It’s your super-sized, extra-large, double-packed issue, just like the old-style comic books used to be, because we missed last week over some technical stuff. We actually recorded a full review and it was great, and then one thing after another came up and we weren’t able to reshoot it. The microphones are working now, there’s actually a memory card in the camera, and we have a checklist. So you’re getting two issues for the price of one: Episode 4, “Is This Not Real Magic?”, and Episode 5, “Mean, Green, and Straight Poured into These Jeans.”

Five episodes in, I think the performances on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law are all stellar. They’re doing great with what they have. But story, production value and talent all have to sell a show, and right now this one is running on two of them. The story’s really weak at the moment.

Is This Not Real Magic?

The short version. There’s a schlocky magician, out of Atlantic City or something silly like that, who suddenly starts using a sling ring. Actual magic. He sends a young lady named Madisynn to another dimension, and the next thing you know she’s crawling into Wong’s lap and Wong’s going, what’s going on? Turns out this guy had formerly been a student at Kamar-Taj and left shortly thereafter. I guess he had a kegger and invited friends, so they kicked him out, and nobody took the sling ring back. Madisynn, for the record, sold her soul to a demon goat to get out of the hell dimension she got sent to. I’d like to see that one.

So Wong approaches She-Hulk and wants a cease and desist so this guy can’t misuse the magic anymore. The dude fights him on it, manages to convince a judge, somewhat poorly, that he should be allowed to keep his stuff, and then opens a portal and lets in these weird little bat-looking pig things that grow really fast. He goes running to Wong, you gotta help me, and Wong goes to get She-Hulk.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Walters wants a date. She’s not getting anywhere on their version of Tinder, which is called Matcher or something like that, so she doubles down and makes a profile as She-Hulk. Which, funny enough, comes into play next episode. The dates just flow right through, one extreme to another, and some of them were really creepy. Then she meets a straight-up nice guy. He’s listening to her, he’s observant, and she’s like, oh yeah, we need to get our order to go. That’s the part from the trailers where she’s carrying a guy out of her living room.

While she’s on that date, Wong shows up asking why she isn’t answering her cell phone, and they fight. In my opinion that’s the first time She-Hulk gets to She-Hulk. She’s fighting monsters and stuff, it’s very comic booky, and I did like that about the episode. Mrs. Know-It-All likes a crunchy Hulk too.

The CGI, from the minute she starts dating until the minute she’s done dating, looks amazing. The threads in her dress, the pores on her face, her hair. Mrs. Know-It-All is still stuck on the hands, and she’s about ready to start her own Man Hands counter.

The end cap on the whole thing is a knock at Jen’s door. It’s a process server, a somewhat unclever one, and it turns out Titania has taken out a trademark on the name She-Hulk.

Too Many Lanes Open

I enjoyed this episode overall. Did it blow my socks off? No. I liked some of the groundwork they were laying, but I’m still very much of the feeling that these episodes don’t need to be a half hour. I know why they did it. I feel like it has actually hurt the show, because it takes most episodes about 15 to 20 minutes just to get ramped up. They do a lot of setup, the payoff comes really quick, and then maybe they lay groundwork for the next one.

Mrs. Know-It-All didn’t like this one. She’s liked the episodes prior to it, and she was entertained, don’t get me wrong. But it’s Episode 4. Give me a little more. Her problem is that by the end of it we have a whole lot of storylines open and none of them have landed.

We still don’t know who the boss is. They’ve implied once that there is a big bad, and I would’ve liked more peppering in for us to find out who this person is. Are we a lawyer show? We did finally get some lawyering, so that was a good thing. Are we a superhero show? Because I’m not seeing much She-Hulk, and that’s starting to bother me a little bit. And Titania. She-Hulk kicked her butt in the first episode and we heard nothing about her until the end of this one. Titania has always been one of She-Hulk’s main villains, and you can totally see why. She’s literally a person whose power is to be strong, up against a female Hulk. So I get why they were always at odds in the comic books. But to go from Episode 1 to Episode 4 with nothing and then a big plop, that’s just throwing her in there.

And the episode ended so abruptly. Jen even says it, I guess that’s a really short episode, with a cute button at the end, and it feels tacked on. Choppy was the word. Boom, this happened. Boom, this happened. Boom, this happened. Episode 6 is where they originally had the origin story placed. We’re getting nine episodes, and they moved the origin you saw in Episode 1 from six all the way to the front. I believe that really messed up how everything was paced and how it was set up.

