She-Hulk: Attorney at Law – Mean, Green, and Straight Poured Into These Jeans S1 E5

There was a lot to take away from this episode and very little was especially encouraging.

Let’s knock the easy one out of the way first. Jen got sued by Titiania, who trademarked the name She-Hulk.

Jameela Jamil plays an obnoxious, self-absorbed influencer (maybe that’s redundant?) and has begun marketing She-Hulk in a manner Jen never imagined. It’s a fun subplot especially with Jen having to turn to co-worker Mallory Book (Renée Elise Goldsberry) to defend her in court. Goldsberry gives Book a stuffy yet effective personality. Book is one of those characters that’s hard to predict how she’ll act in any given circumstance.

Book is more than capable of shutting down Titania’s lawyer and courtroom theatrics, but there is a damning clip where Jen states she will not answer to the name She-Hulk. This forces Jen to call up her character witnesses — all the dudes she went on dates with from her She-Hulk dating profile. While their testimony is invaluable in winning the case, Book says Jen can definitely do better.

This episode falls back on the series’ tired trope of trashing lame dudes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has existed since 2008 and the main boorish character was a young Tony Stark who wanted “one” when Natasha Romanov showed up to work with him. We haven’t had scene after scene of MCU dudes talking about how trifling women can be and yes, Virginia, some women can be awful people just like dudes.

It comes off as tacky for the hero of She-Hulk to spend time on loser dudes. This would be like Sam and Bucky wasting episodes of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier talking about how tough it is to find a good woman. It drags the show down for no reason.

 

In its initial phase, the MCU wasn’t overflowing with women representation from a superhero perspective. The films also weren’t regularly used for target practice for dudes writing the heroes as avatars for themselves and their real-life experiences. Other bad actors when it came to women were villains, who promptly got beaten down, arrested or killed. It was a safe space for women viewers given the lack of balance with shirtless Chris Evans/Hemsworth/Pratt scenes compared to non-Joss Whedon shot scenes of women.

She-Hulk’s writers are “course-correcting” an issue that didn’t exist in the MCU by bringing in issues women in the real-world face. With a pitiful balance in terms of positive portrayals of guys.

But the bigger problem with this episode is once again the treatment of a decent Marvel Comics villain relegated to a punchline. And we still don’t know why she just randomly burst into the courtroom in the first episode.

Titania is She-Hulk’s arch-rival a la Loki, Killmonger or The Red Skull. She’s not a ditzy influencer played up for laughs. Much like the Wrecking Crew, the series is treating some B+ villains like jokes. It’s getting harder to see how She-Hulk would fit in the MCU outside of the corner of her series without the benefit of the cone of her comedy universe.

Hopefully it will also feature better CGI as this episode’s work looked really soft again.

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The other subplot featured Pug and Nikki. And like last episode, She-Hulk gets another episode stolen by her supporting cast. Pug is a sneaker head and he needs Nikki’s help to get a display pair of Iron Man IIIs.

This is relatable real-life scenario that’s playful without being mean-spirited, so it works. Nikki wants Pugh’s help in getting Jen a better wardrobe so he hooks her up with his guy with an inside track on a stylist, Luke Jacobson (Griffin Matthews), who designs clothing for heroes.

Luke isn’t a complete cliche and embraces the challenge of outfitting Jen. When Jen returns to pick up her new wardrobe, Luke is annoyed one of his assistants left out an outfit for another client and we see Daredevil’s helmet coated in yellow. The series sure does seem to be banking a lot on this Daredevil appearance that probably shouldn’t have been spoiled with this kind of tease.

Last week felt like She-Hulk turned the corner, but this was the crashing back to reality episode with the return of lame dude bashing, weak CGI and terrible treatment of Titania.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Photo Credit: Disney