Greetings and bienvenue, all.
In this installment of my Telly Talk Today series, I’ll be reviewing She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Episode 6, “Just Jen.”
First things first, though.
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With that in mind and without further ado, as follows is my review of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s sixth episode, “Just Jen.”
*BE WARNED: MILD TO MEDIUM SPOILERS FOLLOW*
• SUMMARY •
Jen gets a glittery and over-the-top invitation to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of an old high-school friend named Lulu. Nikki tells her to wear Luke Jacobson’s super suit to the event, but Jen insists on wearing a more normal dress that Jacobson made for her.
Jen goes to the wedding as She-Hulk and quickly takes all of the spotlight. Lulu, however, quickly tells She-Hulk that she wants “just Jen” at the event, not She-Hulk (because She-Hulk will take everyone’s attention away from her).
Meanwhile, Mallory Book meets a new client named Craig Hollis—Mister Immortal—who is being sued by eight ex-spouses. He has the power to revive every time that he dies, and he has abused this power to “kill” himself and exit all eight prior marriages and change his living identity after each spouse offended him or just lost his interest. His ex-spouses have all recently discovered his antics and are suing him. While he argues that he’s not a bad guy and felt that simply dying to end his marriages would be better for his spouses than divorce proceedings, Nikki and Mallory take him to task over how the grief of a spouse after his death would be worse. To end their arguing against him, he jumps out of Mallory’s window, falling to his death on a car several stories below. Nikki and Mallory then witness him recover and walk away from the car.
At the wedding, Jen watches as Titania arrives, having seemingly been invited by a friend. Jen believes that Titania is there for no reason but to antagonize her, but Titania makes nice with Lulu before haughtily telling Jen that not everything is about her.
Jen later heads outside for some air and meets a man named Josh Miller, a friend of the groom. Jen and Josh hit it off before Lulu interrupts to ask Jen to act as a practical maid for the wedding celebrations because many of her workers quit over how she demeaned them.
During a meeting with Hollis’s ex-spouses, one of Hollis’s wives discusses how she learned that Hollis faked his death to end their marriage after she saw a video on a website called Intelligencia. Mallory angrily reprimands Hollis for his multiple faked deaths, forged identities, and other criminal activities carried out in furtherance of his schemes to exit his marriages. She tells him that she’ll get the best deal possible for him but that he is going to have to pay all of his ex-spouses. Hollis does offer equal shares of his assets to all of his ex-spouses; but when one ex-spouse argues that she deserves more because she was married to him for longer, everyone devolves into another argument. In the end, it is Nikki who manages to negotiate the best deal between Hollis and each of his ex-spouses.
At the wedding, Jen gets increasingly depressed as she’s forced to do humiliating menial tasks for Lulu—who further demeans her by ignoring her accomplishments as a lawyer and probing into her unfulfilled dating life. Jen eventually gets drunk and dances for hours to forget. She later calls Bruce, who doesn’t pick up. Josh finds her again, and Jen slowly grows more attracted to him (particularly when Jen complains that she feels disappointed because she came to the wedding so that others would see how accomplished she is and Josh tells her that he thinks that she’s both accomplished and beautiful). The moment ends, however, when Jen has to rush outside and vomit. While she’s outside, Titania walks up behind her and punches her, later baiting Jen until she transforms into She-Hulk and engages her in a fight. She-Hulk quickly gains the upper hand over Titania; and the fight ends suddenly when Titania falls, ruins her teeth veneers, and embarrasses herself so much that she storms out on her own. A drunk Lulu arrives afterwards. But instead of growing angry with Jen for transforming, she is so drunk that she compliments Jen on how great she looks in She-Hulk form.
In Mallory’s office, Nikki looks up Intelligencia and finds a litany of hate-speech about She-Hulk, including multiple death threats. Nikki wants to tell Jen and warn her, but Mallory tells Nikki that they should keep it quiet because Jen doesn’t need that in her headspace. Nikki calls Jen and leaves her a voicemail in which she tells her anyway. Jen, it turns out, doesn’t answer because she’s busy eating French fries with Josh.
