Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to the promotional comments made by Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige and series creator Jessica Gao about the creative inspirations for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (which premieres on Disney+ on August 18), one of the early episodes provides a tip-off. It happens when the neighborhood bar where lawyer Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) hangs out happens to be showing Ally McBeal on its television—and it’s not exactly typical to find bars entertaining their patrons with 20-year-old reruns.
Ally McBeal was, of course, a quirky comedy-drama about a single, 30-something female attorney navigating a male-dominated world of law, which is kind of an interesting way to approach a series that’s not just also about a single, 30-something female attorney navigating the male-dominated world of law, but about a female super-hero in the male-dominated world of comic-book entertainment. She-Hulk definitely has its own creative sensibility, but it also can’t avoid succumbing to some of the expectations of the Marvel fan base, even as it’s also kinda mocking those expectations.
The premise finds Jennifer, a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, acquiring similar transform-into-a-powerful-green-giant powers as her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) when the two are in a car accident together and their blood cross-contaminates. But unlike Bruce’s Hulk, Jennifer is in full control of her alter-ego from the outset, able to transform at will. And when she does so for the first time in a highly public location to save some lives, it proceeds to throw her life into chaos.
Both the 30-minute run-time of most of the episodes and the general vibe of She-Hulk set it up as more of a sitcom than an action-adventure. Jennifer’s public Hulking inspires the concern of her parents (Mark Linn-Baker and Tess Walis Kincaid), and adds to the challenge of her attempts at online dating. Gao leans into a self-aware brand of comedy, occasionally giving Jennifer fourth-wall-breaking comments to the audience, like referring to the parade of guest appearances by Wong (Benedict Wong) and The Incredible Hulk villain Emil Blonsky/Abomination (Tim Roth) as “Twitter armor for a week,” and even nudging at the fact that Ruffalo didn’t play Banner in that earlier Hulk film. Maslany has plenty of charm and charisma in the lead role, navigating the metaphor of Jennifer’s hire at a corporate firm being viewed as a kind of tokenism, while avoiding the “neurotic” label that was often tossed at Ally McBeal’s protagonist.
It would have been a bold move indeed if She-Hulk had decided to dwell fully within the Marvel Cinematic Universe without ever feeling obliged to crank up the action beats. Unfortunately, She-Hulk isn’t given that opportunity. The first episode focuses largely on Bruce giving Jennifer “Hulk lessons,” including some disagreements that lead to a head-to-head big green brawl; another episode finds Jennifer confronting a washed-out wizard-turned-stage illusionist with just enough powers to cause a huge mess. Even then, the donnybrooks are played for laughs more than for a genuine sense of peril; it just feels like throwing a bone to viewers who would get restless watching a superhero show without any crash-bang-boom.
There’s plenty of room in the Marvel Universe for a character whose daily life involves dealing with sexism and guys with a superhero kink just as much as dealing with super-villains. And despite the grumbling over the low-rent appearance of the special effects from early trailers, She-Hulk’s CGI mostly works just fine, not remotely suggesting the primitive “dancing baby” made infamous by Ally McBeal. The light-hearted, low-stakes stories here—at least through the first four episodes available for preview—make for a mostly satisfying change-of-pace among the Disney+ Marvel shows, if not as consistently clever as, say, Loki. It’s just worth remembering for the She-Hulk creative team that Ally McBeal managed to focus on a main character whose demons were in her head, rather than from a literal extra-dimensional portal.
She-Hulk begins streaming on August 18, only on Disney+.
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Does the recent string of lighthearted Marvel shows on Disney+ capture your attention? Do you think that She-Hulk will have a place in upcoming MCU films? Do you plan to watch the series? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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