Physical Season 3 Episode 10 Review: Like a Prayer

Much as we’ve seen throughout its third season, Physical Season 3 Episode 10, “Like a Prayer,” brings the series to an end with a conclusion that feels awfully rushed and convenient, as though the show was pushing to get a particular point rather than fully illustrating how its characters got to their various endings. 

At this point, we probably shouldn’t be that surprised. Much of the past two episodes have been concerned with revisiting old relationships without ever truly exploring the fallout from those conversations. And it turns out the finale is no different, using a time jump to simply tell us about Sheila’s growth rather than showing us most of it. 

After last week’s Danny and Sheila-focused hour, the Physical series finale inexplicably skips forward three years into the future, which is fine, save for the fact that the time jump means the show is no longer obligated to deal with the immediate fallout of Sheila and Danny’s hookup, her makeout session with John Breem, or pretty much anything else we happened to witness this season. (What happened to her inner Kelly monologue? Who can say!)

Sheila and Greta’s female-focused Strength in Numbers business is wildly successful, with franchises opening all around the country and helping women start their own community-based businesses.

Sheila’s traveling constantly. Greta’s teaching a class herself now and seems happier than we’ve ever seen her, even as she gleefully uses the company’s legal division to squash copycats and shut down businesses that veer too close to the Strength in Numbers business model.

And they’ve launched a foundation aiming to distribute grants to those attempting to do good, healthful things in the world, one of which is (somehow??) Sheila’s ex Danny, now hosting an environmental podcast and married to Sheila’s former assistant, who’s pregnant. 

The most frustrating part of all this is, of course, that it’s a whole lot of showing without telling. Both Sheila and Greta seem to have undergone some fairly radical and necessary emotional growth, and even Danny seems more settled and centered than he used to be. But Physical basically glosses over how exactly that happened and simply wants viewers to take it all as fact. 

What happened to Sheila and Danny after they hooked up? How did Greta resolve her problems with Ernie? When did she start taking up teaching aerobics herself? Who knows!

Dierdre Friel in “Physical” Season 3 Episode 10 (Photo: Apple TV+)

Sheila’s success doesn’t seem to have made her all that happy, though. She has a beautiful house with a killer view, and a warm relationship with her daughter, and even she and Danny seem generally friendly toward one another. Yet, she’s clearly not happy, heading home alone to have imaginary dinners with a hallucination of John Breem. 

(This would probably be more impactful if the show ever had really given that relationship any layers beyond sex and ambition, but oh well! This imaginary Breem doesn’t seem to have a ton in common with the real version anyway if you ask me.)

At least the final season gave me the one thing I truly wanted in this episode — at last!! — the return of Tyler and Bunny. The revelation that Tyler’s been essentially stalking Sheila because he blames her for his breakup with Bunny, who’s left him to head to Mexico to allegedly “get revenge” on Sheila for the fact that Strength By Numbers had her studio shut down. 

Sheila, displaying a very bizarre idea of growth, convinces Greta that she also needs to head to Mexico, because apparently she can’t bear the thought of Bunny tracking down and, I guess, maybe sleeping with Breem? (In case you forgot, Mexico is the location of his family’s vaguely cult-like compound.)

This is straight-up disturbing, but Physical seems generally uninterested in looking too closely at Sheila’s decision here or questioning why a woman this far along in recovery would head to a different country to make sure the married man she once had an affair with doesn’t have another affair with a woman she once wronged??

Get thee back to therapy, Sheila. 

To be fair, the idea of bringing Sheila’s story full circle in this way makes sense.

She’s never properly atoned for what she did to Bunny, she’s never really even apologized for the way she treated her or the fact that she basically owes her success to the fact that she ripped off her ideas. (I mean, Sheila’s essentially ruined Bunny’s life twice, since it was her legal team that got Bunny’s rip-off Strength in Numbers studio closed and the show doesn’t even really let her be mad about it. Why!!)  

Granted “Like a  Prayer” treats this big moment more like an afterschool special than a real confrontation, barely even giving Bunn anything to do besides immediately forgive her former partner and spout some nonsense about how aerobics is basically just something people (women?? fitness lovers? I’m not sure) pass on to each other because they love it that much. 

The final scene of Sheila penitently joining Bunny’s Mexico fitness class to work out alongside the woman whose husband she’s still obsessed with is not particularly how *I* wanted to see this show end and doesn’t strike me as an especially empowering image, though Physical certainly tries to play it as one.

At this point, it’s hard to argue that Physical deserved a fourth season, but this rushed ending makes it clear that so many things — Sheila and Danny’s relationship, her feelings for Breem, her realization that she really did succeed because she never gave Bunny the credit she deserved — needed more time to percolate and play out onscreen. 

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• As much as I don’t love the choices Season 3 made at a lot of points, Rose Byrne’s performance has been incredible throughout, and I don’t know that I’ve said that enough. She’s amazing. 
• I’m just telling myself that Tyler eventually follows Bunny to Mexico and they work it all out in the end.
• While I’m thrilled to see how successful Greta has become, it truly feels like this season utterly wasted Diedre Friel. 
• What on earth was the point of casting Zoey Deschanel? We never find out what happened to Kelly, how Sheila stopped seeing her as her inner critic, or anything.
• I don’t particularly wish this character well, and his relationship with Sheila was toxic, but the fact that Danny ends up with Sheila’s assistant is pretty gross. (Also glad to see his friend Jerry is still the worst!)

What did you think of the series finale of Physical? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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All three seasons of Physical are now streaming on Apple TV+.

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