REVIEW: ‘Physical’ Season 3 Episode 7 — “Borderline”

Last episode, Sheila Ruben (Rose Byrne) took off her mask on Wake Up San Diego. Tired of the “reporting” she’s doing and feeling dejected as Kelly Kilmartin (Zooey Deschanel) lands on every television screen in her review repping the Figure 8 fat-free cookie that was yanked from her, Sheila snaps. But instead of becoming angry, as we’ve seen happen each time Sheila struggles, she becomes vulnerable. And Physical Season 3 Episode 7, “Borderline,” shows that it worked.

Physical Season 3 Episode 7 shows how Sheila is able to rebuild her brand, aiming to build health in her attendants. She wants them to add to their body, not take it away—paraphrased. Covering up the mirrors in her Body by Sheila studio, she looks like she has it all together. She is practicing self-worth and self-love and teaching it to her students. But we know that it’s not all true as Sheila is struggling with her mental health.

In addition to Sheila though, Physical Season 3 Episode 7 also lets John Breem (Paul Sparks) and his wife Maria (Erin Pineda) deal with their own mental health journey in the middle of their close-to-collapsing marriage. By centering them, the series allows their story and marriage to develop dynamically, but within the context of this season specifically, they seem out of place. While I appreciate the way in which we’ve seen the importance of communication and therapy shown through their marriage and directly confronting a contentious lie, it all feels too contained to have an impact on the rest of the story surrounding them.

While John and Maria have a large and intimate front seat in Physical Season 3 Episode 7, Greta also emerges in this episode to be the phenomenal character that she is. Since last season, Greta’s (Dierdre Friel) impact has grown, her empathy has shined, and as a viewer, you root for her endlessly. So much so, that it’s okay to root against Sheila, our show’s protagonist. You understand why Greta is fighting for her worth, but you also understand why she wants to come back to her friend once Sheila realizes what she did wrong.

By the end of the episode, it’s clear how broken Sheila is. I know, I know, some people don’t like using the word broken, but I see so much of myself in Sheila. I see my angry and vicious inner voice, my eating disorder, and my struggle to reach some sort of control in my life. But those things break you as you try to cling to them and Sheila is breaking. As her manifestation of Kelly gets even more intrusive and interrupts her life to the point she yells in front of her daughter Maya, she knows she needs to change. She needs to fix this, and that starts by apologizing for who she was while in the throws of relapsing. Thankfully, Greta is there.

There is melodrama in Physical, but with Season 3 Episode 7, it’s very clear that Sheila’s recovery, struggles to maintain her mental health, and finding out who she is outside of it all is the core of what makes this series work. As we get closer to the end of the series, everything is coming into focus, and I’m rooting for Sheila to get it all together or, at the very least, embrace who she can be outside of fitness. Sheila has been unlikable as a character for the bulk of the series, but there are glimpses of her stress and abject fear that come out from time to time to work as a mirror for those in the audience looking at her. When we dislike Sheila, it’s because we can see those elements of ourselves that we hate.

Physical Season 3 Episode 7 is a stellar feat for the series, paying off the revelation of the last episode by taking into account how dynamic Sheila is as a character and how complex struggling with your mental health is. There is humor in the darkness, with Sheila yelling, “You’re fake” at a very real Kelly Kilmartin dressed as a bunny on a sound stage. But in that humor, the series doesn’t lose its heart or the important takeaway that “getting better” is a constant journey and you can’t do it alone.

Physical Season 3 Episode 7 is streaming now on AppleTV+, with new episodes every Wednesday.