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In the breezy comedy series Platonic, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne play former best friends who reconnect years after a falling out.
As they attempt to rebuild their relationship, they find themselves in many a silly and occasionally profound situations.
It's a refreshingly low-stakes premise and if you're a fan of Rogan and Byrne and who among us isn't you'll probably dig this.
The show is back for a second season, so we thought it would be a great time to revisit our conversation about the series.
I'm Linda Holmes.
And I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about the Apple TV Plus series Platonic on Pop Culture.
Happy Hour from NPR.
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Joining me and Linda today is Ronald Young Jr.
He's the host of the film and television review podcast, Leaving the Theater.
Welcome back, Ronald.
Hello, hello.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, it's great to have you here.
Platonic stars Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen as Sylvia and Will, a pair of former besties whose friendship ended dramatically over a big disagreement.
Now, years later, they reenter each other's lives, but as very different people.
Sylvia is a retired lawyer and stay-at-home mom who's feeling the pull to return to work and questioning her life's purpose.
Meanwhile, Will is reeling from a recent divorce while expanding his brewery business.
The show follows their misadventures as they try to navigate their respective midlife crises and become friends again.
Platonic was created by the married team of Francesca Dobanco and Nicholas Stoller, who together also created the series Friends from College.
It's streaming on Apple TV+.
So Linda, I want to start with you.
So the series is called Platonic, which suggests that it might be focused on the classic gendered question around whether or not men and women can truly be friends without the sexual tension.
It even directly references When Harry Met Sally in the first episode.
But as the show progresses, it's clearly got other things on its mind.
And so I'm wondering, did you have expectations going into this?
And if so, did anything about how this ultimately unfolded actually kind of surprise you in any way?
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I think the title suggests, and maybe even some of the original promo stuff suggested, that we were going to get something where you know they were best friends but particularly like did Sylvia's husband, who's played by the wonderful Luke McFarlane, who's kind of becoming one of my favorite supporting guys.
Mm-hmm.
You know, was the fact that her husband felt like threatened by the closeness of their relationship?
Were we going to get into one of these?
Can they really be friends?
Is there some love triangle here?
It's absolutely not that.
But at the same time what I like about it is it does go into the questions of kind of how like emotionally intimate this friendship is and the confidences that happen in friendships that don't always happen in marriages and stuff, kind of the emotional real estate that is occupied by close friendships and how it does sometimes create complications in marriages, not because of romance or sex but because of just closeness.
And that can happen with any friend, but I think...
And sometimes straight couples find that it's heightened with opposite sex friends because people are so socialized to not think of that as a thing.
One of the things I really like about it is that it doesn't spend a lot of time in that place.
Yeah, there's definitely jealousy there, but it's jealousy that isn't just about you know, will they or won't they, but about like you said.
Sharing things in different ways and sharing different parts of yourself with the various people in your lives.
And I think that's something everyone can relate to, whether or not they are in a relationship or not.
That's just what it is.
I felt like that with friends. you know?
Yeah.
In some ways I felt it reminded me of Joyride, which is this kind of raucous comedy about these four friends.
And one of the things that gets into is the tensions between, like Your old childhood friend and your college friend.
It's all of these like making space for lots of people in your life.
And I think in some ways platonic is almost plucking strings that are on that instrument as well.
Yeah, yeah.
Ronald, how about you?
What were your sort of expectations going into this, and how did this play out for you?
Looking at the name Platonic and looking at the previews, I had apprehensions that this was just going to be examining.
Can this actually happen?
Can a man and woman actually be friends?
And I know it to be true because I have plenty of women friends.
I think I have more.
So goofy.
Yeah.
And I think I have more women close friends than I do men close friends.
And they've varied the spectrum, some ex-relationships, some never romantic tension, any of that.
When you put that premise at the center of a show, then you kind of force it to kind of be in conflict with anything that's not the norm.
And so a lot of times I noticed that the Luke McFarlane character, like that whole conflict for me is, It felt a little forced.
It felt like well, we have to do this because this is platonic and we have to have the struggle between husband and actual platonic friend.
And I still think that that is something that could still be explored, even if this were her and her woman friend.
You know, in terms of emotional intimacy and all of that.
But they didn't really touch on that in terms of the differences between those two relationships.
And I guess my only qualm about the series itself is that, while I enjoy it and I think they're doing a great job I'm like enjoying their interactions.
I love Seth Rogen.
I love Rose Byrd.
I love the way they're interacting.
I think that because that was intended to be the center of the show, everything around it kind of felt like plot threads rather than plot.
Yeah, I can kind of see that.
