The question posed at the beginning of the first season of Platonic has essentially already been answered. Straight men and straight women can be best friends without it leading to anything sexual, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to interfere with their lives. Sylvia (Rose Byrne) and Will (Seth Rogen) are back for a second round which dives deeper into the separate relationships they have with their own romantic partners and allows them to do what they do best: encourage each other’s worst behaviors and create some truly awkward situations in which audiences would never want to find themselves.
At the end of season one, Will announced his engagement to his new boss Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom), which also meant a fresh job opportunity for Sylvia. Season two picks up during Will and Jenna’s engagement party, when circumstances not quite under their control lead to Sylvia and Will missing most of the event. As they both pursue different professional opportunities, they continue to clash with the people closest to them because they’re not great influences on each other and don’t always make the best decisions when they’re together.
This is the kind of show where a second season doesn’t feel all that different from the first, and it’s merely a chance to follow these friends on their everlasting hijinks while going deeper with some of the supporting cast. That’s a tremendous benefit since it means more of Luke Macfarlane as Sylvia’s husband Charlie and Carla Gallo as her best female friend Katie. While both had decent roles in season one, they’re now gifted their own plotlines and the chance to flex their comedic muscles. Best of all, they both share more scenes with Rogen, which is always a treat since Will is a slightly different person based on who he’s with and what they think of them.
The announcement of a handful of guest stars – all of them Saturday Night Live alumni – might raise alarm bells that this present-day streaming cable series is trying to go the route of 2000s sitcoms which sought to up viewership by bringing in big names. Instead, appearances by Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, and Aidy Bryant feel perfectly natural since they all fit the show’s tone very well and aren’t meant to distract from the main characters’ storylines. Everything moves so fast on this show that they’re just along for the ride and very capable of enhancing the rapid-fire back-and-forth dialogue that flows so quickly from Byrne and Rogen’s mouths.
Platonic still contains a moderate amount of slapstick humor that finds Sylvia and Will encountering physical obstacles and shenanigans on average once per episode, and both actors are more than game. It’s a great moment for two already successful performers, with Byrne, having now concluded her other Apple TV+ series Physical, garnering Oscar buzz for a much less relaxed turn in the film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Rogen living large with his own new Apple TV+ series The Studio, which tied an Emmy record this year with its nominations haul and is only heating up for season two. Together, they’re simply irresistible, and even if the show around them wasn’t any good, it would be well worth sticking around for season after season just to watch them fight, forgive, forget, and repeat the same cycle over and over again.
There is a definite cringe factor to this show that might turn some audiences off, since both Sylvia and Will make extremely regrettable choices that audiences should be able to tell are not smart and also continue to fall prey to the same traps that threaten to ruin personal and professional relationships. Yet they’re blunt and honest characters who are undeniably fun to watch, and their unfiltered natures make it possible for audiences to connect with them while breathing a sigh of relief that their own lives probably aren’t nearly as easily derailed as they are for these two on a near-episodic basis. Like the durability of this occasionally destructive friendship, this show could easily keep going for many more seasons, with its dynamic duo more than capable of delivering a thoroughly entertaining and rewarding viewing experience.
Season Rating: 8/10
