Critic Reviews
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[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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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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It’s through Byrne’s cutting insults and screams buried under her pained smile that Physical truly finds its voice. ... Shelia and her near-constant self-flagellation become Physical’s driving force. It’s a positioning that’s pointedly brilliant.
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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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[Viewers] will get sucked into the story, which after three or four episodes may call out to the viewer the way a bag of free burgers and an empty motel room would to Sheila.
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“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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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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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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The series’ biggest flaw is the amount of storylines that are packed into its 10 episodes. ... In the end, “Physical” is a showcase for Byrne that will have you jumping even if things feel a bit unbalanced.
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But Byrne makes it worth a watch, and once you’re in, it isn’t just nostalgia that keeps you coming back for more.
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An overabundance of plot and characters means that just like one of Sheila’s workouts, it starts to feel fairly exhausting.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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It’s that Physical wants to be so much more, to so many more characters, and it struggles to negotiate the transition between Sheila’s barbed internal world and the lives of everyone else. No one else is as real; no one else has as much agency or space to grow.
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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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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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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.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 10
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Mixed: 3 out of 10
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Negative: 3 out of 10
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Jun 28, 2021