I came into it, you know, I love everyone involved with this.
There's so much DNA in this show where, if you lived through the early mid-aughts especially, you're going to be like oh, I recognize this person.
Oh, I recognize this person.
And of course you have Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, who have co-starred before in the movie Neighbors and Neighbors 2, where they actually played a married couple and that sort of other raucous comedy.
And then you have Nicholas Stoller, and then you have all this sort of like Judd Apatow adjacent universe of characters and people.
So in some respects it's giving you know.
This is 40, you know, knocked up and like some of that DNA in there.
Yeah.
And I was a little worried, especially in the first couple of episodes, because so much of Rose Byrne's character, Sylvia.
Her issues are arriving out of being a parent and also feeling as though her marriage is not what she wants it to be.
And it felt familiar, you know, in a way, like we've seen this before of like the stay at home mom who's just very frustrated with her life and is, you know, wondering what she could have done better.
And what it's like to actually try and reconnect with someone who you were once so close with and now you don't even know really anything about them.
To me, that's like the kernel of what makes this so interesting is that it's really about trying to figure out how do you rebuild this relationship after being so close.
And I don't think we've seen as many depictions of that kind of friendship as I think We maybe should, because people reconnect all the time right.
Especially now, I feel like.
I really liked that.
I also think like out of everything that's going on, it's very low stakes.
And I really admired that about it because it's just fun.
It's silly.
There's an entire scene in a bar where they are all doing – everyone in the bar is giving off their secret skills.
Wow.
Classic comedy moment.
That was funny.
Adored it.
Aisha, I'm so glad that you mentioned the kind of Apatowian DNA in this show.
Because one thing I really like about this show is that in some of those Judd Apatow movies you will get like man and woman who is fun killer.
And I was so afraid going into this, like is Rose Byrne going to be a fun killer, which I hate the idea of because she is so fun and she is so funny?
Yes.
That's not her role here.
She has a lot of fun with him.
That sequence that you mentioned with the secret skills, I think is mind blowing.
It's also a wonderful showcase for Guy Branum, who is a friend of the show, friend of mine and sometime pop culture happy hour panelist, who plays Luke McFarlane's friend at work Stuart, and gets to kind of really stretch out in this bar sequence as like this buddy who's hanging out with all these people.
It's a wonderful Guy Branum moment.
I can name all of the prime numbers to a thousand.
Do you want to see it?
Yeah!
Three, five, seven, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23.
That secret skill stuff, like they're throwing electric scooters and it's just this great night out.
What was with the electric scooters?
He really committed to that bit.
Loved it.
Loved that part.
That bit is like Throughout the entire series, where Seth Rogen just has a beef with electric scooters.
So like in almost every episode, he's like knocking one over.
There's a very satisfying payoff for that, I think, at some point.
And I knew it was coming.
I knew every time he kicked over a scooter, like at some point, you can't – you're not just going to get away with this forever.
The payoff that comes, I thought, was –
Pretty.
I enjoyed it.
I know that.
I think generally like the fun of this show is just it's palpable.
It comes through.
And I think that and it being low stakes works.
Is.
You know, anytime you have a comedy of a certain brand, there's always going to be the inevitable drugs taking sequence.
And, my goodness, they're almost always like, first of all, not at all how those drugs might actually affect you.
It just feels very cliched at this point how they're done.
There's a moment sort of midway through the series where Rose Byrne's character, Sylvia and Will, and then Will's co-workers and friends are all out.
And they take coke and ketamine. but it's mostly ketamine.
I'm very angry.
Leave it at you.
We should get ready.
I'm not happy about this.
No, you don't seem happy.
You look it.
And first of all, they're in the most gigantic bathroom stall I have ever seen in popular culture.
It's like a bathroom stall designed for a bunch of people to take drugs.
Yeah.
Exactly.
100%.
And then, like later on, she's kind of like wobbling around and then they find themselves in a liquor store and she just keeps falling over.
It's great to see sort of this move away from the more typical way of how we depict these things.
And it's again.
It's a great moment to see her just do this physical comedy that I think she's really really great at.
We've seen in her other work as well.
I think in a lot of ways, this would have been the same show if it wasn't called Platonic.
The original premise is kind of gone from what the show actually is, like what I'm actually watching.
When we get to the final few episodes and again I'm looking at these plot threads where I'm like the whole show could have been the conflict at the bar.
Yeah.
The whole show could have been the conflict with the relationship.
But it turns out it's all these little conflicts that, Aisha, you're right.
Y'all both have said, like, this is just low stakes.
Which isn't a problem.
I don't think the stakes have to be high.
