The Call To Action
In the first episode of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, Jennifer is told how amazing she is at her job and how much she enjoys helping others. She’s preparing a speech for a big court case and is well on her way to becoming a district attorney.
Jen and Bruce are cousins, and they go on a road trip together. They get into a car accident, and Bruce and Jen start bleeding out. A strange ship appears, and they end up crashing their car. ..
Jen pulls her cousin to safety, but she cuts her arm in the process. That blood gets inside Jen’s cut, and as a result, she starts to develop superpowers. ..
Jen, a young woman, is running through the forest when she stumbles upon a rest stop. There, she meets a group of women who start to do her makeup and patch her up. When Jen is harassed by a group of men outside the rest stop, she gets angry and turns into She-Hulk. Before She-Hulk can strike, Jen is saved by her cousin who takes her to a secluded cabin. ..
Bruce Banner and Jen are in Mexico, in a beach house lab that Tony Stark actually built him several years back. Bruce explains that during the blip he was working in seclusion here. As Jen takes a look around, Bruce Banner explains how they’re different. Jen then questions Hulk’s smugness calling himself Smart Hulk.
Banner tells Jen she needs to control her Hulk form, explaining that this is a journey that will take time to come to terms with. That is, until Jen turns into She-Hulk and Banner learns that there is no alter-ego inside her, she is just strong… because. Apparently it has all been settled now but she reluctantly agrees to let Bruce teach her. ..
The crux of their conversation centers on Jen being worried she may not be able to transform back into human form. However, the next scene she’s in her human form.
Banner starts teaching her the crucial tactics needed to take this competition seriously, but of course she doesn’t. In fact, this is where we get that montage we saw in the trailer, only this time Banner beats Jen with the boulder throwing and Jen mocks him by growling “men!” repeatedly. ..
Jen and Banner eventually head back to the bar and drink, complete with a whole litany of belches for good measure. Still, Jen refuses to be a superhero and calls Banner a cautionary tale. She doesn’t want to stick around and apparently a jeep can stop Hulk, as he flies backwards and tumbles through some rocks when she puts her foot down on the accelerator. ..
The two Hulks eventually fight, but when Jen breaks the bar, they’re forced to fix it back up again. Eventually Jen decides to go back to her old life, calling Bruce wrong and having never Hulked out since.
Jen stands up in court and prepares to give her closing statement. However, a supervillain called Titania heads in and begins smashing the place up. Jen is forced to transform and save the day – which she does without issue – before nonchalantly turning back into human form and telling the Judge she’s ready to give her closing statement.
The Episode Review
The first is that the writing is often clumsy and awkward. It feels like Walters is trying too hard to be funny and it comes across as forced. There are also moments where the jokes don’t land and the overall tone feels off. The second problem is that the story itself is very slow to develop. It feels like Walters is trying to tell a story that’s going to take a while to come together, but it never does. This makes it difficult to follow along and makes it difficult to care about the characters.
Jen She-Hulk is a powerful and respected superhero, but she’s not the only one in the Marvel Universe. Recently, male characters in the comics have been portrayed as weak and incompetent, with Jen receiving the majority of the focus. This trend has been called out by She-Hulk herself, who says that every single male character is either belittled or made out to be a horrible character – including heroes that aren’t even on screen – in order to make her look better. ..
The women inside the restroom are super caring while the men belittle her outside. Dennis in the courtroom, all the way across to Banner himself – they’re all simply here to elevate Jennifer Walters’ character.
The problem with Jen’s character is that she is essentially a Mary Sue. For those unaware, a Mary Sue is a fictional character portrayed as unrealistically free of weaknesses. Now, this may change later on down the line but so far there have been absolutely no weaknesses shown for Jen, unless you count her impatience and unwillingness to be a superhero as flaws. She may not be stronger than Bruce (given the boulder throwing) but she is better than him in every other sense.
The MCU has done a terrible job with She-Hulk, and it’s a shame because she could have been a great addition to the film franchise. She had bulging muscles and a towering frame, but instead we get Smart Hulk who can shrug off bullets and stop a behemoth rampaging through New York. However, he can’t stop a jeep from driving into him.
There is some promise here and a possibility that the show evolves into portraying Jen’s nonchalance as a flaw, something she needs to get over and become humble, embracing this superhero shtick and respecting male and female alike but based on this first episode, this one gets off to a rather rocky start.
