Summary
Platonic Season 2 finally reaches its high-water mark — literally, in some ways — in Episode 9, which could be too little too late but is appreciated nonetheless.
It has taken almost the entirety of Season 2 for Platonic to feel worthwhile, but here we are. Episode 9, “Boundaries”, isn’t substantially different from any of the previous episodes in its broad strokes, but it’s just one of those outings where everything works. The comedy is funny. The conflict feels organic and meaningful. It’s legitimately hard to see how it all might pan out in the finale, since there are multiple equally compelling angles at play across several characters, instead of only involving Will and Sylvia. I wish the entire season had been like this, but alas.
Maybe it’s a consequence of moving past all those early episodes that were about one thing after another. Everything that happens in “Boundaries” feels like a natural outgrowth of the subplots that have been developing over the last few weeks, probably beginning around the Jeopardy! episode. Things did seem to reach a natural turning point when Charlie found out about Sylvia bribing Simon to read his manuscript, and this is a decent payoff to that cliffhanger.
It doesn’t come immediately, though. First, it’s reiterated how miserable a time Sylvia is having at home, which is largely thanks to Watson, the dog Charlie rescued as part of his new fedora-wearing novelist identity. The mutt’s a maniac, so Cabo Carrie’s sudden offer of a full-time in-house event planning position is compelling to Sylvia, but since it would eat into a lot of their family time, it’s something that should probably be discussed first.
Ordinarily, Sylvia would discuss this with Will, or even Katie, but that proves easier said than done. Andy and Omar convince Will that his life is too intertwined with Sylvia’s and that he should establish some boundaries so she doesn’t keep controlling his life, starting with paying rent. And when Will thinks Jenna might have become physically intimate with her colleague, Terry, he goes to Katie for advice after lightly offending Sylvia for laying out those titular boundaries. This positions Will and Katie, who spend an evening drinking room-temperature spicy margaritas and watching Sex and the City, slightly apart from Sylvia, for perhaps the first time.
It’s worth noting that the boundaries advice is quite good; it’s just that neither Will nor Sylvia seems to be mature enough to set them. When Will and Katie scoot back to Sylvia’s garage for some beers, Watson attacks Will and, in a ridiculous scene, almost drowns in the pool. Will and Charlie have to repeatedly jump in and save him, while Sylvia watches with dejection from an upstairs window. Is this what her life has become?
Things go from bad to worse when Sylvia makes an off-handed quip about wanting to be divorced to get half a week free from the kids, which upsets Charlie and prompts him to mention the fact that he knows she bribed Simon to read his book. Charlie’s rightly annoyed, but he takes it too far the next morning when Sylvia is trying to make amends, sending her on a tirade about how stupid and unthinking he was to quit his job on a whim. To get out of the house she decides to accompany Will and Katie on a kayaking tour of the L.A. River, despite hating the very idea of such a thing, and it goes about how she’d expect — Will and Katie decide to ingest the bacteria-ridden riverwater they were warned not to touch under any circumstances, and Sylvia ends up getting derailed and passing through a homeless encampment.
By the time Sylvia gets home, she has had a tough enough day to be willing to read Charlie’s manuscript and put this whole matter to bed. She gets as far as the dedication, which reveals that Will was the one who encouraged Charlie to quit his job. Sylvia, fuming, immediately throws Will out of her garage without explanation when he comes home to tell her about the Lucky Penny being raided by the FBI (it turns out Reggie’s Game was illegal, and Reggie is now on house arrest for the foreseeable future), and texts Cabo Carrie accepting the event planning job.
The final grace note of Platonic Season 2, Episode 9 is Will leaving to stay with Katie. Both aren’t feeling too well on account of the river water, and Katie projectile vomits all over the windscreen. This partnership is off to a roaring start.
RELATED:
