Review: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, "Just Jen" | Season 1, Episode 6
The show weirdly preemptively apologizes for a productive half-hour
I’m becoming impatient with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, but not for the reason it thinks I am.
It’s clear that the show is anticipating certain critiques, given its defensive asides from Jen intended just for the audience: the idea of Wong as “Twitter Armor,” for instance, and here when Jen turns to the camera to almost apologize for the fact that “Just Jen” is a self-contained wedding episode that’s happening at an inconvenient time in the season. But in truth, my impatience stems from the fact that the show continues to feel like this apologetic tone is necessary. It bugs me that the show isn’t secure enough to just be the show it wants to be, and instead feels it has to explain itself whenever it wants to make an episode that’s driven by Jen’s journey as a character living with a super power.
It’s merely a rhetorical framing, but it marks the show as defensive when it could instead be acting in defiance. It knows that audience expectation is going to be a challenge …