REVIEW: Physical Season 3 Episode 4 — “Like a Rocket”

Physical Season 3 Episode 4, “Like a Rocket,” surrounds Sheila with the industry she has desperately wanted to be a part of, only the results are disastrous. Last episode ended with Sheila finally deciding what she likes of her own accord—and at this point in her life, it’s a produce vendor named Carlos she met at a restaurant. Now, she’s at a fitness trade show and in the big leagues selling her fat-free cookies, Figure 8. With Greta (Dierdre Friel) by her side, day one of the event goes well but then Kelly Kilmartin (Zooey Deschanel) comes into Sheila’s life in a real way and not as a figment of her vicious internal voices. When the two spend a night drinking, everything goes downhill.

Rose Byrne‘s performance as Sheila Ruben is one that deserves as much applause as possible thanks to her ability to oscillate between a vulnerable stifled woman in a male society and narcissistic competitors in the business world. When she’s mean, she’s absolutely mean, but when she’s vulnerable, you can’t help but root for her. While the first two seasons of Physical were a quick move between the two versions of Sheila, Physical Season 3, thus far, has been about a woman who mostly knows who she is but is still struggling to stay on the right side of her destructive habits.

Over the course of this season, Sheila has been invested in her recovery. She’s been trying her best to calm the voice in her head that has taken the shape of Kelly Kilmartin and has avoided a binge more than once. But in Physical Season 3 Episode 4, she finally breaks. Surrounded by the fitness industry she’s worked to be a part of, albeit put into a corner of the floor, Sheila has to grapple with her place in it all. Whether it’s direct comparisons with Kelly or realizing that the fat-free cookies aren’t truly the workout elements that bring her joy, she breaks.

One of the expert things that Physical Season 3 Episode 4 does is highlight the environmental triggers at play in Sheila’s relapse. The series itself is hilarious, and there is no denying that. The back half of the episode is focused on an incoming spiral, and while it’s underpinned with comedy, anyone who has been on the edge of a relapse can feel everything building.

Not to mention that the episode puts Sheila on inherently uneven footing as she bounces between the real Kelly and her whispering voice and the one in her mind with a Southern twang. While the differentiation is simple, it’s stellar. The more drunk that Sheila gets on her girl’s night with Kelly, the closer she gets to collapsing as she shares her darkest secrets.

The breaking of Sheila Ruben is a rough watch, and it closes out the episode. Her recovery was hard fought but by being in the fitness industry, she’s put herself up against environmental triggers with her bulimia just waiting to take the shot. It’s a development that is handled without beating the audience over the head. Instead of Sheila delivering a grand monologue on why shapewear and the space dedicated to women at the fitness show are both sexist and dangerous, she just pushes back against a fashion show on a personal level. She tells Kelly intimate moments about her intentions, and then finally, we get to see the emotional impact it has on her.

Physical Season 3 Episode 4 is a lot to take in, but not at first. The entire episode feels like an avalanche picking up speed as it rolls toward the credits. With expert pacing and an even better and more intimate look at eating disorder relapses and the factors involved, “Like a Rocket” delivers a gut punch in the season that picks up the pacing that leaves the end of Sheila’s story as the final season moves forward even more in limbo than before.

Physical Season 3 Episode 4 is streaming now, exclusively on AppleTV+ with new episodes every Wednesday.