Dhruv Trivedi
The darkly comedic Apple TV+ series ‘Physical’ follows the dutiful housewife turned home workout video celebrity Sheila on her transformative journey as she deals with her eating disorder and the barbs of social judgment. Episode 7 sees not just the self-deprecating leading lady but also some of the other characters deal with deeply personal pains that leave their fates hanging in the balance. Her boorish husband Danny, too, for once, isn’t the most pompous person in the room, and we get to see him in a different light. Unfortunately, Sheila doesn’t as she’s outside in the car, wolfing down packets of crisps and candy bars. Let’s take a closer look at the pivotal ‘Physical’ episode 7 and see where it leaves us. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Physical Episode 7 Recap
The episode opens with Danny delightfully watching his campaign ad on TV. Soon enough, however, a call from the television station informs Sheila that their cheque paying for the air time has been rejected and that she needs to cover the payment as soon as possible so that the ad is not pulled off the air. Swallowing her pride, she calls her friend Tanya, whose husband Jack was friends with Sheila and Danny during their college days and is now a successful writer living in Los Angeles. After convincing her husband, who looks down at LA residents as members of the ignorant bourgeois, they set off to the big city in the hopes of raising more funds.
Upon arriving, Sheila and Danny are taken on an extended and grandiose tour of their old friends’ luxurious new LA mansion. Though Jack and Tanya promise to help with Danny’s campaign as much as they can, the fundraising party they throw doesn’t go as planned. Tanya refuses to ask her snobbish friends for money, and Danny realizes that his fears about the LA crowd were right.
Meanwhile, John Breem celebrates his birthday and seems uncharacteristically tense throughout. Once everyone has gone to bed, the wealthy property developer, still in his bedroom attire, jumps into his swimming pool and, instead of coming up for air, begins to drown. Sheila’s friend Greta also does something surprising when, after playing her husband’s incriminating video in which he can be seen shaving the heads of multiple women, she gets aroused and looks wistfully at the hair trimmer lying in her bathroom.
Physical Episode 7 Ending: Why Does Sheila Go to Her Parents?
Things become too much for Sheila to handle when she runs into an old friend at the failed fundraiser who, it is revealed, was the one that taught her to vomit after meals— a problem Sheila still grapples with. Her friend, on the other hand, loudly proclaims that she is now cured, having gone to therapy and fixed her issues. In a fit of panic, our self-loathing heroine runs to her car, where she wolfs down all the packets of snacks in the glove box before driving to her wealthy parents’ home. The episode closes with Sheila’s mother opening the door to see her daughter standing there after years of not speaking to her.
And so, the tumultuous episode ends with Sheila once again swallowing her pride and reconnecting with her parents. Until now, she had felt confident in saying that she has stopped speaking to them whenever Jerry taunted her about being from a wealthy family. However, the desperate Sheila is now knocking on her parents’ door because she has most likely exhausted all other avenues and desperately needs money for which she is willing to do something she has spent years avoiding.
It’s interesting to note that Sheila might have finally found something that’s even more important to her than her pride — namely, her aerobics video business idea. As Tyler informs her, she needs another $2000 to make more copies of her exercise tapes to sell. According to Sheila’s ledger, she’s flat broke. Combined with the fees needed to air Danny’s campaign ad and the failed fundraiser by her shallow friends, our heroine is left at the mercy of her parents. We aren’t given a clue as to what her dynamic with her parents is like and whether they will welcome her with open arms or turn her away. However, it looks like Sheila is willing to go to great lengths in order to secure the money she needs.
Is John Breem Drowning?
John Breem is mysteriously silent throughout the episode and says little when his concerned wife asks him why he is so. It might be because on the birthday we see him celebrate, he has turned the age at which his father passed away. Or, as he explains to his wife, he could just be stressed out about the outcome of the political campaign (against Danny) that he has a rather large stake in. However, his subsequent fully-clothed dive into his pool cannot be explained by either of those reasons.
Even more bizarre is that it looks like the seaside property developer is drowning. For a man as fit as Breem (Sheila is seen checking out his rear quarters a few episodes ago), it seems unlikely that he doesn’t know how to swim. In the slight chance that the man cannot swim, we have essentially seen him attempting suicide. However, if he does know how to swim, it looks like Breem is having some kind of seizure underwater that is most likely caused by the stress he has been feeling. His fate, too, remains unknown as of now as we last see him unable to come up for air in his pool.
Why Does Greta Watch Her Husband’s Video?
Greta seems to be going through a sexual renaissance as we see her unexpectedly begin to pleasure herself whilst watching her husband’s head-shaving fetish video. Far from the reaction we expected from the paranoid, woefully underconfident woman, she seems to be as interested in her husband’s proclivities as the man himself as she watches the incriminating cassette. It looks like Greta is finally taking control of her body and, tired of waiting around for her husband, is taking matters into her own hands (literally!). We also see her glance suggestively at the hair trimmer in her bathroom after watching the video, hinting at the possibility that she will shave her head.
In keeping with how the motivations of the other major characters are left hanging in limbo, we are not told what has inspired this sudden change in Greta. Specifically, why is she now aroused by the same fetish as her husband? It could be that it is all in a bid to impress him and that she is considering shaving her head only because she hopes it will make him more attracted to her. However, this would be a disappointing outcome, and Greta is possibly taking inspiration from wherever she can get it in order to explore her own sexuality. The inexperienced woman is, therefore, possibly following the first thing that she had at hand, which happened to be her husband’s fetish video.
Read More: Is Physical Based on a True Story?