The Show I Actually Want From Marvel

There’s a fan-made poster going around online for the new show I want from Marvel. It’s the Madisynn and Wongers poster.

Patty Guggenheim, who plays Madisynn King, and of course Benedict Wong, who plays Wong, are both doing wonderful work. I had no idea Benedict had the level of comedic chops he’s got. This dude is hilarious. In Doctor Strange it’s always put your hand up, do the thing, and it’s slow and it takes time. Here he’s walking out mad, just childishly ripping a portal open, like, let me get out of here.

Their chemistry? I’d watch that show all day. If main Marvel is Broadway, then these are the Off-Broadway adventures, and I’m down. Show me Wong and Madisynn just chilling out in the multiverse.

Mrs. Know-It-All had the way to do it. If you go on Disney+ and switch to the timeline view, they’ve added all the little shorts that were originally on the web or in the DVD extras, so you get this really big movie and then a two-minute or five-minute short of what’s happening with the villain. Justin Hammer in jail was in one. Toss something like that in there. Two, three minutes. You could film with them for a week and get everything you need for an entire bunch of these.

Are you listening, Marvel? It’s free advice. Don’t worry, we worked in television.

Mean, Green, and Straight Poured into These Jeans

“Strength is beauty. Beauty is strength.” That Titania commercial is one of the greatest things in the show. It comes on and we’re just like, what is happening, and then you dive right into the episode.

Titania has done a full-blown activation. For those of you playing at home, an activation is what they now call a pop-up store, especially in LA. It’s a space they’ve taken over, kind of like the Spirit stores do for Halloween. Jen walks through it with her assistant Nikki, and the one thing she can’t get over is that everybody is losing their minds over this stuff. Titania’s done a really good job. All the feminine products, everything. She’s a marketer all day.

The whole time Nikki’s asking, are you gonna fight this? And Jen’s like, no, I don’t care, my name’s Jennifer Walters. Then her boss calls her in, and he’s hilarious, because she starts explaining and he’s like, I don’t care, you just fix it. They hired She-Hulk to be the face of their superhuman law division, and nobody’s going to hire a messy law firm that can’t clean up its own messes. He spoke truth.

So they put her with Mallory Book, and it was so exciting to finally see her in the thing. Mrs. Know-It-All loves that actress and thinks she did a really, really good job.

Stop Selling Me a Different Show

That’s my only real criticism. Stop selling me a different show than the one I’m getting. I honestly expected to see much more of Pug, Mallory and She-Hulk collaborating and doing court stuff together. They hit it so hard on the head that this was a superhero lawyer show, and I’m not getting a lot of lawyer.

Then Jessica Gao comes out on the red carpet at the She-Hulk premiere and says, yeah, none of us really knew how to write courtroom dramas. It was kind of embarrassing. No offense, you’ve got Marvel money. Go hire you some good writers who used to work on good courtroom shows.

Titania’s lawyer, and I could be wrong on this, I think is Jason Edwards, and apparently the guy’s a legit attorney playing an attorney. He’s been in a lot of Marvel stuff, a lot of uncredited Marvel stuff, so it looks like he’s been trying hard to get himself in there. Good for him. Wouldn’t you?

The case itself I thought was pretty good as a court case. Mallory goes for the very clear summary judgment: my client has been She-Hulk since before the trademark. Titania’s lawyer shows video of Jen constantly saying my name is not She-Hulk, my name is Jennifer Walters, do not call me She-Hulk. Mallory brings up the clip from the news, the one I said looked very CGI: I’m She-Hulk, I don’t like it, but that’s who I am now. The judge gives them a continuance and tells them to come back with more compelling evidence.

Jen gets the idea at lunch with Nikki, sitting on the bench. What about all those horrible dates? Her profile was under She-Hulk.

Next thing you know, she and Mallory are back in court with her rogues’ gallery of guys, all the yahoos from “Is This Not Real Magic?” You get Ryan Powers as Alan, who’s literally on the app with her in the room. You hear the sound of the app and you’re like, really, bro? You get Todd, the creepy guy, played by Jon Bass, who I love. He’s so into her, almost like a cheap fanboy, except he’s upper crust and definitely has money, and apparently he’s one of Mallory’s clients, a big one. You get David Otunga, who reminds me of Mother’s Milk from The Boys. And then there’s Michel Curiel as Arthur, the guy from last episode who was all deep, tell me about this, tell me about that. Piercing blue eyes, definite specimen, Paragon material. As a dude I’m going to say it: this man is gorgeous.

