Jen Walters vs Matthew Murdock…

Episode 8 is a blast. There are a bunch of reasons it works and in seeing them on screen I cannot understand how we ended up with such a slack mid-season.

Regardless, this episode is well structured, tightly written and, most importantly, centres Jennifer Walters in almost every part of the story. What crossovers we have (and they’re great) don’t detract or outshine. They are there to serve putting Jen centre stage and I loved it.

More than a funny, exciting story we have something deeper (at last). Instead of presenting hot button issues then undermining them with a world and structure that tells an entirely different message, this episode puts a number of challenges faced by someone like Jen onto the screen and then deals with them.

We have creepy, powerful men who don’t understand (and refuse to see the truth without getting angry). We have the very definition of what it means to be a generous friend and a respectful partner. We have the need to present a certain way and the perils of failing to conform when that pressure is very much there.

We also have Jen getting to do what she’s good at without coming off as embarrassed or it being squeezed in. As with all of She-Hulk’s best moments this is because it feels like everything here is happening naturally.

And, most of all, none of it’s cruel and demeaning.

I’ll leave you to discover the episode’s delights for yourself, but I do want to talk about one key scene – which happens right at the end.

It concerns the humiliation of successful and/or powerful women by men. It’s a brilliant piece of writing because it makes it clear that whatever happens, once a woman is being humiliated by a man she is going to lose because the only time one could have stopped the damage from happening was before the incident starts.

Once someone is being humiliated they cannot win. They either absorb the humiliation before their peers and are diminished because of it or they react with anger and are rejected because of it.

Jennifer Walters is put in this impossible position and she cannot win. I raged on her behalf, not least because as a POC I have faced exactly this situation of public humiliation for daring to be me.

What the show didn’t do (and what it’s been guilty of elsewhere) is undermine this experience. Nor did it belittle it or move on without commenting.

We see the reactions of her peers, the fear, the rejection and the immediate move to control someone who was only a pet to them. What the powerful and those who are lucky enough not to have experienced this kind of treatment don’t understand is there is nothing we can do that would help us ‘win’. Whatever we do the humiliation has its desired effect – to destroy our credibility and the careful house of cards we’ve wrought for ourselves in spite and despite of the constraints all around.

Quite why it took 8 episodes to get to this kind of representation (which although the issue is deadly serious isn’t morbid or overwhelming in its presentation) I don’t know and with at least 6 of the preceding episodes undermining that message it was with real relief we got to the end here and finally there’s something to celebrate.

Verdict: There’s more here to love and respect than an authentic expression of the experience of humiliation – but that’s to enter spoiler territory and you really want to watch this without someone telling you what happens.

Rating? 8 tadpoles out of 10.

Stewart Hotston