‘She-Hulk’ Is Entertaining But Much Too Heavy-Handed

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show to drop on Disney+ and continues Disney’s ‘girl power’ trend on the streaming service, releasing close on the heels of Ms. Marvel.

While the first episode dropped today, I’ve seen the first four, and found the story of Jen Walters/She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) pretty enjoyable and at times quite funny. I like that, for the most part, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Maslany is a charismatic lead and her Jen Walters is mostly quite likeable and fun to spend time with, especially when she breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience. And while it may seem, at first blush, like Walters is a bit of a ‘Mary Sue’ in the series premiere—where she can do everything the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) had to spend over a decade learning in a day—we quickly learn that her troubles are far from over, and that her super-powers will lead to some setbacks as well.

The next few episodes feature cameos from other familiar faces and a series of somewhat mundane conflicts—looking for work, online dating troubles etc.—and a tiny bit of courtroom comedy. Mostly this all works fine, though four episodes deep I’m more likely to describe it as mildly entertaining than anything. I do appreciate the shorter episodes, as this is definitely the type of show that works better in small chunks.

What I find less appealing is the heavy-handed messaging the show inflicts on viewers. I say this as someone who very much believes in workplace equality and I know that sexism in the workplace (and everywhere) is a real problem that women, especially, face. But there’s something to be said for conveying these issues with a lighter touch.

Long ago, I was in a creative writing class working on a story in which I incorporated a real-life event I had witnessed. When I was younger, we were at zoo and I overheard a frustrated mother say to her young, misbehaving child, “I don’t love you anymore!” It was shocking and terrible, though almost certainly just a reaction from an exhausted and frazzled parent who (one hopes) regretted ever saying it (even if she meant it in that moment).

I incorporated this into a story I was working on and my creative writing instructor told me it was too unbelievable to work in the context of my story. When I told him that it was a true story—at least that bit—he said it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It’s still not believable. People will read it and it will ring false. It wasn’t earned, so to speak, in the narrative I had constructed, whether or not it was based on something that actually happened.

This is how I feel about the portrayal of chauvinism and misogyny in She-Hulk. It’s not that these things don’t exist or aren’t present in the real world. Some of the stuff that happens to the female characters in this show likely has happened to real women in the real world. But the way these moments are littered throughout the show becomes unbelievable and too on-the-nose.

It’s a parade of slimy men, basically, who our protagonist must endure. A workplace colleague at one point notices an attractive woman. “There’s a 10,” he says, referring to this woman on an attractiveness scale. “I’m going to go talk to it.”

It?

Really, She-Hulk writers? Then there are the men who won’t leave Jen alone outside of a bar; the trickle of terrible first-dates with self-centered losers; the one good date that ends up being just as bad in the end; the entitled prick trying to buy Jen and her paralegal drinks at the bar who describes them as “sitting alone” despite the fact that they’re together.

I mean, don’t get me wrong here ladies, I know these men exist. My ex-girlfriend was once told “I hate to see you leave but I love to watch you go” by some middle-aged dude at a bar because some men really do believe that cheesy pickup lines actually work. But it’s like that woman in the park telling her toddler she doesn’t love him. It’s just a little much after a while.

Jen lectures Bruce on ‘anger’ because of all the crappy men who catcall her and mansplain her and says she’s dealt with more anger than he ever has—but this is the friggin’ HULK we’re talking about. She may have put up with more annoying men but he’s a superhero almost definitionally angry all the time, whose rage is both his power and his curse.

The problem with laying it on too thick is that it quickly loses its power. When all your chauvinistic men are so blatantly awful, the story abandons nuance. Instead of making us question inequality in the workplace or the dangers of misogyny, we’re given such outrageous examples that in the end we just feel detached from them. They feel as outlandish and unrealistic as the superheroes themselves. To truly weave this theme into the story in a way that makes viewers actually think or question things She-Hulk’s writers would require a softer, and more clever, touch.

Again, I like Jen Walters as a character and I enjoy her fourth-wall-breaking. The CGI is fine and as the story progresses we get some interesting new conflicts and cameos. I’m definitely interested in where it goes.

But I remain irritated that modern TV writers seem to think that creating a “strong female character” requires her to be constantly contrasted favorably against the men around her, instead of just existing as an interesting character in her own right. Strong male characters are written without this dichotomy in mind. In many ways, I find the whole exercise in crafting strong female characters these days unintentionally sexist in and of itself, or at least unimaginative and predictable.

Yes, of course we were going to play off the absurdity of the name “She-Hulk” and how female superheroes are often strapped with a moniker that’s derivative of a male counterpart. That’s fine! They do a fine job joking around with it here. It just comes atop a pile of unnecessary baggage the show would be better off without.

Finally, I’m not thrilled with how She-Hulk gets her powers. It was a little confusing and abrupt and frankly felt glossed over. But that’s small potatoes in the bigger scheme of things. I also understand why they made her figure out how to control her Hulk side so much quicker than Bruce: They didn’t really have time to spend a decade showing her figuring all of that out, let alone multiple movies to play around with her character. Sure, it felt a bit fast and that lends to the ‘Mary Sue’ analysis, but I think it was more about expediency than anything.

We shall see. I’m not sold on the show yet but I’m not turned off, either. It’s charming enough when it’s not trying too hard to send The Message. Hopefully they continue to focus on ‘case of the week’ style problems and don’t make this yet another epic superhero show about saving the world. You really start to lose the sharp edges when every show and movie has such high stakes.

Have you watched She-Hulk yet? What did you think? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.