The point of all of it, in front of the judge, is that she had a profile as She-Hulk, and her literal tagline is the name of the episode. Imagine your Tinder profile being read into the record in court. She’s sinking into her seat going, God, I hate myself.

Jen Walters is uber feminist, and yet in She-Hulk form she gave in to the temptation to glam herself up. Quick sidebar. There are issues of the She-Hulk comic, and I can’t remember the circumstance or the issue number, though I know Comics Explained has done a couple of videos that walk through her whole comicography, where it comes out how many sexual partners she’s had. Jen Walters: three, four, a low number, normal. She-Hulk apparently has more, and they never tell you how many more. I feel like this was their version of adapting that story, because she has to put herself on Front Street and march in the guys she dated.

She wins, clearly. The judge agrees she’s been using the name. And she and Mallory go for a drink afterwards. I don’t know if it’s bonding, but it’s definitely an understanding, and what they understand each other on is: even being She-Hulk, those were the best you could get?

Jen Walters Is Not His Type

Then there’s what Arthur said, Mr. Gorgeous. He says Jen Walters is not my type, but She-Hulk is amazing, she’s exciting.

Jen is uber feminist, but she’s also like four foot eleven, a little awkward at times, a little mousy. Not that that’s what feminists are, let me be super clear. And the minute she’s She-Hulk, what else do you get with all that power? I’m six foot seven, bro. I’ve never had an issue with my self-image, because who’s going to challenge me? Same thing with her. At one point she says one of the perks of being She-Hulk is she can walk home with headphones on and not worry about getting mugged. You take those little pieces for granted, though they do put them in front of you a lot.

This episode is where I feel like they juggled and balanced it well, because it’s all very basic. We as people need to be in relationships. Dating apps are normal. You can want to be all these strong, tried and true things and still just want someone. I kind of dig who she’s becoming, or who I see her going to become. I hope she calls Mr. Gorgeous Eyes up again. I really do.

In Jen’s mind, though, hearing Arthur say She-Hulk is awesome and incredible and amazing, she must be hearing Jen Walters is not awesome, Jen Walters is not incredible, Jen Walters is not amazing. Mrs. Know-It-All’s point was that women do that. Remember the first episode, when Bruce says it’s fear and anger and Jen says, oh, the basics of being any woman. And remember Bruce telling her there’s nobody else in there, it’s just you. Mrs. Know-It-All thinks she does have two personalities, She-Hulk and Jennifer Walters, the way all of us do. You feel a little down, a little chubby, whatever, and then you get a makeover, do your hair, put an outfit on, and you’re like, yeah, I feel really good. (I never feel frumpy. Hello, premise of the show. Recovering narcissist.) We have Smart Hulk now, so maybe she just needs to merge them. I’d love to see somebody have that conversation with her psychologically.

I know that in the comic books there’s a period where Jen Walters spends most of her time as She-Hulk and starts learning to be happy being that. Then of course you have the whole dichotomy: is it armor, are you hiding? I think we’re going to explore more of that.

The Suit, and the Yellow Helmet

Mallory tells Nikki that Jen needs to stop dressing like an old man in an old suit. We’d literally had that conversation ourselves. She looks like her dad. Not that I have a problem with Mark Linn-Baker, who plays her dad. She looks like Bruce Banner in a big old suit.

Pug, meanwhile, is into the Marvel Universe version of Air Jordans, and the Iron Man Threes are coming out. I’m surprised nobody called them the Mark Threes. What a missed opportunity. Do I have to do your marketing for you, Marvel?

Pug knows a guy, the drip broker, something goofy like that, who makes custom clothes for superheroes. It’s all cloak and dagger. They go to a boba place, tell the guy at the counter we’re not cops, and he moves a curtain aside right there in the restaurant. It’s Wizard of Oz all over again. They get 15 minutes with this super elite fashion person.

She does eventually get sized up, and he gives her several things. I think she’s going to start dressing more like Mallory, who is not afraid of how she looks. He’s also making her something stretchy, hopefully an unstable molecule type of material. If the phrase unstable molecules gets mentioned even once, I’m going to freak, because that’s an allusion to the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards invents that material in the comics, and it grows and expands with you.

Then he says, I have something a little special for you, and you can see something silvery in the drawer. I think it’s the shoulder piece of an outfit. I’m almost nine times out of ten positive it’s the purple and silver one we’ve seen her land in, which would be reminiscent of her comic book outfit. So she’s getting an outfit. Daredevil didn’t get his until the end of his series.

