"Physical" and the Demythologizing of Reagan's America
The new series, starring Rose Byrne, ruthlessly excoriates the nostalgia surrounding the 1980s.
Like many of the other original series on Apple TV+, Physical has struggled to gain much critical love. In the consensus of Rotten Tomatoes, not even the powerful, searing performance of Rose Byrne is enough to rescue the series from its unlikable characters and distressing plot choices. Many critics, at least in the United States, couldn’t look past the unpleasant characters and sometimes strange plot.
However, the critics have largely missed two important aspects of this remarkably insightful series. First, they don’t give Rose Byrne nearly enough credit for just how powerful her performance is and how skillfully she shows us the divided mental space that her character Sheila constantly inhabits. Second, and just as importantly, they also gloss over just how effectively Physical laceratingly satirizes not only the 1980s but also those who continue to look back to that era with longing. Given the extent to which that decade has long been mythologized by Republicans--and has increasingly become limned with the same sort of nostalgia that the ‘80s cast on the ‘50s—this criticism is both long overdue and a much-needed corrective.
To start with Byrne’s performance...I’ve always thought she was one of those actresses who had yet to attain material that was worthy of her considerable talents. For the most part, she’s been condemned to lurking on the sidelines, where she always threatens to steal the show (see her performance as a snarky and bitter friend in Bridesmaids). On the other hand, her most recent high-profile performance was as Gloria Steinem in the Hulu series Mrs. America. Unfortunately, Byrne was mostly pushed into the background by the more electrifying and scene-stealing performances of Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly and Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug.
Physical, however, gives her room to shine. As the series begins, she’s the put-upon housewife of Danny Rubin, a history professor who, very shortly after the show begins, is fired and decides to run for office on a leftist platform. While he continues to pursue his political ambitions, Sheila finds a new form of liberation in aerobics, which give her the sense of bodily control and euphoria that both her everyday life and the culture around her have resolutely kept from her. What’s more, she discovers that she’s good at it, and this slowly pulls her away from her family and her husband’s political campaign. Unfortunately, she’s also struggling with bulimia, which is itself of a piece with her deep self-loathing and her inability to fully grapple with a sexual assault that occurred in her youth.
Time and again, we witness the extreme disjunction between Sheila’s inner life and the persona that she presents to the outside world, and it’s here that Byrne’s performance is most extraordinary. While her voiceover drips with absolute contempt—for herself, for the people around her, for her life—her outer self shines with big smiles, chipper tones, and ecstatic joy. We almost buy into the performance that she’s giving for the world, even though we, unlike the people in the drama, don’t have access to her innermost thoughts. She is, quite literally, two different people, as were so many women of the period. This was the beginning of the backlash, after all, when American culture and society strove to push women back into the home and out of the public sphere that they’d gained access to throughout the previous two decades.
Some critics have suggested that the series doesn’t do much to flesh out Sheila’s character, but I find myself wondering if they watched the same series that I did. Aside from Byrne’s knockout performance, the series’ narrative also shows us that Sheila’s disdain for herself, for others, and for her society at large stems from her WASPy upbringing and her parents’ horrifying unwillingness to take her accusations seriously when she tells them that one of her father’s friends sexually assaulted her. Since her parents are the epitome of WASPy repression—she turns against all of that, using Danny and his leftist stance as a means of striking back against the parents who never took her seriously. Just as importantly, her eating disorder is, likewise, the one thing in her life that she feels that she can control, even if it ultimately threatens to bring her life crashing down into ruin.
Though Physical is very much a character study, it’s also an indictment of 1980s America and its exuberantly plastic approach to life, politics, and the social fabric. Reagan always lurks in the background, the bogeyman against which Danny always measures himself (he loves nothing more than expounding on how evil Reagan is and how much he will destroy America). Reagan’s avatar in the narrative is John Breem, a local land magnate (and Mormon) who bankrolls Danny’s opponent for the assembly race. His wealth and power, however, are a mere façade covering over the deep ambivalence and self-loathing that he feels, both for himself and, it’s increasingly suggested, for his faith.
While Sheila is obviously the show’s center of gravity, those on the outskirts of Reagan’s America provide further definition and subtlety to the series’ critique of ‘80s America. Chief among these is Sheila’s friend Greta. Like Sheila, she’s in a bit of an unhappy marriage and, like Sheila, she presents a happy (sometimes too happy) face to the world while hiding her inner hurt and pain. At first, we only see her through Sheila’s eyes, and so she can be a bit cloying, but as the series goes on she shows that she has just as much depth as Sheila. She sees in Sheila something of a kindred spirit, and though her friend at first sees her as nothing more than an encumbrance and a nuisance, the two of them gradually form a friendship that is surprisingly touching and wholesome.
And then there are Tyler and Bunny, the surfer/cinematographer and aerobics instructor who become Sheila’s partners as they attempt to purvey the popularity of Bunny’s routines into a successful video business. Of the two, Bunny is the more interesting character, as it’s revealed that she’s an expat from the Middle East, her frizzy blonde hair and bubbly attitude hiding a deep reservoir of pain and dislocation. However, it has to be said that Lou Taylor Pucci is remarkably good as Tyler, imbuing this stereotype with enough warmth and charisma to make him just about bearable to watch.
As scathingly critical as Physical is regarding the emptiness and misogyny of Reagan-era America, it also doesn’t shy away from showing just how hypocritical its leftists critics were (and are). Danny isn’t a bad guy, necessarily, but he is often exasperatingly dense, absolutely blind to the struggles that his wife is enduring right under his nose. Furthermore, he’s not a terribly adept politician, and he’s far too prone to trying to seduce young coeds and buying into whatever nonsense his campaign manager is whispering in his ear than he is to listen to Sheila who, it turns out, is not only great at getting money out of people (an essential skill for any politician) but actually has a keen eye for strategy. Time and again, Danny and campaign manager Jerry dismiss her out of hand, a habit that only gets more entrenched once her eating disorder and duplicity come to light. However, Sheila ends up getting the last laugh, for her aerobic business takes off while Danny’s election campaign flounders in the face of major opposition from everyone in the area.
Ultimately, Physical is something of a cynical show. While it’s taken pains to show us just how complicated uber-capitalist John Breem’s life is, he’s on-screen for far too little time for him to really land as a character. For the most part, he seems to exist as a counterweight to the nutty lefties and to give Sheila the business advice that no one else in her orbit can. Ultimately, Sheila seems to decide that the pie-in-the-sky dreams espoused by her husband and his army of starry-eyed admirers are just that: dreams that will never see fulfillment, especially not after Danny loses his election. Instead, she turns to the very things that Danny has been fighting against—particularly the local mall—to push her brand identity and her success.
Thus, while Physical urges us to see the 1980s as an era full of plastic people, toxic masculinity, and rampant greed and hypocrisy, it also shows that there was (and is?) no escape from this cycle. Ultimately, the only thing that she can do is to make use of the systems that are already in place, and the season is bookended by scenes of her success. What remains unclear is just how much she’s been willing to sacrifice in order to attain it. However, given how unfulfilling and sometimes downright traumatic her life has been, and how often she has sacrificed her own happiness for others, it may well be that we in the audience will cheer for her, no matter what she has to do to attain success and keep it.