But it just, for me, was a little distracting.
But when I was having fun, I was having a lot of fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because really what this show is, this show is a hangout show, right?
This show is a bunch of people hanging out in different groups, people who are really good and funny.
Some of it's physical comedy, some of it's verbal comedy.
It's a really nice deployment of a bunch of different kinds of comedic chemistry.
Yes, Byrne and Rogan, but also, as I said, Luke McFarlane and Guy Branum and some of those folks.
But you can't just make a show and say it's going to be a hangout show.
And so they want like a thing that you can put as you're like, it's this.
Ooh, that sounds interesting.
It's very hard sometimes, I think, as you say, to market things as what they really are.
You mean Pineapple Express?
Yeah.
Like I have nothing against it, like when he wants to make Pineapple Express, or he wants to make This is the End, or whatever those movies are.
That is one kind of thing.
But there's this other like very interesting genre of movie and TV now that he has done, which is these pairings with actresses whose vibe can be like a little patrician vibe.
Whether it's Rose Byrne or Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up is the same way.
Charlize Theron in Longshot is the same thing.
And he has a way.
What I really like about how he handles those pairings is that he always comes across like he really really likes the woman himself.
He doesn't come across like, why is she such a fun killer?
I've got to loosen her up.
He comes across as a little in awe of the woman who could be the fun killer.
Why is this woman such a stick in the mud?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another reason why I mentioned earlier sort of the Judd Apatow of it all, but also This Is 40, is like there's a whole plot line here where Will is dating a much younger woman who looks like – at one point they said she looks like Billie Eilish.
And I was like, actually, I had thought that before.
I thought it was Billie Eilish.
And then I found that it wasn't.
Somebody messaged me and was like, that's not Billie Eilish, is it?
And I was like, I really thought it was.
She's played by Emily Kimball and her character's name is Peyton in the show.
But I was really kind of worried.
I was like oh, are we going to get another one of these where the guy is dating a much younger woman and blah blah, blah.
It really, the way it plays out is actually, I think, very self-aware.
And it does kind of point to the fact that, you know, in the mid-aughts we were kind of in a different place.
And I think that especially someone like Seth Rogen has been able to sort of find in his work, And the people that he's working with and all the people who have made those movies in the past, I feel like, have in many ways sort of progressed in a way that doesn't feel put upon.
It's just kind of like we're kind of moving and changing with the times in a way.
I don't know if you feel that way.
And now that you said it, it hit me like a bell.
It's who's in the room.
They're letting more people into the writer's room.
And that's evidence with the types of relationships that they're having.
Because I believe this was written by a husband and wife team.
Yes.
Yeah, Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delbanca, yeah.
Yeah, so I think you could tell that someone else has a say in the room and that's coming across in the stories that we're getting now.
Like even the idea of like putting black writers, queer writers, women writers like, front and center in a room and having opinions.
It just means that the stories that we love, they're going to be different and they're going to be mindful and intentional of everyone who's there watching, participating in the story and everyone who is viewing the story as well.
But still funny.
Not to be the Guy Branum fan club over here, but I do think the take that he provides on the like queer friend of the husband.
It's quite fresh to me.
It's a character who is gay and talks about being gay, and talks about his sex life and relationship life.
He's also like the very hard charging intense work friend.
That's not a particular combination that I feel like I see all the time.
I also want to point out that there are and it may sound like I have an agenda here with my upcoming project, but I want to point out that there are multiple fat people in this series and them being fat is not a joke.
It's not the joke or point or anything that they're just like living and hanging out.
And Guy Branum is one of those folks.
And I really enjoyed that he gets that.
And he has a sex life.
Yes.
Yes.
He's a whole human.
I'm like, yes, do that.
It's that easy.
I love it.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, Ronald, really quickly, what is your upcoming project?
Just so...
People understand what you mean.
So I'm working on a project about Wait.
It's coming out in August called Wait For It.
So anytime I get to see this out in the world, I get really, really excited about it.
Awesome.
Gosh, and Guy in that little Dodgers outfit.
Love it.
Yeah.
Love it so much.
Yeah.
It's just a fun show.
People should check it out and hopefully...
You'll enjoy it.
And when you do check it out, you should definitely let us know what you think about platonic.
Find us at facebook.com slash PCHH.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Ronald Young Jr. and Linda Holmes.
Thanks so much for being here.
It was fun chatting with you.
Oh, thank you.
Always a pleasure to be with y'all.
Yeah.
And this episode is produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Mike Katziff.
Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy and Hello Come In provides our theme music.
And thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Aisha Harris and we'll see you all tomorrow.
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