After flexing his dramatic muscles in The Fabelmans, Seth Rogen returns to his comic comfort zone as a millennial man-child in Platonic. Nick Stoller and Francesca Delbanco’s comedy begins when Will (Rogen) reconnects with his former best friend, Sylvia (Rose Byrne), who’s living a polar-opposite version of adulthood. Will dresses like a toddler, has a Duffman tattoo, and won’t take responsibility for anything beyond his pet lizard, while Sylvia is a lawyer turned stay-at-home mom, shuttling her kids between extracurricular activities and hunting for a new house while trying to keep the current one from falling apart.
Will and Sylvia’s reunion gets off to a rocky start. They meet at a local diner and anxiously zip punchlines back and forth at each other across the table. But, then, their friend date ends with a screaming match in the middle of the street in which they rehash the argument that led to their falling out before both storm off in opposite directions. And yet, after years of not seeing each other and one very bad evening together, they inexplicably decide to become friends again.
Platonic is littered with odd little moments like this in which a character or relationship totally changes for no apparent reason. Will mentions several times how much he likes Sylvia’s husband, Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), until suddenly deciding that actually he finds him insufferably dull. Elsewhere, an early love interest for Will is portrayed as a perfectly put-together individual until the series requires her to become an imbecile.
When Harry Met Sally… is a major touchstone for Platonic, which frames itself as a modern examination of whether men and women can really be friends, as well as other facets of contemporary life. The series yields the occasional insight, as when Sylvia points out the double standards with which guys judge their male and female friends. But, mostly, its examination of gender politics doesn’t delve much deeper than what you might find in a Twitter thread.
Platonic is a far better show when it focuses on its characters’ shenanigans than on social commentary. After that nervy first episode, Rogen and Byrne settle into a rhythm and begin to feel like actual buddies riffing rather than two actors doing a bit. Rogen’s chortling stoner shtick finds its perfect match in Byrne’s high-energy mischief, and there’s a sense of endless, idiotic possibilities to Will and Sylvia’s hangout sessions, which include everything from electric scooter-tossing contests to impersonating real estate agents to late-night quests to pawn shops in search of Judaism-themed swag. The sillier Platonic gets, the better it is.
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