I wanted to enjoy the current She-Hulk series on Disney+ a lot, boiling down to two reasons:
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Always fun. I really like the character in the comics, esp. in incarnations where there’s humor involved (i.e., starting with John Byrne’s famous run). I wanted something that captured that fun.
- There was a lot of early criticism of the show, far too much of which boiled down to “Powerful female character? Ugh! Gimme more Punisher!” The first episode’s monologue about the problems/risks that women professionals have — a sentiment that every woman professional I’ve talked with about it agreed with — were met with scorn and derision and disbelief from much the same criticizing audience. I wanted this show to be a real hit just to show those yahoos off.
Unfortunately, we’ve ended up with a show that is … okay. Not horrible. Not great. The humor, including the fourth wall bits, feels kind of awkward, with maybe one good laugh an episode. The action sequences are so-so. The CG feels definitely budget. The courtroom bits are mostly more mildly funny humor. The characters are walking bundles of tropes. The storylines are kind of silly and clunky.
As I said to my wife last week, if this were a non-super-hero show, or even a non-MCU show, I would probably have stopped watching by now.
I’m not sure where the problem is. The actors, including star Tatiana Maslany, seem like they should be good. Writing? Directly? Something is just not clicking, leaving me with an amusing, but not uproarious, interesting but not gripping, legal dramedy in spandex.
Worse, at a time when the MCU really needs to be stocking up its bag of heroes for the next Phase, the so-so nature of She-Hulk makes her being part of that action less and less likely.
Here’s hoping they pull something big out of the bag in the last 4 of 9 episodes. If not … well, I don’t regret the time I’ve spent watching it, but I don’t see myself watching it again.