Summary
Rose Byrne continues to be the clear highlight of Platonic Season 2, but Will is becoming increasingly annoying, and the show is starting to feel overly one-sided.
I think Season 2 is making me hate Platonic a little bit. It’s a weird thing to say because it remains a well-made show with a handful of very funny lines, and Rose Byrne is especially great in Episode 4, “Fore!”, but I’m so, so sick of Will. I made a point of mentioning his attire, which continues to rile me, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every storyline involving him is just so circuitous, so laborious, and so dependent on him being an indecisive, emotionally stunted man-child that it’s starting to really aggravate me, at the detriment of the show overall.
The one positive thing I will say about “Fore!” is that it brings the Jenna thing to what I assume is a conclusion. With six episodes still to go, that does, admittedly, worry me a tad, since what else does Will have to be doing with his time? Hopefully, it results in more focus on other supporting characters like Charlie, but that might be wishful thinking.
The way in which Platonic does away with the will-they-won’t-they Will/Jenna marriage subplot is very symptomatic of all the problems I have with Will’s character. You’ll recall that in the previous episode, he had decided to break up with Jenna because they weren’t physically intimate, and had cajoled Sylvia into driving him to San Diego to do the deed. Predictably, once they get there, they’re immediately thrust into a reluctant game of golf that takes a surprising turn when Will accidentally maims Jenna’s father, Hank.
With Hank’s eye having ruptured completely, and Hank believing he has gained a son in a fair exchange, Will thinks he’s now trapped in the relationship forever. Jenna reminds him that the situation hasn’t really changed, but perhaps it has — when Will goes to console Jenna, she finds herself all frisky, the loss of a relative’s eyeball presumably being some kind of weird aphrodisiac. In response to this, Will decides not just not to call the wedding off, but to instead accelerate the timetable and get married on the coming Friday.
Sylvia, sensing that this is a terrible idea, nonetheless agrees to remain in San Diego and plan the wedding, which requires short-notice decisions to be made, none of which Will and Jenna agree on. This includes music and catering, but also, crucially, who’s officiating the ceremony. Jenna wants a priest, Will wants a Rabbi, so they agree to a kind of interfaith situation where they’re both kind of just there, along with a DJ and a live band. Will might as well be holding a sign that reads “This Wedding Isn’t Going to Work”.
At some point in Platonic Season 2, Episode 4, Will decides to be open about their once-in-a-blue-moon sex life, and Jenna admits she’s not a very sexual person. However, she is comfortable with that. And… that’s it. She considers the matter resolved. It never really occurs to her to address Will’s point that he’d like them to be intimate more, nor does she offer any explanation for why her dad being partially blinded turned her on so much. The matter is simply put to bed, so the next day, Will decides to call the wedding off again, this time an hour before the ceremony.
When Will’s friends arrive, he decides to get married again. Then Sylvia spills the beans about the sex thing, so he decides to call it off again. Then it’s brought to his attention that he didn’t sign a prenup, so if they marry and divorce, Will will get half of Jenna’s extensive assets, so the wedding’s back on. The whole thing’s an unfunny nightmare. Can this guy not make any decisions about his own life?
Perhaps not, since it’s ultimately Sylvia who ruins the wedding. Jenna summons her for advice because she’s starting to get cold feet — her spiteful comment to Sylvia at the end of Episode 2 seems to have been forgotten about entirely by both of them — and Sylvia just blurts out that she shouldn’t marry Will because his head isn’t in it, not realizing that Jenna was worrying about the fascinator (and she was right to — it looks ridiculous). After learning that Will originally came to San Diego to break up with her, she calls the wedding off and punches him in the face in front of everyone. I quite liked this bit, to be fair.
So, the wedding’s off, and Will doesn’t seem especially blameful of Sylvia, since it’s the outcome he ultimately wanted anyway, which does make one think that the whole thing was a bit pointless. Now what? Well, “Fore!” introduces another potential angle involving Sylvia’s event planning business, since, on Will’s advice to go more corporate, she offers to plan the annual party for Charlie’s firm. He’s reluctant about mixing their professional lives, but Stewart, who was great in Season 1 and has had nothing to do here, ultimately hires her. That could be fun! I just hope Will isn’t involved.
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