For a show about the emerging popularity of step aerobics in the early 1980s that stars one of Hollywood’s most magnetic actresses, the first season of the Apple TV+ series Physical felt like more of a marathon than a refreshing light jog.
While following Sheila Rubin, a wound-too-tight housewife (played by Rose Byrne) who discovers aerobics as a way of combating her fierce personal demons, the show often made the mistake of pulling back too far from the compelling central character who was spinning out of control. Instead, the focus turned on her dopey, yet lovable, husband Danny (Rory Scovel) and his doomed campaign for a seat in local politics. By the end of last season, it felt almost certain that Physical was a one-and-done, a would-be contender that had to be pulled out of the race after a gnarly, nagging side cramp got the best of it.
Turns out that Season 1 was just our warm-up. Now is when the real action begins.
Within five minutes of Physical Season 2, Sheila has defied the malicious inner voice in her head that she remains constantly and cripplingly at war with, that interior monologue daring her to unleash just an ounce of the rage that she keeps simmering inside her at all times.
Sheila tells Danny that she’s sick of all his pseudo-intellectual bullshit. She doesn’t just hate him, but everything that he means to her and that he stands for. Sheila doesn’t care about the California coastline or marriage or politics—she cares about herself. She’s ruthless, needing nothing more than to keep moving up or risk imploding altogether. And if Danny can’t really see his own wife past the fog of his own smarm, she’ll find someone, or everyone, who can.
The genius of Physical has always been its title’s winking double entendre. Yes, it’s a show about Olivia Newton-John-ing your way to the top through light calisthenics, but it’s just as much about the things that we put our bodies through to get there.
For Sheila, a lifelong bulimic and perpetually self-hating housewife, that journey is wrapped up in minute-to-minute thoughts about what she’s putting into her body. Rose Byrne’s fantastic performance in the show’s first season was accompanied by the relentless voiceover of Sheila’s inner thoughts. Although that narrative device was necessary for understanding the character, it left the series feeling like it was all tell and no show. Now that we’ve spent enough time in Sheila’s head, we get the continued satisfaction of seeing her try to prosper by any means necessary in the real world.
To do this, she’s managed to replace one vice with another. In her previous grasp at control, Sheila binged and purged copious amounts of fast food in motel rooms while trying to start her fitness empire, a move that drove her family into debt and nearly sunk her business altogether. Now, she’s ditched the motel room burgers for motel room trysts with the handsome, eccentric developer John Breem (Paul Sparks), her husband’s mortal enemy. Sheila thrives on keeping secrets. They’re how she regulates her own actions, and are a helpful tool for leverage should she ever need it. This new secret is her most powerful and dangerous one yet.
One of the very best things about Physical—that becomes even more clear in its second season—is how feral and accurate of a portrayal it is of pervasive mental illness and compulsive behaviors. It allows for all of the messiness and self-hatred, the relapse and lying, and it lets its characters sit and stew in the calamity and all of its repercussions. But unlike last season, Physical season two reins in all of its narratives back to what should’ve always been the show’s central focus: Sheila, and all of the conniving, deceitful things she’ll do to keep growing her brand.
That brand is rapidly expanding due to the popularity of her self-made fitness tape, “Body by Sheila,” and can’t be run without a little outside help. Enter Greta (Dierdre Friel), a fellow mom at Sheila’s daughter’s daycare who takes on a larger and much more fun role this season as Sheila’s would-be best friend. Friel is our much-needed reminder that Physical is supposed to be a dramedy. She’s stealing scene after scene. All of her choices are so smart, but nothing can be funnier than watching her carry a life-size Body by Sheila cardboard cutout and softly apologize to its dead-eyed smile after she bumps it into something.
Though Greta’s problems are different, she needs just as much validation as Sheila, and the two feed off each other until one of them finally grows tired and asks for too much, causing tightly-kept secrets and feelings to come pouring out.
Writer/creator Annie Weisman digs into the complex heart of their relationship with such loving tenacity that they may be one of the most compelling and gratifying duos in television right now. This is a complicated friendship between two driven women who have done nothing but give their whole lives: to their husbands, to society, to everyone but themselves. The stop-start nature of Sheila and Greta’s toxic friendship has become one of this season’s greatest strengths.
Intersecting their quest for total domination of the cult of health and fitness is Vinnie Green, an uber-buff, semi-closeted instructor who has already managed to turn his well-loved aerobics class into a whole lifestyle brand. Vinnie (played by Murray Bartlett, fresh off his star turn in HBO’s The White Lotus last summer) sees right through Sheila, clocking her the moment she comes to one of his classes as both a potential competitor and prospective partner.
Nothing says “Happy Pride!” quite like the moment where Rose Byrne is invited to smack Bartlett’s ass during class. But Bartlett’s addition to the cast serves a greater purpose than just being sexy and superfluous. Vinnie allows Sheila to glimpse what life could be like if she were to invest full-stop in the business. Later in the season, their relationship culminates in a cathartic dance sequence, where two people who have similar sets of values and traumas make a bid for power on the dance floor.
One of the nagging problems with the Physical’s first season was that, by taking so long to dive deeper into what was driving Sheila’s unstoppable ambition, we had only scratched the surface of her compulsions. Across the second season’s 10 episodes, all of which were provided for press, we finally get the chance to get a little grittier, and a little sweatier. There are real stakes for Sheila now
Rose Byrne is simply sublime (as usual), letting every one of Sheila’s many emotional intricacies read across her face. In a just world, she’d been a shoo-in for an Emmy nomination.
Still, it’s hard to entirely shake the feeling that Physical is one wrong move from twisting an ankle, sending leg warmers and sweatbands flying. While its second season thankfully made the decision to put the focus back toward its main character, it still feels like it’s trying to balance too many ideas at once.
Inevitably, things get lost in the fold. But maybe that’s for the best. What’s a forgotten-about plotline here or there if it can be in service of moving the story along and creating some momentum? By the season’s end, Physical finds itself more energized than ever before, its protagonists galvanized and merciless. It’s just a shame that it took so long to get there.
If Physical had been left at its initial 10-episode run, it would’ve been a mostly unremarkable show that found an audience due to pandemic holdover and a crackling performance from Rose Byrne. But its second season confirms that all it really needed was some extra time to lace up and find its footing. The trick now is getting people to pay attention one more time, to come back to Sheila Rubin for a darkly funny workout of the psyche so they might emerge just as she would want them to: breathless and wanting more.
