She-Hulk: Attorney at law, for the most part, felt like an exercise in delayed gratification. What do I want? I want to see She-Hulk fight supervillains. Throughout the first season’s nine episodes, there was very little action. The eighth episode somewhat made up for this, but it was mostly Daredevil beating people up. This was cool, of course, but it’s not his show.
The show features lawyer Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), cousin of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), also known as the Hulk, irradiated by her cousin’s blood and turned into a Hulk herself. Much like the Marvel comics published about her in the ’80s and ’90s, the show has been aiming for humor. It’s more of a superhero sitcom than an action show.
Though I expected the humorous angle, the lack of action means the show has not been exactly what I expected or wanted. Judging by its 35% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s not what a lot of other fans have wanted either. However, this might not be such a bad thing for the Marvel brand. She-Hulk is different than other Marvel shows — something that is desperately needed in a franchise known for staleness from its uniformity.
Overall, I have enjoyed the Marvel shows released on Disney Plus, but at the same time, there is a lot of of similarity to most of them. All of them have been very PG-13, with bloodless violence and a lack of profanity and sexual content. This comes in stark contrast to the shows that Marvel Television released on Netflix from 2015 to 2019, including Daredevil and Jessica Jones. To be fair, all of those Netflix shows had a uniformity to them as well — graphic violence and sexual content seemed to be a requirement for all of them. But at the same time, Marvel television was releasing teenage dramas like Freeform’s Cloak and Dagger and Hulu’s Runaways, and spy shows like ABC’s Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter. And while these shows would vary in quality, they would also vary in production design, direction and overall aesthetic.
While the Disney Plus Marvel shows vary in genre, they all have the same Marvel cinematic universe, or MCU, feel to them. This is because they were all released after Marvel Studios took over Marvel Television in 2019, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had control over the shows as well as the movies.
No longer would we see experiments like the violent, PTSD-fueled The Punisher, or the trippy, supernatural teen drama Cloak and Dagger, which was also willing to deal with real issues, like police violence and human trafficking. Of course, this also means we’re not likely to a show Inhumans ever again — a rushed, low-budget show where characters barely used their powers, even though their society was built around people having super powers ruling over those without them.
Don’t get me wrong, Wandavision and Loki are very different from the other Disney Plus Marvel shows, but both Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel are relatively light-hearted comedic shows. Despite being a bit more violent, Moon Knight and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are more like action comedies. Much as I loved Moon Knight, I do wonder how much darker it could have been if Netflix had produced it instead.
Ultimately, we would see more variety in our Marvel television if we had more networks or streaming services producing these shows. But seeing as that’s unlikely to happen, She-Hulk is the next best thing. Marvel should have varied interpretations of their many characters, even if it alienates some of the fans, because if they make the same show repeatedly, there’s no reason to watch them all.
While humor has always been important to the MCU, She-Hulk fully embraces being a sitcom. She breaks the fourth wall, she struggles with dating, and she handles wacky legal cases on a regular basis. Half the time when I expect her to get into a fight, the other character just makes jokes instead.
In the sixth episode of the series, She-Hulk finally gave me what I wanted — a fight scene between She-Hulk and Titania (Jameela Jamil), her comic book nemesis. It made me wonder about my own expectations and why I liked this episode so much. Even though I often think I want more variety, ultimately what I want to see is the heroes fighting the villains.
Many fans have also criticized the show’s depiction of Bruce Banner and the Hulk, with some disliking that Jennifer says she controls her anger far more than Bruce does. However, I think it makes sense for the show and the character. Jennifer is echoing the thoughts of lots of real women when she complains of being catcalled, mansplained, and fearing being killed. In addition, this is She-Hulk’s show, it’s a study of her character. The show doesn’t need to do a deep dive into Banner’s identity, it needs to do that with Jennifer.
In the seventh episode, (mild spoilers to follow) She-Hulk goes to a ranch to see Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) who can turn into the monstrous Abomination, but it would violate his parole. I was hoping to see She-Hulk and Abomination fight — after all, what’s the point of having him in the series if they never do? Of course, they don’t, and she doesn’t really fight any of the other wacky super-powered characters at the ranch, even a former enemy.
Instead, she sits down for a therapy session with them. It’s both funny and actually touching. They help her instead of harming her. And even though sometimes the CGI used for She-Hulk looks bizarre and treads on the uncanny valley, she is given a monologue at one point in the episode about her identity that is a great showcase of both Maslany’s acting abilities and of the show’s computer wizardry. She has difficulty coming to grips with her identity as she believes that people only love She-Hulk, and not Jennifer, her human alter ego.
Why exactly are men not interested in Jennifer Walters, but only in She-Hulk? I suppose it could be the novelty of dating a superhero, but realistically it’s weird that so many men want to date the cartoon character but not the beautiful Tatiana Maslany. The various love interests are there to show Jennifer coming to grips with herself, and how she doesn’t think she is good enough for all the attention she is receiving. Whether she will be able to accept both sides of her identity is something that should probably take years, and refreshingly, it’s not something she really solves within the show’s first season.
She-Hulk is by no means a great show, but it’s a decent one. It’s a comedic tale of a woman coming to terms with herself even after a massive change. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea — including mine. But at least it’s different than other Marvel shows, which is something Marvel should strive for.