{"id":122962,"date":"2025-08-06T06:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T06:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/122962\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T06:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T06:54:09","slug":"platonic-season-two-review-seth-rogen-and-rose-byrne-stop-at-nothing-to-make-you-laugh-and-its-joyful-tv-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/122962\/","title":{"rendered":"Platonic season two review: Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne stop at nothing to make you laugh \u2013 and it\u2019s joyful TV | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Studio<\/a>, Seth Rogen\u2019s cosy Hollywood satire which dropped on Apple TV+ earlier this year, features a glut of industry figures cameoing as themselves: Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron, Zac Efron, Ron Howard, Zo\u00eb Kravitz, Nicholas Stoller. Unless you also happen to work in the movie business, that last name probably won\u2019t mean much: in the show Stoller is introduced as a reliable writer of kid-friendly fare \u2013 The Muppets, Captain Underpants \u2013 who can make a decent job of the IP-driven film (\u201cthe Kool-Aid movie\u201d) that Rogen\u2019s studio head, Matt Remick, has been forced to pursue.<\/p>\n

In real life, Stoller did indeed write those films. Yet he\u2019s also a key figure in the later years of the Judd Apatow-abetted Frat Pack era, responsible for a number of box office hits including Sex Tape, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and Neighbors, which starred Rogen and Rose Byrne<\/a> as a couple warring with the fraternity next door. Pairing lowbrow farce with zingy dialogue and hapless beta male protagonists, these were out-and-out comedies made at a time when the genre occupied a significant slice of the cinematic zeitgeist.<\/p>\n

Those days are over, but Stoller has adapted his shtick to the requirements of the age. In Apple TV+\u2019s Platonic, now returning for a second season, he teams up with his wife, co-writer Francesca Delbanco, for a comedy drama starring Rogen and Byrne, this time as two mischief-loving college pals reunited in midlife after a five-year falling out. Byrne is Sylvia, a married mother of three whose life of predictable happiness and domestic drudgery is beginning to chafe; Rogen plays Will, a recently divorced brewmaster who wears aspirationally quirky outfits and likes kicking over parked e-scooters.<\/p>\n

Platonic has a fair amount in common with its cinematic predecessors. It relies heavily on the likability of its stars and a healthy roster of eccentric supporting characters (including Sylvia\u2019s eight-year-old son, who coolly suggests controversial true-crime documentary Dahmer<\/a> for family film night) and is powered by a series of silly set-pieces. Season one saw the duo snatch a collar off a ferocious doberman, stumble round a grocery store high on ketamine, and \u2013 my favourite \u2013 take a tour of the abandoned nursing home Sylvia feels cornered into buying (very \u201ccolonial hospice, Cape Cod mortuary,\u201d nods Will).<\/p>\n

There are also differences. Platonic is lightweight, comforting entertainment primarily focused on the gag, but it has real depth, too. During an argument, Will calls Sylvia \u201ca miserable stay-at-home mom who hangs out with me to escape your boring life.\u201d That\u2019s not quite true: Sylvia\u2019s not miserable, she\u2019s a frustrated fun-lover low on self-esteem after 13 years out of the workplace. The show does a brilliant job of capturing that feeling of exclusion from the real world that often accompanies motherhood, and Byrne expertly walks the line between aspirational cool girl and relatably downtrodden housewife.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Will has his own struggles \u2013 namely to find love and get along with his colleagues at the bar they run, Lucky Penny, after they decide to collaborate with a cringy diner chain. Will quits in protest, believing the value of his beer to be inextricably linked to its non-corporate edge. Platonic seems curiously keen to disabuse him of his resistance to capitalist overlords; by the first season\u2019s end he is working at the chain\u2019s head office and engaged to the CEO, Jenna.<\/p>\n

This is where season two kicks off, with Sylvia organising the pair\u2019s wedding \u2013 she\u2019s now moonlighting as a party planner \u2013 while secretly hoping they will split. The pair do seem ill-matched \u2013 Will is a committed slacker, Jenna is an overachiever and yet quite basic (she slips lines from the Barbie movie into conversation). She\u2019s also dismissive of Sylvia in a way that plays neatly into the motherhood theme.<\/p>\n

Platonic ranges from great to decent company. The leads have palpable (nonsexual) chemistry, and it\u2019s always nice to watch something that is putting serious effort into making you laugh. Byrne is undoubtedly the comic engine, a natural clown who is given plenty to do; season two begins with Sylvia posing as an eastern European glamourpuss in order to test-drive a sports car which she repeatedly stalls before fleeing.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you can\u2019t help wondering if Platonic would work better if its most hilarious moments were smooshed together into a lean comic movie rather than padded out into a flabby, 10-hour-long TV series. Having worked through the tensions caused by an adult male-female relationship in season one, the show now asks whether Will and Sylvia should continue their mildly dysfunctional friendship. This question doesn\u2019t provide quite enough direction or dramatic substance: the storylines are circular, the bickering is repetitive and there\u2019s a distinct streaming-era bagginess to proceedings. Still, there remains a lot to enjoy here.<\/p>\n

Platonic season two is on Apple TV+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Studio, Seth Rogen\u2019s cosy Hollywood satire which dropped on Apple TV+ earlier this year, features a glut…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":122963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-122962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114980510997804437","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}