Warning: the below contains full spoilers for Episode 6 of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, which is now streaming on Disney+. To refresh your memory, check out our review of last week’s episode.
It’s apparently wedding season on TV! After a very different wedding episode on House of the Dragon, She-Hulk is getting in on the action, humorously highlighting some of the awkwardness of events like these while its B-story shows how evergreen its superhero lawyer premise is. She-Hulk: Attorney At Law remains a breezy treat, although there are moments in “Just Jen” where its sitcom and MCU tendencies started to clash.
But first, the wedding: who among us hasn’t had to attend nuptials where our connections to the bride and groom are tenuous at best? And though some of the lines (Lulu’s in particular) may be a little heavy-handed to get the point across, there’s still a lot of relatability to Jen’s annoyance in being asked about her dating life rather than her career or, hell, She-Hulk.
The wedding is another good catalyst for the main conflict of this season so far: does Jen love or resent She-Hulk, and how does that make her feel about her non-Hulk self? The series continues to play with this push-and-pull in clever ways. And is that a potential love interest we see? Given that this is an MCU series, I’m inclined to wonder if Josh is too good to be true and is simply some kind of evil-doer looking to use Jen as a pawn. Still, Trevor Salter’s cool charisma has me ready to get hurt again.
That said, the best part of the wedding plot – aside from Jonathan, the world’s goodest groomsman – is the return of Jameela Jamil’s Titania. I know I brought up The Good Place in last week’s review as well, but is there any line that’s more Tahani Al-Jamil than “I love that you never make any effort at all”? The over-the-top mean girl schtick remains just that, but because of Jamil’s delivery, it’s still among the funnier parts of the show.
Plus, we get an encore of She-Hulk vs. Titania! This started great, but it’s also where some of the conflict between MCU and sitcom showed. It’ll never get old to watch She-Hulk and Titania trade blows, and the light-hearted decision to have it all scored to “The Electric Slide”? *chef’s kiss* No complaints there. But I found myself disappointed when it ended in Titania tripping and destroying her veneers. It’s this small moment where the comedy (which has largely worked for me) didn’t live up to the action. Although there’s something admirable about She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’s adherence to the 30-minute sitcom structure, there are certainly some scenes that feel they’d be better served with some more breathing room.
But let’s move on to the B-story which, surprisingly, was actually a little more consistent. Last week’s episode made the encouraging step to include more of Ginger Gonzaga’s Nikki, and “Just Jen” continues that and gives us the excellent pairing of her and Mallory (Renée Elise Goldsberry). The two are fantastic together, and the scene where they lecture Mr. Immortal (David Pasquesi) to the point of him jumping out of the window is among She-Hulk’s funniest yet.
The Mr. Immortal case is ridiculous, but also pretty darn entertaining.
It also highlights She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’s secret strength: the longevity of the “wacky superhero legal case!” format. As my colleague Amelia Emberwing correctly pointed out in her review of Episode 4, there are so many bizarre legal cases in the MCU and it’s such a consistently winning formula that this show could run on that aspect alone forever. The Mr. Immortal case is ridiculous, but also pretty darn entertaining – and, like a good sitcom, the themes it touches on here all lead back to the A-story, meaning it all works pretty well together despite being “self-contained” (it’s not, really).
Though even this portion of the episode ran into something pretty heavy – a website called Intelligencia, where Nikki and Mallory discover death threats against She-Hulk – without getting room to explore it further. Still, there are worse complaints to have than having a big reason to tune in next week. The tease at the end, where there seems to be something more insidious than internet trolls at work, does just that… and maybe we should be worried about Jen’s inability to reach Bruce when she drunk-dialed him at the wedding.