make good on her word, I have no choice but to confiscate this old stone puss for the Fibs," Mary tells Norma, to Norma's complete confusion.

The members of Linda and Virginia's Women's Circle have taken up residence at the Rollins mansion, and they use it as a base to support draft dodgers by creating fake passports for them to leave the country.

Linda plans to hightail it to an ashram for some soul-searching following her father's death, and tells Virginia that she will leave her checkbook so Virginia can get whatever the group needs for their work.

Since delivering a baby for one of the Circle's members, Mary has gone full hippie. She suggests that Maxine jumped overboard on purpose to get attention, and that the group should make a similar big gesture for attention.

But Virginia disagrees, saying that with their fake-passport operation, they need less attention not more.

Evelyn arrives, telling the women to "pack up your bean bags and get out of my house, hippies."

Linda calls out Evelyn for trying to blackmail her, and says she paid $2 million to Douglas so the specter of her shooting her father won't hang over her head for the rest of her life.

Later at Ceil Chapman, Evelyn asks Dinah for dating advice. Dinah first confirms that her relationship with Eddie is over, then tells Evelyn that it's expensive to have a lover. This news leaves Evelyn a bit shaken. She has little to no money left to her name.

When Maxine arrives at Ceil Chapman and announces her big Nixon news, Mary seems horrified that he will be at the Beach Ball.

"Nixon's bad, right?" she says. "He's a bad person."

"Mary, you have a shoelace tied around your brain," Evelyn says dismissively.

But the wheels are turning, and while Mary insists that Nixon is killing innocent people, Maxine asks that they leave politics at the party's door.

Evelyn pulls Maxine aside and tells her that she has a new lover. To keep him, and to make some money, she tells Maxine that she, Evelyn, will co-host the Beach Ball with Maxine.

Evelyn also says she expects to receive half of the proceeds from the event.

To give Maxine a little push toward accepting her as a co-host, Evelyn threatens to call in a bomb threat that will shut down the Beach Ball entirely.

The Women's Circle ends up being raided by the police and Secret Service, after Maxine unintentionally gave away their location during her discussion with the Secret Service agents. Mary and Linda aren't at the mansion when officers arrive, so they aren't scooped up as part of the raid.

Later, Linda returns to her father's mansion and finds Mary waiting there. Mary breaks the news to Linda that the house was raided.

Mary also shares that she has a history of mental health issues, and her husband would send her away in a "paddy wagon" a couple of times a year.

"This is all Richard Nixon's fault," Mary laments, before suggesting — that they should try to kill the president.

Linda immediately says that isn't a good idea, but Mary insists.

"Didn't you say he was responsible for the deaths of thousands?" Mary asks.

Linda asks Mary if she needs to call the police, and Mary backpedals, saying she won't do anything rash.

But then that's exactly what she does, whacking Linda over the head with Norma's $75,000 cat, taking her out of commission so she can enact a plan to try to assassinate Nixon.

Bonus: Yes, Richard Nixon loved cottage cheese.

Nixon loved eating cottage cheese so much that he would eat it with not just fruit, which is pretty traditional, but ketchup.

Yes, cottage cheese and ketchup.

According to his presidential library and museum, Nixon enjoyed cottage cheese with either ketchup or black pepper with his breakfasts. In 1958, Nixon told the crowd at a national food conference that his love of cottage cheese and ketchup started in his youth, when his grandmother would get him to eat cottage cheese by pouring ketchup on top and stirring it in.

His last meal at the White House following his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, was a lunch of pineapple and cottage cheese, according to his presidential diaries.

The dairy product was such a part of his persona that a political strategy memo from Pat Buchanan to Nixon in 1972 referred to the president as "'Old Meat Loaf and Cottage Cheese,' the candidate of Middle America."

I don't know about you, but "Old Meat Loaf and Cottage Cheese" doesn't sound like a good nickname for someone. It sounds more like an answer to, "What was in the back of Pat Nixon's refrigerator in 1973?"

Kristina Webb is a reporter for Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at kwebb@pbdailynews.com. Subscribe today to support our journalism.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: 'Palm Royale' Episode 9 recap: Maxine bags astronaut, Nixon for ball