Physical Season 3 Episode 7 Review: Like No One’s Watching

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.

As someone very wise once said, it’s the hope that kills you. After a genuinely surprising installment that seemed to set up a high-stakes endgame for the series, Physical Season 3 Episode 7, “Like No One’s Watching,” takes a massive step backward, doubling down on the show’s worst tendencies and essentially undoing its best plot twist. 

Physical’s final season giveth, and Physical’s final season taketh away, I guess.

It’s hard to think of a recent series that’s been as frustratingly uneven as Physical has been. For a show that has such a unique premise and solid cast, the show often struggles to figure out what kind of story it wants to tell, or how it wants viewers to feel about the main character at its center

Last week’s installment ended with Sheila going public with her struggles around disordered eating, a move that signaled real, important growth for her character and a positive step forward in her recovery. Her fractured relationship with Greta seems to have collapsed completely and the pair are deliberately set at odds with one another in the health and fitness space.

Everything seemed as though it was finally building toward something substantial, narratively speaking, as the series’ rocketed toward its end. 

Unfortunately,  “Like No One’s Watching” feels like a colossal step backward. Although it seems as though lots of fans both appreciated and responded to her very public honesty (her workout class is packed), Physical itself doesn’t show us much of how this confession has impacted Sheila herself. Does she feel relieved, to have her darkest secret out in the open? Was it empowering to finally tell the world the truth? Did it make her day-to-day struggle harder? Easier? Somewhere in between?

We don’t know, because, for some reason, the show doesn’t seem to think those key character moments are important enough to tell us about. 

Instead, the series’ focus shifts back toward Sheila’s exes. Granted, at least this week we get to spend a little more time with her new boyfriend Carlos, who wants to meet Maya even though the show could not be telegraphing more clearly that he’s too normal and functional to be her real endgame. (But since the fact that his entire personality appears to be limited to somewhat controversial food opinions — and he’s wrong, Brussels sprouts are disgusting — I’m surprised he lsated this long.)

For reasons that well passeth my understanding, Physical seems to be positioning Breem and Danny as some kind of endgame romantic options for Sheila, because I guess we didn’t get the chance to see how toxic both those relationships are over, say, the previous two seasons of the show. It’s honestly the only explanation I can come up with for why either character is getting so much darn screen time.

To be fair, on a different show, I would probably be super interested in the Breems’ marriage subplot. The idea that Maria — I finally gave up and Googled her name — would have herself artificially inseminated without her husband’s knowledge so that she could have a child and they could stop being treated like something was wrong with them by the rest of their religious community is fascinating and worthy of exploration. I just don’t know why Physical wants to explore that story.

Breem is basically a guy Sheila had an ill-advised sexual relationship with for a while. (And may want to have more sex with in the future, the show’s not super clear on that right now, but Sheila’s subconscious is sure hinting that way.) Physical never tried to portray the two as any sort of love match, or even try particularly hard to give him a personality, which makes the fact that the show can’t seem to let go of the character all the stranger.

Furthermore, Physical can’t seem to decide what it wants from Breem either. Because even as the show has started hinting that Sheila might still want him in some way, it also seems to be asking its audience to genuinely invest in the Breems’ marriage. I’ve no idea how we’re meant to read the scene of them throwing tomatoes if it isn’t healing/forgiveness coded, but to what end? Why is the state of their relationship relevant to Sheila’s journey or the larger story this show is telling? Or, to put it more plainly, who cares?

But, the worst thing about “Like No One’s Watching” is that it basically completely undoes Season 3’s most interesting plot twist. While it’s been uncomfortable to watch Sheila and Greta on opposite sides, the break between them made for exciting storytelling.

It also felt like a natural and understandable conflict — so much of their relationship has involved Sheila either manipulating or bully Greta into doing something for her own ends, and there were certainly moments it felt like their friendship could only work if Greta was willing to be the second tier partner within it. Watching her stand up for herself, finally, has been great.

To be fair, it’s unlikely anyone thought Sheila and Greta would stay moral enemies forever. But I suspect most of us assumed their conflict might last longer than a single episode. The joke’s on us, apparently, because the pair are reteamed by the end of “Like You Mean It,” without ever really digging into any of the issues at the heart of their spat. 

What was the point? Does it really feel like Sheila has learned anything or changed in some significant way? Are she and Greta on more equal footing now? Not really! 

Given that “Like You Mean It” essentially undid almost everything it felt as though the series’ was putting in place for its final run of episodes, it’s hard to know what to expect from its impending end. What does an ending to this story even look like at this point? And with just three episodes left to go, how does Physical ever get there?

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• When Sheila was yelling at Greta about Kelly being fake, all I could see was the lady who went viral for insisting that one of her fellow airplane passengers wasn’t real.
• I’ve said this before, but I feel like it just keeps reaffirmed every week so I have to keep repeating it — as much as I am enjoying Zoey Deschanel here, I have no idea what the point of bringing the character of Kelly onto the show was. At this point, I’d probably have preferred if they just left her as a sort of imaginary friend for Sheila, a projection that never intersected with the “real” woman in this way.
• Danny just continues to be one of television’s absolute worst characters. 

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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