If you read me three weeks ago, you’ll know that, to my own astonishment, I received ‘She-Hulk: Lawyer She-Hulk’ quite enthusiastically. The new series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Disney + reconciled me with the macro project of The house of ideas, craving a breath of fresh air and lightness between the narrative and conceptual rehashes that are marking most of Phase 4.
This idyll lasted for two episodes, but in the third, as the song said, “we broke our love from using it so much”. Almost suddenly, Jessica Gao’s production deflated, plummeting the level of its comedy and seeing a stagnant narrative that seemed not to advance as smoothly as it should.
Unfortunately, with the fourth chapter, titled ‘Isn’t this real magic?’ things have not improved at all; repeating the mistakes of his predecessor and aggravating them because of the repetition in 25 minutes of raw content in which the horizontal plot refuses to evolve until the last minute —literally— and that give way to unexpected boredom.
- Beware, from here on there are spoilers – although there is not so much to burst either.
Magic Erasers
After apparently closing the arc related to Emil Blonsky —aka Abomination— ‘She-Hulk: Lawyer Hulka’ makes a clean slate and spends its first minutes raising a new case that, although it seems impossible, manages to take the levels of ridicule even further —not hilarity— after last Thursday’s lawsuit against the Asgardian impersonator.
This time, Wong returns to the fore, this time as a client of Jen Walters, to get a former Kamar-Taj student magician to stop using his powers in his shows of dubious quality and reputation. A subplot that, among other things, leads to a court scene to forgetin the incorporation of secondary characters that are more irritating than funny, and in a set-piece devoid of emotion due to the lack of risk involved and that seems more like a formality than anything else.
In parallel, the second subplot of the episode starts with Jen creating a profile on a dating app; a tremendously juicy premise who wins whole when, after the usual disappointment, our protagonist is encouraged to create a new account as his alter-egomaking the number of “matches” obtained grow at full speed and, consequently, the chances of finding your better half.
Of course, all of their dates end up being a bunch of blatant jerks, but when all seems to be lost, a tough, good listener, and detail-oriented pediatric oncologist makes an appearance. But of course, the prototype of the ideal man also turns out to be a cretin when he sees Jen and not She-Hulk in the morning after what we guess was a night of madness and passion.
Foreseeable? Yes. Bored? Also. Not because of the anodyne nature of the staging, editing and exchange of dialogues —which seem to have lost the agility of the beginning of the series—, but because of the accumulation of clichés that flood the story and that, feeling it a lot, no matter how much the fourth wall is broken playing self-awareness, they don’t become just another gag.
Having said all this, you may be asking yourselves: But, Victor, what about the horizontal plot? Well, after getting rid of last week’s incident in which a group of assailants tried to draw blood from lawyer Walters, the chapter stalls for, at the last moment, retrieve the Titania from Jameela Jamil —you had probably already forgotten her—, which denounces She-Hulk for using the registered name of She-Hulk. What a twist!
Hope is the only thing lost, and there are still five — which is said soon — episodes of ‘She-Hulk: Lawyer Hulka’ ahead. Let’s hope they get their act together and start tell us something with more substance and that they take advantage of the character of the sexy oncologist as a resource to continue with the story about the coveted superhero blood. Although, at this point, about Chekhov’s pistol doesn’t seem to matter to anyone anymore.