Summary
Platonic mostly adheres to the Season 2 holding pattern in Episode 8, but there is a bit of welcome friction between Will and Sylvia and a last-minute hint of real conflict.
The obvious joke is that I’d rather read Charlie’s Brett Coyote legal thriller than watch any more Platonic. I think I’m better than that, but I can’t deny that the thought crossed my mind in “Young Darcy Mysteries”, which mostly adheres to the usual Season 2 holding pattern. We’ve already seen what Apple TV+ can do with a show about a terrible novel. What I’m still wondering at this point is whether the streaming platform can do anything of significant worth with this show, and Episode 8 doesn’t contain any concrete answers either way. It does at least tease some coming conflict, though, both between Sylvia and Will and, perhaps more seriously, Sylvia and Charlie, so that’ll be a nice way to spend the remaining couple of episodes. Hopefully.
Both of these potential conflicts grow gradually throughout the episode. The one with Charlie is funnier on the face of it, but could prove to be more impactful long-term. After retiring as a lawyer, he has now decided he is going to be a novelist, picking up an old legal thriller manuscript he drafted in college starring a guy named Brett Coyote. It’s terrible, which is made clear when Sylvia reads some of it aloud to Katie over the phone, but that isn’t the point. Charlie has supported all of Sylvia’s wacky business endeavours. She’s maritally obligated to return the favour, even if they’re potentially staring down the barrel of financial ruin if the event planning doesn’t work out.
But Charlie has reimagined himself as Hunter S. Thompson. He starts wearing a fedora all the time and referring to his laptop as “the machine”. On Stewart’s advice, he rescues a dog for no reason at all. He’s determined to make a serious go of this, and from his perspective, Sylvia’s lack of support is a betrayal. What he doesn’t know is that she has barely managed to read four pages and bribed the kids to give her a summary. This is what Charlie overhears at the end of Platonic Season 2, Episode 8, and by the look on his face, he isn’t going to take it in his stride.
To be fair to Sylvia, she’s pretty busy. As promised in the previous episode, Cabo Carrie secured her a gig planning the party of a Hollywood star named Mason Grand (played by a guest-starring Milo Manheim), famous for the titular Young Darcy Adventures, a Pride & Prejudice spin-off pitched at a much younger, more female-oriented crowd. But it immediately becomes apparent when Sylvia meets Mason that he’s a disrespectful, pampered misogynist, but she needs the job, so she plays on the only angle she can. Mason likes beer, and thus likes the Lucky Penny — and Will.
Sylvia brings Will in as a partner so he can schmooze Mason, and then becomes immediately annoyed when Mason starts ignoring her completely and going through Will for everything. Her main concern is that Will seems entirely unconcerned with Mason’s less wholesome qualities, especially the sexism, but Will likes the attention and, more importantly, the potential of investment in his new bar, which he plans to call “Shitty Little Bar” after Jenna called it that to mock it.
Will needs the investment because his supposed best friend, Reggie, not only refuses to give him a loan to rent the commercial space he found in the previous episode, but also rents that space from under him to open an offshoot of The Lucky Penny. He offers to bring Will in as a manager as a sweetener, but it’s so obviously a betrayal that I don’t know why Will even gives him the time of day afterwards. It’s easy to see how even working with Mason is better than that.
But Mason is so unpleasant that even Will realises it would be a terrible idea, and that Sylvia was right to call him out on it. I like this scene since it’s the first time that Will has realised even for a moment that he’s a ridiculous older dude cosplaying a much younger one. Seeing Mason’s entourage fake-laughing at his dudebro banter is too much for all of us to take. The realisation is so profound for Will that he even agrees to work for Reggie, and the two of them share a surprisingly nice moment of tenderness. Here’s Platonic, combating the male loneliness epidemic one episode at a time.
There are only two left, though, so we might not address the problem in its entirety. And besides, if anyone’s likely to be lonely in the next episode, it’s Sylvia.
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