Summary
Platonic seems to have no idea where it’s going in Season 2, and Episode 7 is perhaps more indicative of that than any other.
Sometimes, even when a show isn’t at its best, it can still be pretty good. Platonic has always been like that, which is why it’s sometimes difficult to talk about. Even the worst, most asinine episodes still have a funny line or two, or an unexpected moment of physical comedy, and that’s what you tend to focus on because it’s what you’re looking for from a comedy. But whereas the first season had this and a complementary overarching narrative shape, Season 2 doesn’t seem to have any idea where it’s going or what it’s doing. And this felt more obvious to me in Episode 7, “The Office Party”, than it has in any of the others.
As usual, there are funny moments. Stewart is here, and I love Stewart. Charlie is continuing to get more focus, which is what I wanted. But at this point, stuff is happening that throws you for a loop, not because it’s sneakily implemented but because it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. It muddies up the underlying thematic points and confuses ongoing character arcs. There’s just a sense that there wasn’t a long-term plan for what this season was going to look like.
The message, as far as I can tell, is that therapy isn’t very useful. This is a weird point for a show to make — especially since Apple TV+’s best show, Shrinking, is about how great therapy is — but it’s the only one I think makes sense in context. Charlie has finally started attending sessions after the Jeopardy! debacle, and it takes him all of one episode to completely derail his life. He starts regurgitating conflict resolution platitudes around the house, insists that Will stop living in his home — I can get on board with that one, at least — and develops a bunch of problems with his career and his marriage to Sylvia that, weirdly, he didn’t really have before.
On multiple occasions, therapy is blamed for Will’s previous marital breakdown (Audrey crops up in this episode for basically no reason at all, by the way), Sylvia expresses outright disdain for the idea when Charlie asks her to attend his next session with him, and when she finally gets there and meets his therapist, he’s an obvious charlatan who forces them out of his office under the pretense of having another appointment, just so he can go cycling. Charlie attending therapy doesn’t have a single positive knock-on effect. In fact, it might have caused him to blow up his entire life, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Platonic Season 2, Episode 7 pretends to hinge on the success of the party Sylvia has organized for Frank’s retirement. Through a convoluted string of circumstances that involves Will having spontaneously morphed into a ladies’ man, she’s able to secure the swanky venue she was angling for in the first place, and as is typical of this show, all signs point to everything going wrong. They don’t, though. A mishap involving some chairs gets sorted out by Will, of all people, and while it makes Sylvia late for her therapy appointment with Charlie, she manages to get there. The party’s a big hit. Everything that you thought was going to go wrong doesn’t.
Let me just break off a minute to complain about Will. This is becoming harder to do, since last time out, he had an epiphany about how much of an idiot he is, and he seems to have turned over a new leaf. But the idea of him being an unstoppably virile womanizer is simply too ridiculous for me to accept. Look at how he’s dressed! It’s implausible that any woman would be interested in him, let alone a string of them, and it runs counter to his generally awkward demeanour. It’s only happening because 1) Charlie needs an excuse to want him out of the house and 2) Sylvia needs a way to secure that swanky venue. It’s weak, inconsistent storytelling.
Speaking of which, with Sylvia’s event a success, some conflict needs to be introduced from somewhere, so Charlie spontaneously uses Frank’s retirement as an excuse to announce his own retirement, totally out of nowhere. The way it’s presented, this is clearly another outgrowth of his therapy, so Sylvia feels like she has to politely support him in it despite it obviously being a rash and no doubt terrible decision. It just doesn’t feel consistent. Either way, though, it’s probably going to be the focal point of the next couple of episodes, so buckle up, folks. We’ve still got a long way to go.
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