Summary
The location change adds a little to Platonic, and Will taking a principled stance in defense of Sylvia helps their friendship to feel more earnest.
This recap of Platonic Season 1 Episode 8, “San Diego”, contains spoilers.
Last week in Episode 7, Sylvia started her new job. And within one day, she got fired for falling asleep against a painting of the firm’s senior partner, Kirk Friedkin, damaging it, and having it restored by an underground anti-establishment artist who rendered Kirk’s nose as a penis.
Perhaps hanging the artwork back up in the office, in full view of the CCTV, was the nail in the coffin.
Platonic Season 1 Episode 8 Recap
As of the opening of “San Diego”, Sylvia hasn’t told Charlie about this. Her kids now think she’s a working hero, directly comparable to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Miley Cyrus, so she can’t bring herself to reveal her failure.
Naturally, she confides in Will, showing up at the Lucky Penny every day in full business attire with a to-go flask of coffee. Will pushes her to tell Charlie, but in the several days that follow before she plucks up the courage to do so, she horses around with Will and documents their shenanigans in pictures that Charlie later discovers on his laptop.
Why does Charlie become suspicious of Sylvia and Will?
This shouldn’t seem like that big of a deal. However, Sylvia has gone with Will, Katie, and Andy on a business trip to the titular San Diego. It isn’t unusual for Sylvia to be spending time with “her boyfriend”, as Stewart puts it, but combine that with keeping her dismissal a secret, and things are starting to look a little shady.
Stewart rounds up the troops (read: the rest of the office). It’s a Code Green. They need to find a smoking gun that proves Sylvia and Will are more than friends. Photos of them together are merely circumstantial. But proof that Will previously owned the lizard, Gandalf, that Sylvia took on? That’ll do it.
“I’ve been living with another man’s lizard,” laments Charlie.
Who is Johnny Rev?
Meanwhile, the Lucky Penny gang meets with Johnny Rev (a surprise Ted McGinley cameo, back on Apple TV+ after doing sublime work in Shrinking) in San Diego. Johnny is the founder and visionary of Johnny 66, a hip and very mainstream restaurant franchise that plans to upscale and expand the Lucky Penny — an idea that Will, as we know, is totally against.
Andy and Reggie didn’t want to take Will along, in fact, but Sylvia insisted he be there, mostly so that Katie didn’t get to meet Johnny Rev without her. Will has no plans to sabotage the deal, but he can’t help himself from criticizing the quality of the hops in front of Johnny and Johnny 66’s brewer, Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom), with whom Will has some pretty obvious chemistry.
Johnny Rev admires his honesty, though, so things seem to going well.
Platonic Season 1 Episode 8 Ending Explained
Until, as usual, they aren’t. As it turns out, the rich motorhead and food enthusiast is also kind of a creep. After Sylvia makes it clear she and Will aren’t together and that she’s married to someone else, Johnny figures she must be “up for grabs” and tries to kiss her. When she rejects him he throws a giant tantrum and continues to be rude to her until Will intervenes and Johnny directs his ire at him instead.
After a silly fight, the gang is expelled from the house and the deal presumably falls through. When Sylvia returns home, she finds Charlie sitting in the darkness, ominously stroking Gandalf the lizard, ready to confront her about her relationship with Will.
You can stream Platonic Season 1 Episode 8, “San Diego” exclusively on Apple TV+.
