Who is the rock in your relationship? .
Platonic S2
The first two episodes of Season 2 premiere Wednesday, August 6, on Apple TV+. New episodes debut every Wednesday. I've seen all 10 episodes.
Created by Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delbanco, the Netflix comedy series Friends From College revolved around a group of friends dealing with the challenges of middle life. Stoller and Delbanco followed that up with the Apple TV+ comedy series Platonic, which revolved around college best friends who reunite and deal with the challenges of middle life.
If Friends from College and Platonic sound like Stoller and Delbanco are plowing well-trod territory, that's because they are. But whereas Friends From College missed as often as it hit, Platonic fired on (nearly) all cylinders during its first season, as I wrote about two years ago, when it premiered.
Picking up soon after the events in Season 1, best friends Sylvia (Rose Byrne) and Will (Seth Rogen) appear to be in a good place in their respective lives. In Los Angeles, having survived a temporary rift, Sylvia is still happily married to her affable, longtime attorney husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane) and enjoying their three adorable, wisecracking children, while staying busy as an event planner and keeping up with her other best friend, Katie (Carla Gallo).
Will is still engaged to Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom) and is living comfortably with her some 150 miles away in San Diego, California. They both work at the company she runs as CEO. Of course, things are not always going to go well for Sylvia and Will, and when their roads get rocky, they turn to each other.
Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen have easy, infectious, combustible chemistry on screen, which they first showed in Neighbors (2014) under the direction of Nicholas Stoller, and they remain the flagship attraction of Platonic. They are a great team, comfortably trading quips, barbs, jokes, wisecracks, and rejoinders with sharp comic timing.
They are complementary talents. Whenever the show shifts into the dramatic arena, Byrne is peerless, always able to hit each emotional button with elegant precision. Rogen finds humor in the most remote corners of his character, stretching out his personality to embrace the extremes of his behavior in a funny, believable manner.
Largely written and often directed by Francesca Delbanco, who also plays a recurring role as an accommodating realtor, Season 2 of Platonic is more assured, more convincing, and more consistent in its frank and funny depiction of ongoing midlife crisis management by best friends and their best friends and, more often than not, their respective romantic partners.
Now Streaming covers international and indie genre films and TV shows that are available on legal streaming services.