Kristen Wiig in the star-studded Apple TV+ comedy

Apple TV+ Royal Palm It may be set in the late 1960s, but its greatest pleasures seem tailor-made for the Internet age. Every shot of a socialite smiling over the rim of a cocktail glass plays as the perfect reaction GIF. The malicious comments could also be designed to be broken down into TikTok-sized sound bites, and the outrageous plot twists to elicit gasps in the group chat. And the aesthetics… oh, the aesthetics! In a repudiation of the gray of “quiet luxury,” this vision of the American elite is awash in shimmering jewel tones and Lilly Pulitzer sparkles. You could build entire mood boards around the hippie-chic bookstore or baroque mansion. I myself wasted a good 20 minutes googling between episodes for cat-eye sunglasses like the ones featured on Maxine (Kristen Wiig).

But the eye-catching style is as good as the show; The fun ends where the surface ends. Although many things happen in Royal Palm, including backstabbing, torrid affairs, and attempted murders, there’s very little real substance lurking beneath its candy shell. In ten-hour long episodes, the comedy goes an awfully long way to get nowhere interesting.

However, under the right golden light, even flaws can seem like flashes of potential at first glance, and the same goes for Royal Palm. If the tone of the premiere (directed by Aid helmer Tate Taylor) is all over the place, one might expect it to be due to excess ambition; If the characters are difficult to read, perhaps the fun is guessing what they are doing. Protagonist Maxine is, after all, an imposter: she is first seen sneaking into a country club she can’t afford, wearing clothes and jewelry she “borrowed” from the comatose grande dame Norma (Carol Burnett). ). But her real breakthrough into high society comes when she befriends Dinah (Leslie Bibb), who is actually the socialite Maxine has only been pretending to be. From there, the Tennessee beauty queen slowly charms and manipulates her way into Palm Beach’s ruling class, overseen by the imperious Evelyn (Allison Janney).

As is surely clear from the previous paragraph, a large part of Royal PalmThe appeal of is its star-studded cast. And the actors certainly come to play: Wiig brings an off-kilter intensity to Maxine’s Barbie-perfect looks and parade-ready smiles, so that no matter how hard Maxine tries to blend in, she can’t help but stand out. Janney might play the “towering matriarch” in her sleep, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining to watch her swan swan around in caftans while she shrinks down to Laura Dern’s feminist Linda. Bibb is so great at playing the bitchy, spoiled one that I wouldn’t be surprised if her next lead role was scrapped on the strength of this one. And Ricky Martin, as the sarcastic but secretly sweet bartender Robert, emerges as the closest thing this series has to a beating heart.

However, if the performances are consistently entertaining, the writing is rarely up to their level. Created by Abe Sylvia (adapting the book by Juliet McDaniel) Mr. and Mrs. American Pie), the story is loosely framed as a destruction of the American dream: with Maxine as the fighter who climbs the ladder through sheer courage, and the members of Palm Royale as the unworthy elite unable to cope with a changing world. But to see the bigger picture you have to zoom out a lot. Up close, the only thing that is clear is that the characters are a disaster and their relationships are chaos. It’s one thing if Maxine’s enemies can’t tell if she’s “a lollipop or the most ruthless woman in Palm Beach”; the problem is that Royal Palm He doesn’t seem to know either. The narrative just throws everything it can think of against the wall and tries to see what sticks.

At times it’s a cheesy skit about Evelyn and Dinah exchanging passive-aggressive pleasantries. Sometimes it’s a serious drama about Maxine trying to find her place in the world, or about Robert becoming more sure of her sexuality. There are suspenseful elements, such as gunshots, blackmail and secret identities, and other absurdities, such as a subplot centered on whales that could have been more at home in Wiig’s film. Barb & Star go to Vista Del Mar. She occasionally hints at social commentary, while television reports of anti-war protests blare in the background and ladies at lunch mourn the “death of gentility.” It mainly operates on the level of a soap opera about who is screwing who, who inherits what, whether Maxine will be able to throw an end-of-season party grand enough to cement her status in Palm Beach, which would be more fascinating if the Characters were more than paper dolls bowing to the whims of writers trying to fill an episode count.

In a sense, it is appropriate that the only Royal Palm Nails are really what they look like. Each set appears to have been decorated at great expense, in keeping with the characters’ luxurious tastes. Each magnificent costume has been carefully chosen to signal the status or aspirations of each character at any given time, so that it is often easier to trace Maxine’s fate through the appropriateness of her clothing than through the choppy plot. Our heroine would be the first to agree that presentation matters, whether one is trying to win a pageant crown, climb the social hierarchy, or tell a story.

However, in the end, even she loses the patience to put on a brave face. In what should have been her greatest moment of triumph, she appears before a crowd in her most beautiful dress yet to sing “Is That All There Is?” I wish she could ask the show the same thing.