She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - Episode 4 Review

Smoother than a vodka yak milk...

For better or worse, the MCU is tonally diverse. There have been serious moments, a la the fight between Tony, Steve and Bucky in Civil War. There have been funny moments, a la the fight between Peter, Bucky and Sam in Civil War. And there have been downright silly moments, a la basically everything that is Thor recently. It's been expected that every movie outing will have some variety of these across a spectrum, with different characters filling in needed tones to bounce things around as the filmmakers see fit. However, with the development of the MCU shows on Disney+, we've seen an interesting trend of each show having a more centralized tone. In recent examples, Ms. Marvel has presented more of the fun, direct comedy, while Moon Knight stuck to a darker, more serious tone.

And then in marches She-Hulk in glittery parachute pants holding a rubber chicken. (This doesn't actually happen in the show, I'm saying it's going for the silly tone...)

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was always going to be a goofier, more humorous show. Whether you knew this from the comics that were being used as source material, or you just paid attention to how the people behind the scenes were constantly saying "this is going to be a goofier show," it was expected basically from day one. While we've seen some of the tongue-in-cheekiness of the show, it had so many details that needed establishing in the first three episodes that it had yet to reach it's full sonic-clap power of silly. Episode 4, titled "Is This Not Real Magic?," finally hits the full tonal stride. The episode is festooned in 4th wall breaks, Wong being out of touch, hammy characters and chuckle-worthy gags. If this be the reservoir of silly, then the Megan Thee Stallion twerk stinger was the dam.

Short episode synopsis time! Wong is mad that a cheap magician named Donny Blaze (yes mhm uh-huh) keeps using things he learned at Kamar-taj to rake in that sweet-3-shows-a-week-at-4-different-venues-for-a-10-person-audience money. So, he's suing him. With the help of their key witness, perma-drunk Madisynn, Jen and Wong take Mr. Blaze to court to middling success. Blaze eventually releases some bat-demon things into the world, Jen and Wong fight them, and then Jen intimidates Blaze into agreeing to their cease and desist, which I don't think the Bar Association would appreciate, but whatever. Also, Jen dates in this episode, finding much more success in her green mommy-dommy form than in normal, attractive, successful lawyer form - a situation that we can only truly blame the internet and possibly Capcom for.

As I said earlier, the show has finally found it's true form. It feels incredibly traditional, as an episodic sitcom should. The humor and irreverence is amped up at this point, as we focus in on Jen moving through different wacky situations with the help of her wacky friends and wacky acquaintances and sometimes just wacky drunk ladies that like froyo. This episode provided more than a few laughs while keeping the pace fairly consistent, moving from scene to scene seamlessly. There was also a nice bit of action, with Wong and Shulky cleansing the Bat-Demon horde, which visually looked incredible, so props to the team for that.

The inclusion of a full action segment is where She-Hulk will truly shine against the backdrop of other sitcoms. Setting a show in a super hero world and featuring a super hero character gives the creators room to do things that other sitcoms can't. Jen as a protag can not only do things that most standard sitcom leads can't do, she can experience things that they can't either. With this in mind, the showrunners and Tatiana Maslany have given us a Jen that isn't phased by much of the Marvel Universe weirdness. She is an incredibly believable citizen of a world, where Gods and Monsters fly around daily. In fact, most of the characters react ho-hummedly to even the most fantastical things being presented around them. This show existing alongside the citizens of the MCU gives it an incredible stage to truly analyze just how strange being a normal person would be. What would life be like and how desensitized would John Q Public be in a world where billions of people were once poofed out of existence by a cosmic Grape Ape?

It's an amazing show so far with a lot of potential to explore a ton of stories there just isn't room for in other MCU titles. As we move into the next story that brings back Jameela Jamil's Titania, I hope we continue to see just as much of the world around these characters as we do the characters themselves.

She-Hulk episode 5 premieres September 15th. See you then.

(Also, when will we get "Wong: Multiverse of Madisynn?" I hope soon.)