Jen – not She-Hulk – is invited to a wedding…

We’re at the end of episode 6. A normal MCU TV series would have ended by now. We would have had a full story line in which things happened, characters changed and we saw some kind of character development.

With another three episodes to go we have, as yet, seen not a single bit of any of the above. It feels like a massive wasted opportunity which could have given She-Hulk centre stage within the MCU.

Instead, we’ve got a half-assed sitcom that doesn’t know if it wants to have an adventure of the week or if it wants to talk about ‘girl power’ or even if it can be bothered to turn up at all for its central protagonist.

For example I use the phrase ‘girl power’ above to precisely call back to the 1990s when lads mags showed undressed women on their front covers while the Spice Girls presented a kind of reckless and fun image of what it meant to give up their voices as women for the sake of popularity. We could say that their having any voices at all was a good thing but feminism has a long history and it most certainly does not have much to do with ‘If you wanna be my lover’.

I’m not aiming to be puritanical here. I’m trying to say that presenting surface level details as ‘progressive’ while then utterly undermining them with the meta narrative and world being presented is not just poor form but, for me at least, rage inducing.

So this episode is dire in almost every respect.

We have a fight between two women because one of them wants more attention. The fight ends when one of them slips on an ice cube and breaks their teeth so when she stands up people laugh at her appearance.

Let that sink in. Apparently, appearance equals worth for our female superheroes.

Once again we have a premise that could have been interesting and subversive. We could have had the ‘women’s issue’ of going to wedding alone in a judgemental and sexist culture addressed and challenged. Instead we get jokes about what people are wearing, how they look and who is supposed to do the hard work (all while ignoring the legions of people actually doing the work). It felt, at moments, like the absolute worst elements of Sex in the City and the movie Eat, Pray, Love had been put on a sheet and then checked off one by one.

Entitled people supposedly looked down upon because they’re asked to do ordinary work. Check.

Appearance being the arbiter of female value. Check.

Worth as a human defined by being in a relationship. Check.

At one point Jen Walters protests she’s fine being single, happy even, but then spends significant time trying to get it together with a stranger. I don’t care about her desires – what someone wants is entirely up to them and strictly none of my business. However, for a show that wants us to celebrate female liberation and independence to then spend so much energy lamenting over failed attempts to find a partner? It feels like another bait and switch where the show pretends to be progressive only to swap the issue out for a standard fantasy about women only being happy when in a relationship with a man.

I also wanted to ask if they knew that one scene following another generally implies something called continuity?

There are two moments of joy in this episode. The first is when Jen is dancing and clearly having a moment of pure happiness. I wanted an entire episode of this.

The other is in the whole other plotline involving a complete manbaby called Mr Immortal who will literally jump out of a window rather than have a difficult conversation. It was funny and refreshing. Although the plot around Mr Immortal is ostensibly about a legal case, no part of this episode had bothered to even look up the dictionary definition of ‘law’ let alone consider what that might mean for a firm of lawyers and their adventures in practising law…

Is there any plot? As is usual for a sitcom, the show returns its characters right back to where they started at the end. We have one moment where we see an ominous needle replaced with a thicker one and that’s it for plot. Even here it’s thick as hardened mud. If you can’t pierce something with a fine point, replacing that fine point with an item that has a larger surface area? Um, that noise you’re hearing? It’s physics calling, it wants to talk you through the basics about pressure and forces.

Verdict: I just don’t know what to do with this show. This episode was dire. Not just in relation to the amazing opening episode but also on its own merits.

Rating? 3 buck teeth out of 10.

Stewart Hotston