For those who had been anticipating some grand denouement based on the buildup to the finale of Platonic’s second season, they were likely disappointed by the somewhat lackluster delivery/“wrapping up in a neat bow” of things. Because, for all that “slow-burn tension” with regard to Sylvia (Rose Byrne) and her husband, Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), it landed with all the rushedness of a premature ejaculator.
The tease of some inevitable separation or divorce between Sylvia and Charlie all started when Will Zysman (Seth Rogen), Sylvia’s long-time bestie (hence, the name of the show), encouraged Charlie to quit his job in episode five, “Jeopardy.” Titled as such not only because Charlie fulfills a lifelong dream of appearing on said show, but because, all of the sudden his reputation is in jeopardy as a result of how disastrous his ability to “be” in front of a live audience is (not to mention his entire sense of sanity also being in jeopardy).
Soon after the taping, Charlie goes out with Will for a drink, during which the latter ruminates on how he wishes he could be solid like Charlie. To this, Charlie replies, “I’m ‘solid’ because I have to be. I have a wife and three kids to support. I, I don’t have a choice… And you know what? I think I thought that after I was on Jeopardy!, everything would be different in my life.” He then adds, “[My life] has been exactly the same for a very, very long time. Sometimes I feel…boxed in. I guess I just wish I could blow shit up.” Will then gives him a pep talk that includes the advice, “So fucking quit dude. Blow it all up, start a new chapter.”
Charlie, surprisingly, takes the advice to heart. His sudden attack of “brashness” also hitting when he leads Will unknowingly to the house of the Head of Business Affairs at King World Media in an unhinged bid to plead with him not to air the episode of Jeopardy! that he was on so as to spare him the embarrassment. Determined to break in with no ostensible plan other than that, Charlie realizes the huge mistake he’s made after already crossing the threshold of entering (ergo, breaking). Injuring his foot in the process of then making his escape (while a gaggle of teenage youths look on with mild, slack-jawed interest) before something truly terrible happens, it’s now completely apparent that he’s having some kind of crack-up. A midlife crisis would be too easy of a phrase to use for it. No, for Charlie, it’s the realization that he’s been suffocated by a blanket of sameness all these years.
While Sylvia, in contrast, has been given the luxury of being much more “loose” and “la-di-da.” Or so she herself would also like to believe. But it’s in the episode following “Jeopardy,” “Road Trip,” that Sylvia is forced to reckon with her own “basicness” with regard to the shackles of her domestic life. It all starts when Will forces his way on the so-called road trip Sylvia is taking, which starts out as driving her daughter, Frances (Sophie Leonard), to Palm Desert for a debate tournament. But when Will secures a seat, followed by Sylvia’s other best friend, Katie Fields (Carla Gallo), when she calls Sylvia in tears over finding out that her first ex-husband’s new wife is pregnant, it does turn into a “whole thing” with road trip cachet. Much to Frances’ irritation more than Sylvia’s.
And, at first, Will and Katie don’t exactly gel, until he starts warming to the rather generic tenets of her Breaking the Glass Ceiling podcast (as poorly made as it is)—“part of the Boss Mama Industries Network.” Then, by the time they all stop at a tavern (namely, Red’s Tavern) that Will insists on going to along the way (after already dropping off Frances), it starts to become clear that Sylvia is turning into the third wheel. Especially after she tells them, “My life is a little bit different to both of yours.”
When they express offense and outrage over her comment, she doubles down, “My life is stable and predictable.” Will balks, “Are you kidding me right now? You fucking think you’re better than us?” Katie chimes in, “You’re just as fucked up as we are.” Sylvia continues to claim no, and that everything about her life and Charlie—recent “light breakdown” and all—is fine. Katie then counters, “Also, we are the two most interesting people in your life.” Apparently, as the two most interesting people, they feel it’s their responsibility to fully “team up” by the end of the episode, insisting that Sylvia goes home to Charlie during his overt emotional time of need (having just hallucinated someone was humming the Jeopardy! theme song in the bathroom at work and then leaving early as a result).