Speaking of which. He walks by and sets down a box with a note on it, and it’s the yellow Daredevil helmet. So we’re getting Daredevil.

How do I feel about that? It’s another lane. Another thread. We knew this one was coming, and I think it’s probably next episode. I like Daredevil, and so does she. From what they’re saying, it’s not a reboot so much, and we’re not getting an origin story. I think we are and we aren’t getting the Daredevil we saw before, in that Marvel’s trying to put their own stamp on him. The yellow and red outfit from the John Romita Jr. run was a really good outfit. I’m both excited and surprised they’re doing it, and I want this to work.

If Episode 6 is the one we get Daredevil in, I now understand why the origin story was originally there. He’s a nighttime vigilante, he’d be asking who are you, and she’d give the overview: the car rolling over, a shot of Jen’s arms turning green, all the way up to the present. There’s a version of this where that’s how they open.

Who the Boss Is, and Where This Is Going

Mrs. Know-It-All has a theory on who the boss is: Emil Blonsky. His experiment went wrong, and that’s why he’s the Abomination. Somebody came after Jen to get her blood. Her theory is the blood was going to help Emil become more like a Hulk, maybe fix what he is now, which would explain why he picked Jen Walters for his lawyer and all of a sudden people are trying to get blood from her. We also talked about Titania maybe working for whoever the boss is, more of a henchman. Even after Titania loses in court, she threatens Jen again.

If you’re a hardcore She-Hulk comic fan, don’t crucify me. I just know Titania has always been more than what she’s being portrayed as currently, though she’s not a full-on megalomaniac.

I have another one. There’s a world in which Mallory is there strictly to be killed off. Mallory is the Uncle Ben. They sacrifice Mallory and Jen becomes the new Mallory, meaning she embraces her She-Hulk womanhood. The Jen Walters I know wears a nice form-fitting business suit, she’s got the glasses, and her hair’s in a bun. She wears those outfits because she likes who she is as She-Hulk, and I think that’s who this Jen is going to become.

So here’s my prediction based on these five episodes, with four left. By the end of the series, if not sooner, we get a fully realized Jen Walters, She-Hulk, attorney at law, embracing her She-Hulk womanhood. She’s probably fought Titania finally, Titania’s made the turn from superhuman influencer to full-blown supervillain, and that’s how we go into season two. They’re really spending time laying the groundwork for who Jen Walters is. That’s why Mrs. Know-It-All is trying to be patient with all these lanes.

Will We Rewatch It?

Mrs. Know-It-All said it this morning: she won’t rewatch this series unless it picks up. A lot of the Marvel shows have been so good that when we’re writing, they’ve become wonderful background. We know exactly where everything’s at, and we stop for a scene we’ve fallen in love with. She doesn’t see herself doing that here, at least not with anything up to this episode.

What’s funny is I rewatched the first episode probably a dozen times. The second maybe four. I haven’t rewatched any of the ones since. I think the shine has worn off. You get goodwill when your pilot drops, and after that the show has to earn it. And she made me realize that even though the origin story is behind us, the whole first season still feels like an origin story.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jumping ship yet. It’s not a bad show. She-Hulk needs to do a little more for me.

The Verdict

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Episode 4, “Is This Not Real Magic?”, lands at a 6 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index, and that’s from both of us. Episode 5, “Mean, Green, and Straight Poured into These Jeans”, gets a 7 from Mrs. Know-It-All and a 7.5 from me.

On Episode 4, she gave it a six and I agree. I will honestly and openly say I was going to do a seven when we recorded the version you never saw. But upon rewatching and rethinking and having another week to sit on it, I think it’s more like a six. I don’t think enough happens to propel it much higher than that. From all the scores we’ve given, the show was batting an average of about six and a half going into this week, and that’s to be expected, because it’s been mediocre at best.

Episode 5 is not a bad episode, but it’s still a very filler episode. It still feels like it’s missing pieces of itself. Mrs. Know-It-All went seven: the whole fashion thing was pretty cool, Mallory showed up, she wasn’t completely disappointed, and she’s still wanting more. A 44 or 45 minute episode, like on television, would work for this show. I’m down for a seven. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great. I’m just going to nudge that a hair and go seven and a half, because it was good, but it wasn’t an eight.

Tell me what you thought of both episodes, and tell me who you think the boss is. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.