Apple TV+ comedy Platonic closes its hilarious first season this week with a sentimental look at the way two people have to understand the limits of their relationship.
Sylvia and her husband Charlie find a new home that seems to signal the end of their recent troubles. But will there be a place for Will in this new version of their life? The answer probably won’t shock you, but it’s basically moving anyway.
Platonic recap: ‘When Will Met Sylvia’
Season 1, episode 10: After months of looking, Sylvia (played by Rose Byrne) and Charlie (Luke Macfarlane) finally locate a house big enough to suit their needs. A triple homicide happened in the house last year, but other than that it’s perfect. Three bathrooms, plenty of space, and in their price range. The start of a new chapter.
Will (Seth Rogen), meanwhile, is looking down the end of his own chapter. Omar (Vinny Thomas), Andy (Tre Hale) and Reggie (Andrew Lopez) are trying to muscle him out of his bar because he has the wrong mindset. They want to make money; he wants to make beer. Andy and Reggie promote Omar to brewmaster to spite Will.
There’s a little trouble a-brewin’, though, because Andy is marrying Sylvia’s friend Katie (Carla Gallo). And Katie brings Andy to Sylvia and Charlie’s housewarming party. Knowing how much she and Will have disrupted her life lately, she doesn’t want to get too crazy with Will first thing at their new place but she invites him anyway.
It’s not long before Will and Sylvia see what they think is a UFO and begin disrupting the party. Sylvia catches herself before she gets too into it, and begs Will to do so, too. When he won’t, they start shouting at each other in the kitchen. Then Will storms out.
A new beginning for Charlie and Sylvia … and for Will
Photo: Apple TV+
Later that night, Charlie surprises Sylvia by saying he actually does believe in UFOs and would be interested in exploring that more with her. She turns the lights out before he can continue. To get her mind off of everything, she starts planning Katie and Andy’s wedding, even though she told them she doesn’t have time.
While she’s doing that, she gets a call from a lawyer about Johnny Rev (Ted McGinley), the restaurant chain owner who hit on Sylvia and fought with Will. Turns out that wasn’t an isolated incident. He has a whole history of sexual misconduct, and it’s finally caught up with him.
To celebrate, Sylvia goes to Will and tells him he can finally quit the bar and go get the job that new CEO Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom) promised him when they met. He’s nervous about trying for the head brewmaster slot, but it pays off — he gets the job. The problem is, now he must move to San Diego.
A few months later, Sylvia has become an event planner, and she and Charlie are in a decent if busy place. Will is in San Diego. When Katie and Andy finally get married, Will comes back into town with Jenna in tow, and it makes them both wistful. Will and Jenna are engaged now, and they want Sylvia to help plan their wedding. The two old friends talk, and it’s like no time has passed at all.
Platonic season finale releases the show’s central tension
Photo: Apple TV+
The ending to season one of Platonic isn’t not effective, but it does sort of undermine the tension of the series. The whole idea was that the two would need to learn to be friends, despite all the tension they came up against, sexual and otherwise. (The season finale’s title is a big hint about this, not to mention the fact that the writers had Rogen name-drop When Harry Met Sally… in the first episode.)
Throughout the first season, there was a funky and fun imbalance because Rogen’s character is so much more obviously less appealing and less together than Byrne’s. And that made it more interesting than if she were stepping out (platonically) with a perfect 10 with a perfect job.
In the endgame, Platonic lost track of what Sylvia and Will are meant to represent for each other.
A successful but unsurprising outcome
Will can’t come out and say it, but when he learns that he’s moving to San Diego, he doesn’t want to because he’s going to miss Sylvia, whether as a friend or as a potential romantic partner. However, Platonic never really gave us any room to consider the latter possibility. It’s not that we weren’t thinking it. (Charlie’s constant freakouts left us little choice after all.) But there wasn’t any breathing room for Byrne and Rogen to actually dig into this at all.
That would be fine if the show wasn’t so obviously meant to make us think these two are going to fall for each other. It got to the point where I was certain Byrne was going to try to kiss Rogen in the final two minutes of the finale, which would of course have been ludicrous.
And that’s the problem. Ultimately, the Platonic finale played out the more-realistic version of events. But dramatically, it left me a hair unsatisfied after such a nice slide into home plate.
★★★☆☆
Watch Platonic on Apple TV+
You can now watch the entire first season of Platonic 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.
