Summary
“Let’s Get Together” doesn’t bring the story to a close, but it does lead Sheila to an important personal crossroads where she has to make a decision that’ll determine her future.
This recap of Physical season 1, episode 10, “Let’s Get Together”, contains spoilers, as well as a discussion of the Physical Season 1 ending.
It has been a long road for Sheila, both internally and externally. A lifetime of self-loathing and babying a wannabe local politician has taken its toll on her already fragile psyche, and after last week’s penultimate episode showed that there was some light at the end of the tunnel, it’s up to the finale, “Let’s Get Together”, to allow Sheila to reach it. Does it? Well, sort of, but as with everything in this show, things don’t go entirely to plan.
Physical season 1, episode 10 recap
It’s easy to think, given the finale’s opening, that things are all going to be fine. Sheila and Bunny are performing for a crowded mall, and the routine has everyone’s attention, from Danny — looking very sheepish, given the whole affair thing — to Greta and John Breem. The latter shares some telling eye contact with Sheila, having realized in their first meeting something that Danny apparently didn’t notice until right this moment — Sheila is sexy.
I don’t say that for no reason; it’s actually pretty integral to the show. Sheila, remember, hates herself. She thinks she’s fat and disgusting and a loser, and one assumes that she shackled herself to someone like Danny because he pays so little attention to her that he doesn’t notice how much she’s struggling. Sheila’s pain is all internalized, so she doesn’t want her husband to notice it. She wants him to regurgitate empty platitudes in the same way she regurgitates her Drive-Thru binges. That way, she can keep believing she is all the things her internal monologue insists she is.
But she isn’t. The way Danny and Breem look at her while she’s performing tells her that. The fact that some TV mogul named Augie Cartwright immediately offers her, and only her, a production and distribution deal tells her that. Sheila is desirable in a way that she has never allowed herself to think she might be. But that realization comes with some consequences. As Breem rightly points out to her after witnessing her meeting with Augie in the mall, Bunny wasn’t present. She’s the draw. And when she makes the front page of the style section in the Times and all the reporting is about her, Bunny notices too. Something has to give. Can Sheila embrace herself without also abandoning the people who helped her realize who she really was?
Bunny has other problems, too. Just as she’s realizing that Sheila is using her and Tyler, the surfer, who is almost completely deaf at this point, collapses and has a seizure. Later, at the hospital, Bunny’s told he has an infection in his ear and needs monitoring and treatment that’ll far exceed what their insurance is able to cover. Now more than ever, Bunny needs to be included in Sheila’s success. So, she turns up at Sheila’s house on election night while everyone is sat around waiting to see if Danny’s campaigning paid off, and asks Sheila outright about their financial future. Sheila tells her what she wants to hear while her internal monologue confirms everything Bunny’s worried about. She scurries back inside convinced that she and everyone present are, in her words, “big fat losers”. She grabs the tray of cream puffs, one of which a stressed-out Danny shoved in her face earlier, and goes to gobble them all down in the bathroom — where she finds Greta and Ernie having a much better marriage than she is.
Physical season 1, episode 10 ending explained
Danny, blessedly, loses his campaign. And while this somewhat reinforces Sheila’s idea of them all being losers, it’s the best outcome for everyone. The last thing Danny needed was any political power, not to mention how smug he’d be over a big win. The speech that Jerry gives earlier in “Let’s Get Together” during which he cried while reiterating how great Danny was turned my stomach a bit. Naturally, both of them go on a coke binge to help salve the loss.
At the same time, though, Sheila flees to the mall, where John Breem, reeling from the news that his wife is pregnant, is running laps of the stairs. Sheila spots him from afar, he spots her in return and removes his shirt. They both stare at each other from a distance, and at some point and for some reason, both start masturbating. It’s hardly the success for Sheila that has been teased throughout the season. But it is a moment of personal and sexual freedom, the next step on the road to truly finding herself. I suppose it’ll be up to the already-confirmed second season to reveal who that person will be.