Reluctantly, Sylvia agrees, already afraid of what’s coming with Charlie after she talked to him on the phone to try and get his help with some shysters at a mechanic shop. Realizing the full weight of his existential crisis, she laments to Will and Katie, “He’s always been the rock” and “I need him to be the rock.”
But for those who thought the tension was actually meant to be between Sylvia and Charlie this season, the truth is, as usual, it’s between Sylvia and Will, whose fraught dynamic anchors the series. And it’s because Sylvia blames Will for “breaking” Charlie (as she puts in the finale), in addition to his sudden pivot toward spending more time with Katie (who evidently “just gets it” because she’s divorced and freaky too), that they start to experience another rift as the season draws to a close. This prompting Will to lean more and more on Katie, especially after Sylvia kicks him out of her guest house/would-be office in the penultimate episode of season two, “Boundaries.” He then starts to “crash” at Katie’s, promising her it’s only “temporary” (as he promised Sylvia).
But by the next episode (the finale), she’s already grown sick of his presence in her house, telling Sylvia outside their kids’ school, “He’s been living with me for weeks. I don’t know how this guy became my problem. I barely know him… [oh, now she barely knows him, even though they’ve been acting like besties for a minute]. I get why you dumped him on me. The only trouble is, now I don’t know how to get rid of him.” Sylvia confirms, “He is impossible to get rid of.” Even though that certainly wasn’t the case in season one, when it started out with the two of them having not spoken for years because Sylvia didn’t much care for Will’s now ex-wife. Katie gets a devious look on her face all of the sudden and says, “Well, there is one thing I don’t think you tried.” There’s then an immediate cut to Katie and Will together in bed after having had sex. Once again proving what Vickie Miner in Reality Bites declared: “Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.” Or at least the quickest way to make everything too awkward to continue living with that person anymore. So it is that Katie gets him to leave with the power of a few thrusts.
Consequently, Will gets sent back to his “one true north,” Sylvia—only she isn’t so willing to “take him back,” as it were. In fact, her giving in to helping him move all the beer equipment he left in her backyard leads to a big argument that prompts the old Friends chestnut, “We need to take a break.” Interestingly enough, Friends, too, proved that platonic relationships between men and women were always either 1) prone to giving way to the romantic or 2) more trouble than they were worth—especially if one friend had romantic feelings for another that weren’t reciprocated (ultimately, Joey and Rachel).
Naturally, the “break” between them doesn’t hold, with Sylvia giving in to overhearing Will’s pained reaction to a noncompete letter he gets from his former fiancée Jenna’s (Rachel Rosenbloom) company, Johnny 66, informing him he can’t open up Shitty Little Bar, even though he’s just weeks away from doing it—from at last opening his own place. And yes, Jenna is one of many people in the series who end up being vexed by Sylvia and Will’s closeness, this having been an early part of what was going to doom the relationship in season two.
In the meantime, Charlie continues to “find himself” through the book he’s writing about Brett Coyote (though he only ends up finding himself right back in the corporate sector after self-publishing it). In point of fact, calling the episode, “Brett Coyote’s Last Stand” made it seem as though this finale would be about Charlie finally losing all patience for Sylvia and her general disinterest in him or his life, instead constantly mired in Will’s latest dramas and issues. Making most of Sylvia’s energy go into helping and catering to him, rather than her own husband.
So while Harry Burns said in When Harry Met Sally, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way,” for Will and Sylvia, just as it was in season one, that still hasn’t technically become a factor. And yet, there’s no doubt that, with their plans to become even more intertwined by going into business together, their friendship will only wreak more havoc on everyone around them, Charlie and Katie included. So yes, maybe Sylvia actually should take a page from Katie’s book and sleep with Will if she really wants to “get rid of him” for good. After all, such a method is a cliché for a reason: it usually works.
Genna Rivieccio
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