What comes after the pop-culture girlboss?

PHYSICAL, A NEW BLACK-COMEDY SERIES FROM Apple TV+, chronicles the rise of a ’60s radical turned ’80s workout-video queen. Played with gritted-teeth intensity by Rose Byrne, Sheila Rubin is a frustrated San Diego housewife with a Berkeley degree, a young daughter, an eating disorder and a relentlessly critical inner monologue. When her husband Danny (Rory Scovel), a philandering hippie academic, loses his job and proposes that they use their savings to fund a state assembly campaign, she panics—because she has already spent it all on her elaborate binge-and-purge rituals.

Instead of coming clean, Sheila discovers aerobics. And the deeper she gets into exercise, the less miserable she seems. This sounds like a redemption arc. It might well have formed the basis for one half a decade is the story of an unhappy woman who finds her calling. But it’s also the story of a spiteful person who cheats, steals and worse to achieve selfish ends.