Physical Review: Let’s Take This Show on the Road (Season 1 Episode 7)

Sheila and Danny embark on a disastrous road trip to Los Angeles in Physical Season 1 Episode 7, “Let’s Take This Show on the Road,” an installment that raises not just serious questions about the Durbins’ finances but truly makes me wonder why on earth these two people got (and stayed) together in the first place.

Over the course of the first season thus far, we’ve heard both Sheila and Danny refer to their time at Berkeley with varying degrees of warmth, nostalgia, and disbelief. And one of the most interesting dynamics at work in this show is how these two former pseudo-hippies have been forced to recalibrate their lives in Ronald Reagan’s conservative, capitalist 1980s America, a far cry from the love all, serve none world the pair used to agitate for. 

After all, it’s not an accident that Danny is running for state assembly from San Diego, one of California’s most conservative districts, and one of the few places in the state where his opponent’s attack ad branding him what is essentially a dirty hippie would be effective. 

In “Let’s Take his Show on the Road,” Physical once again hints at the couple’s disparate backgrounds, with several of Sheila’s old college friends — including one of the women who first taught and encouraged her to purge before ballet class — reminiscing about how her decision to be with Danny had as much to do with pissing off her wealthy, presumably traditional parents as anything else.

This isn’t the first time a character from Sheila’s world has referred to Danny as some variation of a “liberal Jew” or “Jewish hippie”, which kind of tells you a lot without actually saying anything about her presumably WASPish upbringing. (And the prejudices that likely involved.)

But looking at these women, it’s suddenly a lot easier to understand why Sheila is the way she is and where her warped view of herself has come from. 

The purpose of the Rubins’ trip to L.A. is ostensibly to fundraise campaign cash for rich Hollywood types, but their reunion with college friends Tonya and Jack is strained at best. (Tonya even refuses to outright ask her rich friends for cash on Danny’s behalf, though Sheila made it perfectly clear that was the main reason for her visit.)

Though, to her credit, the scene where Danny and Sheila are forced to listen to Tonya and Jack dramatically having sex is maybe the most I’ve ever liked them together. (Which I guess is a sign of just how awful Tonya is? I don’t know. Why are all of Sheila’s supposed friends so terrible?)

While Danny is arguing with Jack about whether the personal can ever be divorced from the political and rehashing what appears to be a fairly long-standing debate about their roles in the Vietnam protests on their canvas, Sheila is stuck with the women talking psychology and eating disorders, defending her decision to turn her love of aerobics into a business instead of a hobby to “keep busy”. 

The things Sheila’s so-called friends want to know about though have nothing to do with her own ideas or new interests — despite the fact that Tonya expresses shock that she never told her about her aerobics classes, these women are still only looking to rehash old issues such as why Sheila quit ballet or whether she’s still purging the way they did when they were younger. 

It seems likely that we’ll find out more about all of this next week, since “Let’s Take This Show on the Road’s” final scene shows us Sheila returning to her parents’ house, presumably with some scheme to ask them for money, since she’s deeply in debt and scrambling for funds.

But even while that likely is the case, it also seems like a perfect time for some flashbacks that might fill in some of these many blanks.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Is Tyler my favorite character on this show? Yes, yes he is. Protect him at all costs.
• I want Tyler to have more subplots with his stoner surfer friends!
• I truly don’t know what to make with Gretta’s subplot right now — does she like the weird head shaving video because it genuinely titillates her in some way or simply because it’s something she thinks her husband likes? Either way, her presence in this episode felt really weird to me. 
• The fact that Danny’s default reaction to every situation is to get high to deal with it is….definitely problematic at best.
• Part of me wonders if one of the reasons that Sheila stays with Danny is that his actions are so darn easy to predict and manipulate.

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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