Physical Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Like It’s A Rocket
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
After several weeks that left us wondering whether Kelly Kilman was actually a real person, Physical Season 3 Episode 4, “Like It’s a Rocket,” finally introduces the real-world version of the character when Sheila attends a sprawling fitness expo.
But surprisingly enough, Kelly turns out to be the best part of the episode, thanks in large part to Zooey Deschanel’s sweetly winning performance. (The different ways she distinguishes between the real Kelly and the one in Sheila’s mind — whether through movement, tone of voice, or facial expression — are fascinating to watch.)
Physical’s recreation of a 1980s health and fitness expo is predictably extra, featuring a lot of lycra and legwarmers, strange diet pills and weight loss supplements (the knockoff Slim-fast is particularly appalling), and, for some reason, a giant h0t tub in the middle of the show floor. Ostensibly, Sheila and Greta are there to promote their new partnership with Hartman Foods, the company behind a new range of new fat-free cookies. What it actually means is a ridiculous amount of flirting with skeevy men that like to stare at her leotard and bored-looking housewife types.
The real Kelly Kilman is, surprisingly, also present, something that seems to throw Sheila for a loop — even as her own internal imagining of the other woman continues to cruelly tease and taunt her. But when she meets the real Kelly by accident, it turns out that the she’s nothing like the snappish mean girl she’s been imagining.
The real Kelly is sweet and kind, not to mention completely lacking in the bitchy competitive nature Sheila’s been ascribing to her in her head since she first learned of her existence. In fact, Kelly doesn’t even seem to really want to be a fitness star — she hates exercise, she loves to sing, and she’s hawking diet pills because she was kicked off her show for requesting pay equity with a male co-star.
She’s also remarkably self-aware — both about the validity of her blond bombshell act and the way she’s being exploited by an industry that hates her. She knows precisely who the world expects her to be and gives it to them, but hates them all for it at the same time. I adore her.
I also maybe ship her with Sheila a little bit? After all, Byrne and Deschanel have more chemistry in a handful of drunk scenes than we’ve seen between Sheila and any of her male co-stars thus far over three seasons, and the characters have a lot more in common. Just saying!!
Of course, Sheila can’t help self-sabotaging, possibly because she still doesn’t know how to form genuine relationships with anyone — let’s not forget her friendship with Greta originally started because Sheila wanted something from her — and, when she’s invited to participate in the expo’s Fall Fashion Show, the voices jeering in her head bring on a panic attack, causing her to basically strip naked in front of the audience.
It’s a bit ridiculous to be sure, something I could have seen earlier season Sheila doing much more easily than the Sheila we’ve seen this season, but maybe that’s the point — that she hasn’t gotten as far in her recovery as we’d all like to think or hope. She reacts to the public humiliation in the worst, most self-destructive way, literally covering herself with at least a dozen boxes of diet cookies in a hotel bathtub before binging and purging her way through them all.
It’s strange, how easy it was to believe that Sheila was better (to want Sheila to be better). And, granted, no one’s path out of any kind of disorder or addiction is a straight line, and mistakes happen. What will be interesting, and perhaps most telling, is to see how Sheila reacts to what she did, to her first real incidence of backsliding. Will she dust herself off and try again, or will she assume that to have failed once is to have failed forever?
Outside of Breem’s (completely random) thirty-second appearance at the end of the episode, none of Sheila’s messy ex-es were part of the episode, and “Like It’s a Rocket” is honestly all the better for it. I expect we’re about to find out that either Sheila or Kelly drunk-dialed Breem the night before after the former’s dramatic confession about their affair, but to what end? Is he there to rescue her? To resume their affair? To give her business advice? I guess we’ll see!
Stray Thoughts and Observations:
- Every week I am going to note that I am n e v e r getting over Physical unceremoniously dumping Bunny and Tyler from this season. Because I am not!
- Also, how difficult would it be to explain their absence? Murray Bartlett couldn’t be part of this hour for whatever reason but it didn’t stop the show from giving us an update on Vinnie, did it? (Sidebar: Because this is the 1980s, I am now terrified that Vinnie’s illness is AIDS.)
- It was the “Now I sell diet pills that give people strokes. Don’t tell anyone.” that made me a die-hard Kelly fan, just saying.
- I like Kelly so much but have to admit that I’m a bit confused about why the show seems
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 Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.
2 comments
Kind and nice?! I got the impression that Kelly roofied Sheila and manipulated her into spilling her deepest secrets and breaking down in front of an audience. She’s a snake.
I do not think Kelly was suppose to be nice. It looks like she sabotaged Sheila. It is sad Bunny and Tyler are gone, but their story ended. They took the money and left. They were very interesting characters.
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