She-Hulk episode 2 (Disney+)
I don’t like spoilers, and I hate spoiling things for people without their permission. I thought about how I would do an episode-by-episode review of this series without spoiling, and honestly I don’t think I can. But before I dive into spoiler (albeit light) territory, I will say that this episode is a watch – not a must-watch, but a watch nonetheless. There are some points that are important to the story, but if you miss this episode, you shouldn’t be too disoriented for long, but the story flow would be better if you do.
Now, SPOILER Warning (though I’ll try to keep it light).
With the previous episode ending on a high note, it carries on to this episode with She-Hulk being celebrated and her She-Hulk moniker being made official. However, this ends as the story threw a twist that I was not expecting (at least this early). Maybe it is better if you watch that part for full effect.
Long-story short, Jen (remember that is She-Hulk's civilian name) has to deal with major changes in her life, not the least of it being her new-found super-hero powers being publicly revealed. And, yes, they know her civilian name. So far, being a super-powered person sucks for Jen as much as she imagined.
Now, assuming you’ve seen one of the She-Hulk trailers that Disney+ put out, you would already know Jen is involved in some sort of super-hero legal team. This is when it happens. Jen gets an offer from a prestigious law firm to head up a super-powered legal division for the firm – apparently, the first of its kind! She gets to trade in a cramped and dingy office for a corner office with large windows (and a fully-stocked mini-bar!). The catch? She has to come into work and represent her clients as… the She-Hulk. As in, she has to be “hulked out”.
And now she worries about how people are going to think she got the job just because she had super-powers.
Worst still, her first client is someone who tried to kill her cousin, the original Hulk.
As she agonizes over this, she finally decides to do the appropriate thing and give the offending party, her cousin, a call. She basically gushes to her cousin (totally ignoring and overriding him in the process) about it. All the while, he was trying to say that he was cool with it, and even got a nice letter from her client a long time ago, but basically he had let it go. Now this might seem like such a minor point to highlight, apart from the being-polite-and-sensitive part, except for what happens next. Bruce says that he has got to go. Okay, normal. But remember that spaceship from episode 1 that caused the whole issue with Jen? Well, guess who is riding on it now? We see Bruce end his call just as the ship hits warp speed and out of the galaxy (we assume).
Hulk-in-space aside, things seem to be going swimmingly, and Jen accepts her new job as She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. And of course, things happen. If you remember the scene from another Marvel movie where Shang-Chi goes to Macao and through some sort of underground fighting ring, you’ll see that scene connected here.
All I will say here is: Oops!
Overall, I liked the story flow so far, and it felt like a nice episode to watch. Nothing grand in terms of MCU happened, relatively, but it felt like, well, an episode. One thing I did like seeing was the way Jen’s character developed more, and also some of the things she has to deal with in daily life made complicated by her now-public powers. However, I did not like the part where she basically muscled her way through the conversation with her cousin in this episode. I’m not sure if that felt out of character for her yet or if it just felt rude. One would expect that if someone tried to interject that many times that they might have something worth interjecting for. And one would further expect that a reasonably polite party would, at that point, at least pause to see if it would address the current train of thought that they were currently spouting, in an effort to save the efforts of both parties. Maybe, since there are others who seem to think this show is some medium to push a feminist agenda, that the scene was a commentary on how some men override women by “talking over them”, but I don’t think so. It seemed more like a character’s display of insecurity — which I currently can’t tell if it lines up with what I know of Jen so far. Even if it is a case of the former, “fighting” this way (essential fighting fire with fire) is not the way to go; it’s just plain rude and can be combative. I won’t go into how it can be knowingly used as a tactic for aggression, etc. but using it on people who care for you, or simply people who are not showing active signs of aggression towards you, is not cool. I'm not saying that one should always back down, but rather that we should be mindful of each other, especially when interacting with people who care for you – regardless of gender. Okay, all that is really to say that I didn’t like that scene and it bothered me enough to write about it, but I do not know if that is more of a character thing with Jen or if it was something that was shoehorned by the writing team to tick some imaginary box. It did not feel like it fit with what the show has shown of Jen so far. Hopefully it is just a minor bump to what, I feel, is a build-up to a great character.
She-Hulk streams new episodes every Thursday on Disney+.
