The reference to When Harry Met Sally appears very early in Platonic. This new Apple TV comedy knows that the Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron movie is the mother of her. In that mythical tape, Harry and Sally, some also mythical Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, ended up together. The leads in Platonic, played by Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen, surely shouldn’t. That would be the happy ending of the series, the one that confirms its premise that a man and a woman can just be friends, without necessarily one of them having to be homosexual. Both Sylvia (Byrne) and Will (Rogen) are very straight, but their bond was neither sexual nor romantic. They meet again after his divorce and rediscover his friendship on a vital journey that, despite being a textbook midlife crisis, couldn’t be more fun.
It helps that the chemistry between Byrne and Rogen is superlative and that Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller, creators of the series, are hard at work in comedies about reaching 40 and still not understanding what the pod is about. That was the funny series Friends from the University and the movie Bros. From the latter and failed gay rom-com, Stoller and Delbanco recover Luke MacFarlane, as handsome as he is insipid, whose interpretation of Sylvia’s pluperfect husband reinforces the thesis, as comical as adult, from Platonic: you can love and desire your ideal husband very much but also need another less ideal man to make your life better. Yes, dear: your best friend could be a guy. One who likes women, too.
All of this could lead to a cheesy vaudeville based on misunderstandings and confusion, which is just what Platonic is not.
Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen, in addition to the latest proof of the economic might of the Apple series, are two magnificent comedians. She knows how to vulgarize his natural elegance (she already did it in the interesting Physical, on the same platform) and he, the epitome of the scruffy, disastrous, and potent turkey, is capable of transmitting the same confidence that his character generates in Sylvia . Together they make a very special magic, magic that Platónico needs because that’s what it’s all about: connecting with someone in a special but not romantic way. Like College Friends and Bros, this new series has a trace of existential angst that viewers who are in a similar moment of life similar to that of Sylvia and Will will appreciate (or not). It is not a comedy built like a machine gun with brilliant phrases and crazy situations, but it also has that and its protagonists are not scared when they have to go from Woody Allen to Kimmy Schmidt.
She is a housewife who regrets having stopped working; he will help you to recognize it and perhaps to change it. He has to mature, more out of dignity than decency; she will be the one who drives him to do it. Along the way they will recover what they had and that, as Platonic well tells, she is much more enviable than a husband with the charms and docility of an inflatable doll. Who has a friend…
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