Part of the promotional campaign for The Naked Gun legacy-sequel was a trailer spoofing charity promotional videos, as star Liam Neeson pleaded with viewers to buy a ticket and help save the entire business of movie comedies. The joke sadly wasn’t too far off from the truth. Theatrical comedies have been having a rougher go since Covid than most movie genres, as viewers are opting to wait to watch them on streaming, believing they don’t need to be seen on the big screen. This ignores the fact that few moviegoing experiences — massive spectacle included — are as rewarding as watching something funny in a packed theatre filled with people laughing at the same time, but that unfortunately is the way things have gone. And as a result, enormous comedy stars have had to find ways to ply their craft on television — which is how something like Platonic, starring Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as lifelong best friends, is back this week for a second season, instead of being the umpteenth Rogen/Byrne movie made in the wake of the two Neighbors films.
For the decade after the release of Knocked Up, Rogen was as big a name in film comedy as anyone. But the box-office failure of Long Shot, his extremely charming 2018 team-up with Charlize Theron, coincided with the business as a whole backing away from the genre. Since 2020, the only live-action theatrical films Rogen has acted in are Dumb Money and The Fabelmans, in a supporting role both times. An American Pickle, his last vehicle as a leading man, wound up on HBO Max, though that was one of many films pushed to streaming during early Covid.
Instead, Rogen has done a lot of voice acting and made a lot of TV, as a producer (The Boys) or a multi-hyphenate on Apple shows like the hilarious Hollywood satire The Studio and Platonic, which is back after a two-year hiatus. Rogen and Byrne were so good together in Neighbors (directed by Nicholas Stoller, who co-created Platonic with wife Francesca Delbanco) and their stars were so high in the mid-2010s, that it’s not hard to imagine it as a potential blockbuster around that time. The premise of two people who are more devoted to their best friend than to their respective romantic partners would be more than enough to support a feature film with a half-dozen elaborate comic set pieces where Rogen gets Byrne into trouble, or vice versa. It probably would have been a very good movie.
But in this case, cinema’s loss has very much been television’s gain. The streaming era is littered with shows that clearly began life as a movie script that couldn’t sell, and that the writers then attempted to fill a 10-hour bag with two hours’ worth of story. Most of those are dramas, though. Comedy — especially the kind of comedy that Rogen, Stoller, and their frequent collaborators like Judd Apatow prefer — can be more elastic. And once upon a time, Stoller and Rogen were young writers on Apatow’s short-lived college Undeclared, so the show’s co-creator knows how episodic storytelling works. When the hook of your project is letting viewers spend time in the company of two funny characters, played by two actors with superb comic chemistry, more is actually more. And the episodes feel like actual episodes, with individual problems for Will and Sylvia to solve — usually because one or both of them created it in the first place — and a notable set piece to distinguish each installment from the others.
The Season Two premiere, for instance, finds Sylvia — who quit her flagging legal career in the first season and decided to try event planning(*) — managing the engagement party for Will and his boss/fiancée Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom). There’s some relationship strife, as Will admits to Sylvia that he’s developed a crush on a friendly barista. There’s some inevitable drug humor, as Will’s former coworkers accidentally leave a tab of acid in a champagne flute. And there’s an extremely low-stakes comic heist, as Sylvia and Will have to liberate some fancy replacement champagne from a local wine store. A satisfying, often funny, more or less self-contained adventure, in under a half hour. Television! And very appealing television, at that!
(*) As with most shows that take more than a year off between seasons, you’ll probably spend a few minutes at the start of the premiere Googling what happened last time.
There are, of course, ongoing conflicts within the season, particularly regarding our heroes’ respective partners. Sylvia grows worried that Jenna’s not a good match for Will — not out of jealousy, thankfully, since Platonic is smart enough to stick to its titular concept at all times, but because she can see Will talking himself into too many aspects of the relationship. And Sylvia’s saintly husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane) again grows frustrated that his wife keeps prioritizing her college buddy over him.
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Delbanco, Stoller, and the other writers have very smartly figured out how to keep that central tension from feeling repetitive. Charlie genuinely enjoys Will’s company. And after Macfarlane spent most of the first season playing straight man to Byrne and Rogen, this year his character gets to go off the deep end himself, in an ongoing subplot about his obsession with Jeopardy! (Which includes a cameo by Ken Jenning.) This season, characters beyond Charlie frequently point out how dysfunctional Will and Sylvia’s friendship is, and there are variations on that basic idea — like a stretch where Will starts spending more time with Sylvia’s other best friend, Katie (Carla Gallo, another Undeclared alum), so that now Sylvia is the one on the outside looking in.
Mostly, though, Platonic continues to work because Rogen and Byrne are so good together, and because they’re placed into so many situations that feel only slightly more ridiculous than real life. Beck Bennett (one of several SNL alums to guest star this year, along with Kyle Mooney and Aidy Bryant) plays Wild Card, the third member of what was once a trio of friends back in college. Sylvia grows paranoid that Will and Wild Card are talking behind her back, so she sets her phone to record them while she goes to the bathroom. When she checks the audio later, it’s just an endless discussion of how hot the two guys find Sydney Sweeney — while also constantly trying to point out her many admirable qualities beyond that. The first season had a running gag where Will was constantly venting his anger by knocking over the many scooters littering the sidewalks of Los Angeles; this year, his technological targets are delivery robots. (Can a crossover with John Mulaney’s talk show be far away?)
Every now and then, Platonic leans a bit too hard on scenes where Will and Sylvia panic and begin screaming at each other about their latest catastrophe. But even some of those louder gags are terrific, like Sylvia figuring out how to scare away a coyote that keeps hanging out on her lawn, or a golf-related mishap with Jenna’s dad (Sam McMurray) that’s more disgusting than you can possibly imagine.
I wish we had a healthy enough comedy movie economy that Rogen and Byrne could be starring in more films — or at least doing more scene-stealing supporting work, like Rogen in The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Byrne in Spy. But it’s hard to complain about the actual version of Platonic that’s on TV again.
The first two episodes of Platonic Season Two are now streaming on Apple TV+, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all 10 episodes.
From Rolling Stone US
