Well, that was weak. Last night's new She-Hulk: Attorney at Law aimed for the tone of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, baffling many people who tried to approach the episode as an honest piece of the MCU. The first episode not to be written by Jessica Gao, "The People vs. Emil Blonsky" was written by Jacqueline Gailes and Francesca Gailes, whose previous credits include working as assistants on Punky Brewster (the reboot) and The Tick (the new live action one). Going for the gusto, eh, Disney? Francesca Gailes has two actual writing credits, though, having written a short film called Awake and six episodes of a series called The Enemy: The N in Me, examining the internalised racism of a young black man. Just the kind of expertise that completely did not come in handy for last night's She-Hulk.
I did kind of like the appearance of Megan Thee Stallion and her song included on the show. But She-Hulk twerking at the end managed to make the event about as corny as a celebrity appearance on the old Scooby-Doo cartoon.
Despite last week setting up the complications inherent in Emil Blonsky's original arrest, this episode instead focused on a parole hearing for Blonsky. According to Gao, she originally intended the show to feature a more in-depth trial of Blonsky but this had to be abandoned when she realised no-one in the writer's room knew anything about writing courtroom drama. So they made do, writing what they know, which is apparently cheap sitcom jokes. This results in a b plot about the broadly comedic misogynist DA falling for a shapeshifter pretending to be Megan Thee Stallion.
This isn't dissimilar to the fundamental problems of Thor: Love and Thunder. The jokey tone of the writing seems to put everything in a different reality. I mean, if people act like this in serious situations, and supporting characters are two dimensional punch lines, is there any sensible difference between the "real" world and Wanda's fantasy sitcom realm?
Oh. What if we're going to find out everything in the MCU after Multiverse of Madness occurs in Wanda's sitcom reality? That would almost make it worth it.
We get a little action sequence in which Jennifer fights off the Wrecking Crew, some thugs with Asgardian construction tools. It relies on a lot of close-ups in dim lighting to be passable. I can understand, with the low budget, it's hard to make this work with a cgi main character fighting real actors. But I've been watching season three of Daredevil lately in which the action sequences are as amazing as, if not better than, the stuff in Shang-Chi. And I'm forced to realise how different our expectations are for the MCU now. In any case, I still wouldn't say, as some people do, that feminism is the show's problem. Maybe feminism's problem is this show.
She-Hulk is available on Disney+.
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