Apple TV+ comedy Platonic hits a milestone this week as Sylvia and Will find boundaries to test they didn’t even know existed. Will learns some hard lessons about aging and relationships, while Sylvia tries to embark on a new chapter of her life without much support.
Entitled “The Big Two Six,” it’s a solid episode of the show about two people in their 40s who reconnect and re-become besties, heedless of optics and obstacles.
Platonic recap: ‘The Big Two Six’
Season 1, episode 6: Sylvia (played by Rose Byrne) has a big job interview at a big law firm, and her husband, Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), isn’t being helpful. (Husbands tend not to give helpful fashion advice.) She decides to go out with Katie (Carla Gallo) to buy a new outfit, but that doesn’t yield the breakthrough she’s looking for either. Sometimes a suit is just a suit.
Sylvia gets the job anyway — and she’s elated — but this means new challenges. First things first: She needs a babysitter. Charlie’s mother (Gigi Bermingham) isn’t going to be much help, considering how absent-minded (and quick to reward her grandkids with candy) she is.
Will (Seth Rogen) also faces a new challenge when his relationship with Peyton (Emily Kimball) hits a snag. Turns out Peyton is friends with Will’s co-worker Omar (Vinny Thomas), and he relayed a conversation that Will and Sylvia had the other night. When Sylvia found out Will was keeping his relationship with Peyton a secret, Will deflected by saying the relationship was not a big deal to Will at all, a quick and, he thought, painless lie. Peyton heard this and took it at face value, so now Will needs to apologize to her — but he wants Sylvia there to help him communicate.
Let’s put this in perspective
They all go to Will’s bar and get to talking. Soon, Peyton and Sylvia talk each other into the idea of Peyton being a part-time sitter for Sylvia’s kids. Sylvia doesn’t love Peyton: As a 26-year-old, Peyton doesn’t have much to offer Sylvia, perspective-wise. But Peyton desperately wants to grill Sylvia about Will. Specifically, whether he’s still hung up on his ex-wife, Audrey (Alisha Wainwright).
She waffles on the issue and then goes back to Will and gives him an earful about it, so Will barges into Sylvia’s house in the middle of the night to demand an apology. They start arguing, and it comes out that Sylvia thinks Peyton is too young for Will. Furious, he tries to leave but walks through her glass door.
Smarting — from the glass in his face and from Sylvia’s barbs — Will goes right back to Peyton’s house and promises to throw her the best 26th birthday party of all time. He invites Sylvia and, though she doesn’t want to go, her daughter Frances (Sophie Leonard) talks her into it after spying the invite on her mom’s phone.
The theme is “yolo,” and Peyton and her friends spend the party dancing, which finally snaps Will out of his fantasy of being with the young woman. He panics and demands that Sylvia help him break up with her, which she refuses to do. So Will waits until they get back to Peyton’s place, then breaks up with her. She’s bummed for a minute, but gets over it very quickly … which also makes Will feel bad and old and out of place.
Tonight we are young
The stuff about aging in this week’s episode of Platonic didn’t land with much force because there’s very little for the audience to do but nod sagely in agreement when Will realizes he’s making a foolish cliche of himself by dating someone 15 years his junior. It was never going to be a thing that lasts. And the more the show ladles on the signifiers that she’s too young for Will, the less convincing it feels that he made it even these few weeks into the relationship without seeing all the red flags.
Still, that’s a little thing. The episode is otherwise very good. Will knocking into the door was some good physical comedy, and the introduction of a new side character — Peyton and Maddie’s (Sarah Yarkin) new geriatric roommate Alan (Thomas Nowell) — carried its weight.
When Will goes to Peyton’s to apologize and say he’s throwing her a birthday party, Alan, a tiny, thin, bald man answers the door. It goes unremarked upon until after their conversation, at which point Peyton introduces Alan as their third roommate. He’ll later say he was in third grade on 9/11 because he’s 29 years old, which Sylvia and Will immediately disbelieve and give him shit about behind his back.
The best bit comes at the end, when Sylvia accuses Will of being too old and Alan is in earshot and agrees.
“Dress your age!” Alan shouts.
“You dress your age,” Will throws back at him. “Get a monocle and a top hat!”
It’s a great little bit of back-and-forth because we know too well from comedy precedent that Alan won’t lose the argument. He’s too weird to be unsettled. He’s basically part of Will’s subconscious speaking to him. Nicely handled.
★★★★☆
Watch Platonic on Apple TV+
New episodes of Platonic arrive Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper and But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
