Apple TV+ comedy Platonic, about two once-former-now-current best friends navigating their relationship, finds Sylvia back at work and Will out of step this week.
A lot has changed since Sylvia was last in the workplace, and the new workload is too much for her, without factoring in everything else that can go wrong in an office. Will tries to help but makes things worse as he himself learns a few lessons about the modern workplace. Entitled “Let the River Run,” it’s a very funny episode of the very funny series.
Platonic recap: ‘Let the River Run’
Season 1, episode 7: It’s the first day back at work for Sylvia (played by Rose Byrne), and her family is being as supportive as they can. But she’s quickly learning no one else cares. It’s just life, after all.
Meanwhile, her friend Will (Seth Rogen) has a new proposition for his partners at the brewery, Omar (Vinny Thomas), Andy (Tre Hale) and Reggie (Andrew Lopez). He’s made a brilliant new beer and, though it costs $60 to make, he wants to sell it for $5 a bottle as a way of building word of mouth. They agree to do this on a trial basis. But there’s something about the convenience with which they suggest he take a day off that says they have other plans.
Meanwhile, Stewart (Guy Branum), a co-worker of Sylvia’s husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), is concerned about her heading back into the workforce after so much time away. The kids who work in law now are on another level. Can she keep pace with them?
The modern workplace is weird
Stewart’s right to worry. The workload is intense, the workplace is far from neighborly and Sylvia is, indeed, quite out of touch. She can’t banter with them at all, being more used to riffing with Will. She embarrasses herself, has to stay late to keep up with the workload, and accidentally mangles a portrait of one of the partners at the firm.
Sylvia calls Will to ask if he can help, and of course, he makes it worse. He does have an idea, though: Why not call his ex-wife Audrey (Alisha Wainwright) the art consultant? They meet her at an artist’s (Leonard Robinson) studio at midnight. Sylvia’s high-strung attitude almost gets them kicked out, but the artist agrees to do it.
When he does, though, he paints a penis on the portrait’s face where his nose should be. While Lord Rotero (for that is the artist’s pen name) is working on the painting — and before they know he’s botched it — Audrey mentions to Will that she can’t make it to “the party.” She asks if he make her excuses to Reggie (her stepbrother and co-investor in the bar). This takes Will off guard. What party? Is that why they gave him the day off? Yes, it is.
A hard lesson from hard kombucha
Turns out Reggie, Andy and Omar had a plot to start selling hard kombucha, a product Will despises. Not only that, but they hired his recent ex-girlfriend Peyton (Emily Kimball) to waitress at the launch party. (Sylvia also discovers that her friend Katie [Carla Gallo] is sleeping with Andy, though that’s less a betrayal than just plain odd.)
Will feels left out and left behind by this business idea that was meant to be his. As Andy explains it to him, they see Will as an artist. The rest of the guys just want to make money. This is disheartening, but Sylvia saves the day by calling in a gas leak at the bar, which prompts the fire department to empty the place and ruin the party.
The next day, Sylvia brings the painting back into the firm with her, and it takes everyone about eight seconds to notice the defacement — and then a further 30 seconds for them to get CCTV footage of Sylvia ruining the painting, leaving with it, and returning it in bowdlerized form. She gets fired, but because corporate culture has changed so much in recent years, she mistakes the firing for encouragement and needs to be told twice.
It’s like you have money, you know …
This week’s episode of Platonic serves up a very good bit when Sylvia tries to get along with her new colleagues in the break room. Desperate to break into the conversation, she blurts out that she bets one of them “masturbates in the bathroom.” Everyone is horrifed. She tries to backpedal, saying that it’s an expression in Australia, at which point an Australian employee (Amanda Barlow) appears out of nowhere to say she’s never heard that expression before.
“Can you use it in a sentence?” she asks.
That’s probably the hardest I’ve laughed at this show yet.
Also, after the firm axes Sylvia, she makes a point to move as slowly as possible out of the office while her HR supervisor Jessica (Miranda De Meo) watches her, growing madder and madder. Very funny.
Platonic could squeeze a lot more mileage out of Rose Byrne’s comic chops. This episode serves a good example of how richly it pays off when the writers let her shine.
★★★★☆
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.
