Physical Review: Let’s Get This On Tape (Season 1 Episode 6)

Sheila achieves a dream on Physical Season 1 Episode 6, “Let’s Get This on Tape,” but it feels as though her struggle to balance her many personal and financial secrets is starting to become untenable. 

The show hasn’t exactly gone into great detail about how exactly Sheila’s been cooking the books at home to cover up her — definitely not inexpensive — binge and purge trips to local fast-food chains and low-rent hotels.

But it’s clear that she’s working hard to keep many financial balls in the air: Household bills, the costs of running her husband’s campaign for state assembly, and more. 

And it finally seems as though the strain is catching up with her — Danny’s odious campaign manager Jerry insists that they have several thousand dollars to spend on advertising, even as Sheila is secretly juggling credit cards to pay for everything from the clothes for their commercial shoot to supplies for her and Bunny’s trial aerobics video.

What will happen when Danny finally realizes how broke they are? Definitely nothing good. 

Physical showed us this week that it is narratively committed to seeing Sheila face consequences for her actions — after Sheila hijacks a knock-off Color Me Beautiful seminar to hawk the workout video she and Bunny made, Greta figures out what really happened to her husband’s expensive film camera.

The subsequent confrontation between the two women is honestly riveting television, not just because Sheila’s right in that Greta is someone one of the few people who does see her for who she is, warts and all, but because Greta has tried so hard to be a genuine friend and Sheila has repeatedly thrown it in her face — and mocked her behind her back.

To Sheila’s credit, she doesn’t try to lie her way out of getting caught, though her explanation of why she felt driven to steal was more than a bit lacking. (Especially given Greta’s pointed reminder that her lie did cost an innocent woman her job and the livelihood she used to support her family!)

But I will admit I was hoping she wouldn’t give Greta her husband’s deeply creepy head shaving video, if only because wow that poor woman has been through enough.

She’s often stuck being this show’s avatar for the utter cruelty of 80s beauty culture, and while it’s a very accurate portrayal, it’s hard to watch sometimes.

But, the big news of this installment is that Bunny and Sheila successfully choreograph and film their first at-home workout video. And they look cool enough doing it to silence even Sheila’s vicious inner critic, so you know the final product has to actually be good. 

Of course, the process of producing and distributing it is another high-cost endeavor that Sheila didn’t anticipate, so at this point, we should all probably start wondering just how much debt she’s actively hiding from her husband. It’s got to be a lot.

That said, there’s a rare joy to be found in these segments — not just the fun of Sheila’s grand dream realized, which, let’s face it is very smart and forward-thinking, but the charming slow-burn friendship she seems to be developing with Bunny, even in spite of herself.

As I said last week, Bunny and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters on this show, and I think that her take no BS attitude is really something Sheila could benefit from having more of in her life. (Imagine Bunny even hearing the least of the stuff that Sheila’s forced to grin and bear at home. Just saying!)

I just wish I didn’t feel terrified that the constant references to Bunny’s incessant smoking weren’t going to turn out to be some kind of foreshadowing… (Here’s hoping I’m very wrong. But we didn’t exactly see her as a part of the future glimpses of Sheila’s success, and that worries me.)

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• I can’t decide whether Danny makes these throwaway comments about how great Sheila is, about how she’s all he needs to succeed, about how she’s the genius that makes their campaign work because he actually believes them — and is subsequently fine with dumping all the work and responsibility of their life on him – -or because he thinks he has to say them as a method of keeping her in line. Neither is a great look for him, tbh. 
• Can we just throw Danny in the sea, is really what I mean. 
• Also, all I can say is I would have thrown Jerry out of my house like a long time ago. The nerve of this mediocre freeloader.
• How did Tyler become the secret MVP of this show?? Who could have known??
• I am living for Physical’s dedication to Betamax jokes.
• If AppleTV+ has not yet made a Spotify playlist for this show they need to get on that, like, right now. This music!

What did you think of this episode of Physical? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Physical stream Fridays on Apple TV+.

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