Meanwhile in a secret laboratory, unknown scientists spy on Jen and Josh while preparing a metal case full of needles and syringes apparently adapted from the one that Thunderball tried to use to pierce She-Hulk’s skin.
• MY THOUGHTS •
o Another week without Daredevil. I’ve said repeatedly that I’m only watching She-Hulk for Charlie Cox’s return as Matt Murdock, and I REALLY felt like we might be getting it this time after last week’s tease. Jen even admits to this misdirection early in the episode when she tells the audience that this is a “self-contained wedding episode” that’s being dropped at an “inconvenient time.” It was a slyly meta way for the show to acknowledge its own habit of shelving its coolest storylines in favor spotlighting less-interesting plots. But that doesn’t make the deflections any more endurable.
o As usual, it’s not She-Hulk unless it goes out of its way to preach every five minutes about how irretrievably vile men are. 🙄 This week’s stereotypically vain, stupid, and tone-deaf male stand-in is Craig Hollis. An idiot who’s so out of touch with reality that he thinks forcing his spouses to witness his suicides is a better alternative than communicating with them. An idiot who believes he shouldn’t even have to apologize to the people whom he’s hurt with these antics.
o This is a bit nitpicky, but Nikki is JEN’S paralegal, which raises two inaccuracies that any real lawyer should spot fast in this episode. The first is that she probably shouldn’t be working for Mallory—who appears to be accomplished enough that she should have her own paralegal by now. The second is that it is both unprofessional and illegal for Nikki (a nonlawyer) to be engaging in the practice of law by negotiating terms on Mallory’s behalf between Hollis and his ex-spouses.
o Equally nitpicky: Mallory’s statement that Hollis’s ex-spouses could file criminal charges against him is quite wrong. Private citizens can’t file criminal charges against each other. That’s a task for the police. The most that private citizens can do is file CIVIL charges against each other—which is what Hollis’s ex-spouses have apparently done.
o This show’s continued self-contradictory approach to the question of if Jen wants to be She-Hulk has gotten a bit grating. On the one hand, Jen will go to court for the right to use the “She-Hulk” name. And she seems A-okay accepting and even coveting the benefits of being She-Hulk (including hot men who want her, attention from other women, a high-powered job with a premier law firm, et cetera). On the other hand, Jen can’t stop talking about how being She-Hulk is the last thing that she wants and how she refuses to go places or do things as She-Hulk. It’s getting well near past time that she made up her mind.
o So, it looks like Jen has a new love interest in the form of Josh—a seemingly sincere man who appears just as attracted to Jen’s human persona as her She-Hulk hero form. Of course, this is an MCU Disney+ show, so I’m waiting for the twist where he either dies tragically or is revealed as a criminal mastermind with nefarious plans for Jen and She-Hulk.
o We were long overdue for a She-Hulk/Titania rematch, but the one we got was sorely disappointing. Honestly, it really felt like a sillier, less expensive, less cinematic send-up of the third-act fight between Hulk and Abomination in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. Just like that fight, this one is provoked by an antagonist’s jealousy of a Hulk’s perceived unearned power and prestige. However, this fight lasts about two underwhelming minutes and ends anticlimactically when Titania trips and embarrasses herself. I understand that this show is trying to adhere to the 30-minute sitcom format with most of its episodes, but that limitation here REALLY serves to limit what could’ve and should’ve been a great second confrontation between She-Hulk and Titania.
o Given the comics history of The Intelligencia, I’m holding out hope that The Leader will somehow be revealed as the (he-he) leader of the organization and that MODOK might at least make one of this show’s patented cameo appearances at some point down the line.
• BRASS TACKS •
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s sixth episode tackles a sitcom staple—the wedding episode—in a breezy and entertaining way. But the show is brought down by the dismaying She-Hulk/Titania rematch and the preachy B-Plot centered around Mr. Immortal.
• MY RATING •
I give She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s Episode 6, “Just Jen,” three cronuts out of five.
