In "Physical" on Apple TV+, Sheila, a housewife breaks a sweat and hustles for a better future
In "Physical" on Apple TV+, Sheila, a housewife breaks a sweat and hustles for a better future
Socialist Flower Power and Capitalist Reaganomic ideologies clash in 80s California, serving as the perfect backdrop for Sheila's self-reckoning and journey to the home video entertainment market
Fact: It’s a basic human desire to want to be seen. Second to that is wanting to be heard.
Also fact: Being “seen” is nuanced - We say we want it, but to be truly seen means we need to be at relative peace with our faults, our superficial ones and our deeper ones.
We can at times feel unworthy and focus on our faults more than we should.
Enter Sheila (Rose Byrne) - queen of self hatred and self harm. Sheila is a WASP and if you don’t know what this means, there’s a good chance you’re not Jewish or you’re not an “other” who is not a WASP. At any rate, Sheila, who is beautiful, brilliant, and ice cold on the surface, and from a well-to-do San Diego family went to the UC Berkeley where she met idealist Hippie, Danny Rubin (Rory Scovel) and they fell in love.
Danny, always political, was a big deal on campus (his popularity has waned since) but you also get the impression that Sheila was no wilting flower. In an episode mid way into the season, at a social engagement, an old professor comes up to Sheila and inquires as to what Sheila is doing with her career. Disappointed that Sheila has taken a back seat to her husband’s career, the professor comments about how she [Sheila] was the one who was going to go places, not Danny.
We derive from this interaction but mostly thru Sheila’s interactions with Danny, that she is very much the visionary and holds the cards in the relationship. She’s the one that encourages him to run for office and to “go green” but also encourage “smart development” in the very Reagan leaning San Diego.
What Danny doesn’t see and to be fair Sheila goes to every effort to hide is that she is a bulimic. Her bulimia is connected to a childhood trauma in which she was molested by her father’s friend. It’s pretty clear that her parents likely tsk-tsked all this which is why Sheila probably ended up with Danny, who, while he’s become an annoying husband (cheating on her, belitting her, and suggesting menage-a-trois, etc.), we can also see that at one point, he was probably the sensitive guy who she could be vulnerable with. Together, they unleashed their hatred at “the establishment” towards Sheila’s callous and crappy parents.
Part of Sheila’s ritual behaviour associated with her bulimia is going to a San Diego fast food restaurant drive thru and ordering a lot of food and then renting a hotel room where she undresses, and then lines up the food on the bed and goes to town.
Afterwards, the camera pans to the bathroom where her face is red (she’s post-vomiting) and she’s standing in her underwear staring at herself in the mirror. This release allows Sheila to move on. But what’s interesting is that it’s also a moment in time where Sheila is forced to look at herself. Of course she experiences disgust - it’s a visceral reaction to the events that have just occurred. Not just the eating, but the guilt and the lying.
What often acts at the catalyst for these binges are the moments where Sheila’s stress increases. She thinks she’ll get “caught” draining the family’s finances to bank her bulimia or her new obsession with aerobics and does everything she can to conceal both - aerobics and the bulimia - from everyone she knows.
The entire season runs 10 episodes and without giving away too much, the season doesn’t unfold based on what you’d expect after watching the first episode.
While the focuses to large extent on Sheila, playing the role of wife, friend, daughter and [barely] mother, it pivots to Sheila’s desire to pursue a path for her life that directly contradicts all the tropes by which she, as a woman is expected to confirm to. The biggest one of all perhaps being that of “the selfless giver” - the one who gives of herself to the point of self-neglect, pushing her feelings down (in Sheila’s case eating them and then literally throwing them up) because she is deemed unworthy of taking up space or being seen or heard by a society that doesn’t value woman in the way it values men.
In the end, Sheila comes to the conclusion that there are winners and losers. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to dislike about Sheila as you will see in the show, but there’s equally a lot to dislike about Danny, and about Jerry, his campaign manager. We’re not really supposed to like anyone here (except for maybe Sheila’s friend, Greta and surfer videographer Tyler) which might make the watching difficult but hey, it’s not supposed to be easy.
Physical was picked up for a second season so be sure to watch the first season. All episodes now available for streaming on Apple TV+.