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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
17
Mixed:
12
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Jun 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
[Rose Byrne] nails the woman’s painful awareness of her true inner ugliness and poignant desperation, often while maintaining a serene facade. It’s a performance that always looks great yet, somehow, never displays an ounce of vanity. Those are just a few impressive aspects of this year’s most observant new sitcom.
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The PlaylistJun 11, 2021
Season 1 Review:
By probing Sheila’s mental health with care, complexity, and humor, we’re offered a fresh new kind of female antihero, one that isn’t just meant to be a compelling character study, but an engrossing exploration of the ways that American empowerment culture continues to fail us all.
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Jun 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s darkly funny at times but also deals with serious themes in a way that could turn off some viewers. It lacks the universally appealing, feel-good nature of a show like Ted Lasso. ... But it’s also well made, frequently compelling, and features episodes that come in at under 30 minutes.
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The Daily BeastJun 15, 2022
Season 2 Review:
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. ... Its second season confirms that all it really needed was some extra time to lace up and find its footing.
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Jun 17, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Physical” flirts with messiness at times (and has to occasionally rely on coincidences to make things fit together), but it’s built on an intriguing and idiosyncratic overlap of fiefdoms and credos. The show’s smartest decision, other than Byrne’s casting, may be its tendency to evoke rather than spoon-feed.
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Jun 17, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s a rocky first season, as creator Annie Weisman tries to figure out which characters matter, and just how hard to push Sheila’s darkness and unlikability. But “Physical,” whose half-hour episodes are at times crafted with an operatic flair, has plenty of potential. It’s abrasive, but it has a dynamic rhythm and a strong core.
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RogerEbert.comJun 17, 2021
Season 1 Review:
No doubt there will be viewers who balk at Sheila’s vitriolic running monologue; nothing is spared from criticism, and no blow is too low. But for anyone who can identify with obsessive thinking tendencies, even in a much milder form, it’s painfully relatable, refreshingly honest, and more than enough to make Sheila’s journey engaging even if she is decidedly lacking in anything that would traditionally be deemed “likable” qualities.
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Jul 28, 2023
Season 3 Review:
The fact that they didn’t get the time they needed to play out the string in a satisfying manner is sad, but does not ultimately detract from what this was: a tremendous character study set in a time when opportunity for people like Rubin came as a country just began to embrace the drug of money that would eventually eat it from the inside.
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Jun 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The show devotes too much time to developing peripheral characters of unequal interest, while resorting to the stale tactic of Sheila's narration contradicting what actually comes out of her mouth too often, punctuated by those rare moments of candor when she says what's truly on her mind.
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RogerEbert.comAug 2, 2023
Season 3 Review:
It leans into the lore of its previous two seasons, a move that feels a little unearned for a show with around 15 hours to its name. This final season is also disjointed, as if they had to stuff multiple seasons of plot and character development into one last set of episodes.
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Jun 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Physical would be unwatchable misery if it wasn’t for Byrne’s performance. Her Sheila is a mess that’s fraying at her edges. In Byrne’s hands, that jittery exterior gives way to a bellowing sadness and frustration not just at her life gone wrong, but also the state of the world around her.
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Jun 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Rose Byrne is an immensely likable actress playing a character who needs help but is too shallow, too self-consumed and too damaged to know where to look. We get the feeling it’s exhausting to be Sheila. And, unfortunately, it’s exhausting to spend so much time with her.
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Jun 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Physical spends so much time on Danny’s boring campaign that we’re often not rooting for anyone we see on screen. ... The only reason we root for Sheila at all is Byrne, who stokes her character’s desperation while gradually finding the building blocks of her strength, in aerobics class and out of it.
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The GuardianJun 18, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Everyone in the cast does good work with their thinly written characters, who have few redeeming features among them. Not least Byrne, whose commitment makes Sheila credible even in her most vicious or unlikely moments (stealing video equipment from a potential political ally foremost among them). But Physical feels like a wasted opportunity generally.
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Jun 17, 2021
Season 1 Review:
A distinctly flat and unfocused example. Abusing its status as satire, it doesn’t work hard enough either to generate real laughs or to coherently dramatize the serious issues — fulfillment, control, body image, the slow fade of idealism — around which it jury-rigs its story.
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Jun 17, 2021
Jun 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
With this star, setting, and premise, Physical looked from a distance like another surefire success. But just as Sheila Rubin’s picture-perfect exterior conceals a whole lot of pain and suffering, the glitzy packaging of Physical is wrapped around a miserable, frustrating show.
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Jun 16, 2021
Season 1 Review:
If you accept going in that Physical is a dark and tormented character study propelled by an ultra-intense performance from Rose Byrne, there are things to be engaged by. But I’ve rarely seen a show more committed to following storylines I didn’t care about at the expense of its best assets. ... After 10 episodes, I can’t say Physical has inspired me to become that inner voice motivating you to watch.
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Jun 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Byrne’s been handed a lead role but saddled with a rudimentary sketch of a character. Sheila’s pains and compulsions are real and will be relatable to many, but they’re anchored in nothing particular about her. What we see, with unfettered access to Sheila’s inner life, is a person who can’t bear to have a single sincere thought. As a tribute to the ethos of the 1980s, this corrosive irony may in fact be perfectly pitched — but what was unbearable then remains so now.
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