She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - Episode 6 Review

Many Funerals and A Wedding

I need to get something off my chest right off the jump here: I really am NOT a huge fan of humor derived out of everyone around the main character being a delusional asshole. It always just makes me cringe. It's just needless douche-baggery for the sake of making the protagonist have to navigate impossible hurdles, inevitably falter and then we all point and laugh. That said, this episode hit me right in the annoying bone fairly hard, but I still had a good time overall.

​In this episode, Jen is invited to be a bridesmaid at a wedding of someone she went to highschool with. She is honored despite the whole thing being awkward since she has barely kept touch with the individual. Meanwhile, Nikki holds down the fort with Mallory in Jen's stead as the two tackle the case of Mr. Immortal, who likes to unalive himself instead of dealing with marital issues. At the wedding, Jen confronts Titania who has weaseled her way into the wedding specifically to mess with Jen, she meets a nice guy named Josh, she dances and drinks a lot, and she experiences a lot of horrible mistreatment at the hands of the bride and bridal party. The episode wraps with Nikki and Mallory discovering a thread called Hulk-King hosted on a terrible hate site where a bunch of people make death threats and dangerous comments about She-Hulk. We get a glimpse that this "Hulkking" person might be more than just an internet troll as scientists prepare something for probably episode 7.

The bride and bridesmaids characters were incredibly hard to deal with for me. I get that everyone hates weddings, like it's one of those "what is the deal with airline food" kind of jokes at this point. I myself have never really had a bad experience at a wedding, but I know plenty of people have, whether it's dealing with a bridezilla or difficult family members or some sort of complication in the event itself. It sucks, truly, but watching someone just get absolute battered back and forth by a wedding party consisting of some of the most grating characters ever committed to the screen does not make for entertainment for me. My biggest issue is that writing like this rarely leaves room for a point, which is ultimately what held this episode down as I'll explain later. When the people you're main character is challenged with are so delusional in their terrible nature, it presents little message at the end of the narrative beyond "avoid bad people," which isn't much of a message at all. I'm not saying all comedy needs to be preachy, but comedy built out of conflict should be able to have more of a resolve than just "hooray, the main character can leave now."

All that whining out of the way, there was a decent bit of clever writing that did revive the wedding segment for me a smidge, as well as the just continued charming performance that is Tatiana Maslany in every single episode. There was one moment where the bride asked Jen how she was doing, to which Jen laid out how great her new career is and having super powers. The bride responds that she doesn't care and meant more does Jen have a boyfriend, to which the answer is "no." The bride immediately jumps on the pity train, Jen says it doesn't bother her, and the bride responds with a backhanded "good, you've got a little bit of time left." While painful, it was the small subtle moments like this that changed the tone just enough to be palatable. Ironically, it's when these moments become more real that there is actually something to be gained from this. Moments like the bride being angry that Jen makes a big, green entrance or the bride chilling out after the wedding is over (and admittedly having a few drinks) ground the whole thing more in reality and honestly provide the message that was needed, which I suppose in this case is don't let people judging you or trying to treat you unfairly dictate how you choose to present yourself. I do think this episode could have been a good moment for Jen to gain more confidence as Jen, and it's possible that the runoff of this episode is still going to provide that, but overall it was a fun episode and felt less chaotic than the prior episode did. I hope we see more of Josh, as I think his teeny bit of screen time was a delight.

As for the "HulkKing" stuff, I do think it is very ballsy of the creators to constantly make their very IRL critics into the in-universe villains.  A few episodes back, they had a bunch of people on the media complaining about "why do we NEED a girl hulk?" and the like. In this episode, we see that the website the HulkKing stuff is posted to has a STRIKING resemblance to reddit, where many and many pitchforks have been strewn about over the past few months. I've honestly avoided talking about it in previous write-ups out of an uneasiness that I just couldn't put my finger on. There was a part of me that worries about shaking up any beehives or invoking the ire of this group of shitty people, but honestly - I say go for it. I'm so very tired of irrationally hate-filled and bigoted fans, that I am fully on board with making them the enemies. Call them out. Make media exclusively against them. I don't mind if someone doesn't like this show, it truly doesn't bother me; but it's naive to think that 100% of that dislike is just casual distaste and then ignore the very clear misogyny and bigotry that does exist in these fandoms. So hoorah, She Hulk Team, you got my vote.

Just a very, very real quick shout-out to the inclusion of Mr. Immortal. Excellent choice. All of the Great Lakes Avengers should make an appearance on this show. They are absolutely perfect for it tonally and making Mr. Immortal into a grifter who fakes his death instead of dealing with marital conflict was just absolutely

Episode 7 of She-Hulk premieres on September 29th. Will we get more Josh? Will we find out who HulkKing is? Will Titania have new veneers? Stay tuned and find out!