She-Hulk has to prove she owns her own name.

She-Hulk remains funny. Tatiana Maslany is fantastic. Almost everything else about it doesn’t work for me.

This week epitomises what I’m struggling with. We have an interesting premise both in She-Hulk – a lawyer who is also a superhero (just like Daredevil). We have a self-aware protagonist who also happens to be self-conscious. We have acres of space in a nine part show to explore how a competent but otherwise ordinary person might come to terms with a change in how she presents to the world.

What we get is a subpar legal procedural which is focused on what Hollywood thinks are ‘women’s issues’. I say this guardedly because I’m not dismissing the challenges and struggles being portrayed here but to quote my teenage daughter, “they have all these serious issues and they undermine them in the way they’re presented”.

We have a main character who is supposed to be an incredible lawyer who makes the most rookie mistakes (like attempting to represent herself), doesn’t do basic groundwork, uses incriminating witness evidence instead of the reams of documentary evidence at her disposal and, worse still, doesn’t let her legal team actually do their job but interferes at every stage.

We have issues that male MCU characters do not have to wrestle with. By this I don’t mean sexism – rather, I mean that this episode is half about conforming to gender stereotypes and the other half is about whether someone else can use her name to sell beauty products.

No one has ever asked whether Bruce Banner in torn pants is a good look, but we’ve had several episodes taking pot shots at She-Hulk’s appearance. This is structural sexism written to look as if it’s addressing sexism when all it’s doing is perpetuating that very societal prejudice. When people start making ad hominem comments about Stephen Strange’s appearance as part of the plot then I’ll be more prepared to accept this approach to one of the MCU’s favourite characters. I mean, what will actually happen is I’ll critique that as unacceptable too but at least the treatment of the two characters will be equal at that point.

She-Hulk should have been fun but instead we’ve got a deeply problematic show that is, in its ‘issuewashing’ approach to the character ends up presenting what, at first sight, are interesting issues to talk through but are really serving an agenda that focuses on forcing She-Hulk to conform to gender stereotypes around beauty and capability.

We had a massive opportunity to have a legal show where Jennifer Walters was super smart, brilliant and capable. She could have been assertive, forthright and kick ass. Instead we have a character who has spent more time worrying about whether men like her or her alter ego or whether she needs new clothes rather than doing anything with her brain.

In other words I don’t feel I know anything about the character of Jennifer Walters but I know a lot about how the MCU want us to think about She-Hulk’s role in the MCU and in her work.

There’s even a line, ‘in fashion it’s cool to be mean’ which is used as justification for nasty behaviour – with no challenge but a whimper and then a nod of acceptance. She-Hulk could make it really clear that being treated like her worth depends on how she appears is unacceptable. I mean, she could literally destroy the idiots behaving like that but what we get is nothing. Instead she rolls over.

She also rolls over for an abusive man (actually several men). Their behaviour mocked but, ultimately, completely accepted and hence condoned.

Into this come the infuriating comments about issues that are, frankly, the problems of White middle class women in the US. Now, Jen is exactly that but these are presented as self-evident truths that trump any and all other commentary.

Intersectionalism is ignored and as a result the commentary about these issues (such as the unquestionable important women’s right to be safe) are both trivialised and presented as ubiquitous unassailable truths over against other people’s experiences of the world.

Matt Murdock at least gets to wrestle with the challenge of being a lawyer against the temptation to be a vigilante, of how violence corrodes our souls and whether being a hero destroys your relationships. Jennifer gets the struggle of finding a suit that makes her look fashionable and less like Shrek or a hag (to quote the show).

Ironic perhaps that the message of Shrek was that it doesn’t matter what you look like because competence, compassion and morality have nothing to do with beauty.

Verdict: I get the show is trying to be light-hearted. In its attempt to be fun and bright it has chosen to condone unacceptably poor male behaviour, demand its female protagonist find her worth in how she looks and rendered her brilliance as nothing more than something to be discarded.

None of this had to be the case but here we are.

Rating? 4 suits out of 10.

Stewart Hotston