She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has begun its descent as we entered into the final third of the season and, boy, did it do that emphatically.
The nine-episode first season of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law aired its seventh episode on Disney Plus on Sept. 29. While the show has followed standard sitcom practices of carrying largely standalone arcs, this week’s episode progressed the overall story in a fun way.
She-Hulk follows Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) as she grapples with her newfound Hulk powers, looking for a balance between Jen and She-Hulk.
Warning: This review may contain light spoilers. Be sure to check out our past reviews of the first two episodes as well as the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth installments.
Synopsis
Jen begins dating Josh Miller (Trevor Salter) and the two hit it off really well, texting constantly. After the third date, she sleeps with him.
The next morning, Jen wakes up to Josh being gone with no note or anything. She texts him to say they should meet up again but doesn’t hear from him for a couple of days as she constantly checks her phone.
She then gets a call from the parole officer for Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), the recently reformed Abomination. The officer wants Jen to accompany him to Blonsky’s retreat to investigate an alert from his inhibitor.
Jen and the officer find out the alert was the result of a malfunction. As Jen goes to leave, two of Blonsky’s clients accidentally wreck her car, preventing her from leaving for several hours.
Blonsky invites Jen to participate in some of the self-discovery activities at the retreat, but she initially refuses as she desperately looks for cell service. One of the guys who attacked her in the dark alley shows up and Jen attacks him.
The reformed thug says he came to Blonsky’s retreat to work on himself and invites Jen to do the same. Thanks to a group of misfit super-powered friends, Jen has a breakthrough and better accepts the differences between She-Hulk and her human form.
The episode ends with a flashback to the night Jen and Josh slept together where Josh’s true intentions are seemingly revealed.
Breakdown
Full disclosure: I’ve been reviewing these episodes not as a piece of the MCU, but rather as a show separate from the larger universe yet set within its world.
That’s why I’ve loved this show so much. I’ve loved the connections when they’re there but I’ve loved that it feels separate in both tone and story.
That being said, it never felt like a cohesive story ever established itself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as plenty of sitcoms don’t have a largely cohesive story, but rather story arcs.
This episode felt like a tying together of several plot points while still maintaining its fresh tone I’ve come to love.
While we still don’t know the true villain, we do have a clearer picture than before with enough questions to keep us enthralled.
The tug of war between Jen and She-Hulk has been a constant theme in this show and the breakthrough thanks to Blonsky’s retreat was a fantastic development. Jen’s experience of wrestling with who she is vs. who she’s expected to be is incredibly relatable to me as a minority and Latino.
As far as characters, the group Jen meets with at the retreat include Man-Bull, El Aguila, Porcupine, Saracen the Vampire, and Wrecker from the gang that attacked Jen.
This mismatched group of superpowered goofballs made the episode for me. Comedically, they were phenomenal and brought some excellent levity to the entire episode. They even did a great job at making me forget about a long-awaited cameo that only has two episodes left to appear.
Verdict (4.5 out of 5 Stars)
This has become my favorite episode of the series.
There was a good mix of character development for Jen as well as some excellent comedy. She-Hulk seems to finally have found its story as it weaved together several elements really well.
There’s still plenty of questions left with two episodes to answer them. Still, the development of what feels like the true villain, despite not knowing who that is exactly, helps propel this episode forward.
The comedy in this episode from the therapy circle is really what made me like this episode. I hope we get to see these likable goofs again.
We still have two more episodes before She-Hulk: Attorney at Law lands. If this episode is any indication of what’s to come, I like our trajectory.
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