Physical Review: Let’s Do This / Let’s Get Political / Let’s Get Down to Business (Season 1 Episodes 1-3)

Many viewers might be looking to the new AppleTV+ dark comedy Physical to fill the hole that the cancellation of Netflix’s GLOW left in our lives. After all, it’s got a very similar aesthetic: Big hair, a banging 1980s soundtrack, and an exploration of female empowerment through a very specific physical activity.

But, you should be warned: Physical is a much bleaker, more depressing story than GLOW ever was and though the series is often very funny, its humor has much sharper edges.

There’s little of the heart to be found here that made the Netflix wrestling drama so compelling to watch. most of the characters, including the series’ lead, are incredibly unlikeable, and the humor is often biting and cruel. This doesn’t mean that Physical is bad, per se: In fact, I quite enjoyed the first three episodes. 

But you should adjust your expectations about what kind of show this is and what sort of story it’s telling accordingly. 

Physical stars Rose Byrne as Sheila Rubin, a deeply unhappy 1980s housewife and mother who struggles with self-image issues, low self-esteem, and a cutting inner monologue that disparages her every choice.

She also seems to hate everyone around her, has no friends to speak of, and few hobbies outside of being screamed at by her toddler. Though her life — and appearance — may seem perfect, Sheila’s true situation is uncomfortably grim.

Sheila’s unhappiness most frequently manifests in vicious cycles of bulimia — after she drops her daughter off at a crunchy co-op daycare, she regularly laps the local fast food drive-throughs before stripping naked in a rented hotel room and eating half a dozen cheeseburgers in one go before purging and promising herself that this time was the last time.

Her husband, of course, doesn’t help matters, as Danny Rubin is the worst sort of 1980s West Coast liberal, who gives lip service to progressive values even as he expects his wife to manage their household, raise their daughter, run his subsequent campaign for public office, and show up — without complaint! — to what feels like an endless sea of fundraisers and rallies.

Thankfully, the show opens with several scenes of Sheila’s ultimate success — enough so that we know that there’s eventually some triumph mixed in with all the ugliness and suffering — and much of Physical seems as though it will recount Sheila’s rise as a lifestyle guru — by way of becoming an aerobics instructor. 

In the series’ first three episodes, Sheila doesn’t have a lot going for her — at least not until she essentially stalks a woman who essentially looks like she has a perfect life to a local mall.

There, she discovers that Bunny is an aerobics instructor and slowly learns that there are positive ways she can use her body to quiet the voices in her head. 

Along with Bunny and her surfer/porn filmmaker boyfriend, Sheila finds an outlet not just for her feelings of dissatisfaction and self-hatred, but for her rage and creativity too. By the end of the season’s third episode, Sheila’s teaching a class of her own at Bunny’s studio and plotting her own routines while her husband sleeps. 

Yet, somehow, there’s little about this series that feels uplifting or joyous and despite the obvious signposts that clue us in to Sheila’s future success, Physical’s first three episodes are almost completely devoid of hope.

Byrne is as wonderful here as she is in everything else, giving Sheila’s rage complicated depth and teeth. But Sheila is a very difficult heroine to root for, and part of that is because she’s almost unrelentingly cruel to everyone she encounters, her inner voice unceasingly and profanely disparaging almost everyone, including — and most often — herself.

Yet, the entire cottage industry of prestige TV was built on the backs of male characters with similar degrees of self-loathing, so perhaps that’s part of the point that Physical is trying to make, if clumsily so. It’s rare that female characters are allowed to display the ugliest parts of themselves in this way, particularly to this sort of degree. 

Much of Physical’s first three episodes feel like table setting: We have to meet Sheila, establish her particular emotional stressors, witness her occasionally kind but mostly selfish husband dictate a marriage in which she feels like an afterthought, and that’s all before she discovers aerobics and has to go through the complicated dance of steps that see her become a co-instructor with Bunny. 

So let’s see what happens next.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• I hope future episodes show us something positive about Sheila and Danny’s relationship. Clearly, she wasn’t always so resentful of him and he wasn’t always such a terrible partner. And their history as former Berkeley activists turned suburbanites certainly hints at an intriguing mix of compromises and rude awakenings that could easily make for some great storytelling. But, right now, all I want for their relationship is for Sheila to get out of it. And I would like to at least get some perspective on why she says with him. 
• Every time I felt even remotely kindly toward Danny (he does occasionally remember to tell Sheila that his life only functions because of her), he would start hitting on some co-ed and I would want him to fall in the sea.
• Leotards were really a thing we all decided to do back then, huh?
• I think Dierdre Friel is perhaps going to be the stealth MVP of this show.

What did you think of the premiere episodes of Physical? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The first three episodes of Physical are available to stream on Apple TV+. Moving forward, new episodes will premiere on the service on Fridays. 

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