After a promising debut episode last week, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law continues its streak of being a solid program with its second episode, “Superhuman Law.” With her She-Hulk identity in full swing, Jennifer Walters, played by Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black, Parks and Recreation) continues to adapt to life as Jennifer Walters The Lawyer and Jennifer Walters the She-Hulk. Much to Jennifer’s dismay, she can’t even exist without “being a derivative of the Hulk.” Despite all of her superhuman abilities, she cannot even stand alone in her feats.
She-Hulk screenwriter Jessica Gao continues the feminist themes from the last episode, continuing to make digs at the behaviors of men through the lens of a woman in a male dominated field. These quips keep things interesting. For example, when at the bar, one of Jennifer’s co-workers says, “there’s a hot chick over there. I’m gonna go talk to it.”
You read that correctly. Not “her,” but “it.”
Through this simple but effective change of pronoun, Gao reminds us of the world that Jennifer, and many other women, find themselves in daily. It’s already hard to be some sort of strange and transformative superhero – it’s even harder when you are surrounded by people who already don’t view you as human.
The general premise of “Superhuman Law” is that Jennifer ultimately gets fired from her position working for the District Attorney’s office on the claims that she’s now a liability in court. Discouraged and ultimately defeated by rejection after rejection after rejection from multiple firms, she feels like she has nowhere else to turn.
Until her competitors offer her a job.
Hired to run the Superhuman Law division of Goodman, Lieber, and Kurtzberg & Holloway (GLK&H), Jennifer’s first case is to represent Emil Blonsky, played by Tim Roth (The Hateful Eight, Pulp Fiction). Despite the generous case offer, Jen hesitates to take the job on the grounds that Blonsky had previously attempted to kill her cousin, Bruce Banner; however, once she calls Bruce and has his approval, she decides to represent Blonsky for his past crimes. He blames his behavior on the government, saying that they gave him serums to alter his behavior. Whether or not that is actually true is anybody’s guess.
On a side note, this episode’s rating deserves an extra .5 point just because of the Silence of the Lambs joke that Jen makes as they prep her on how to behave around Blonsky in his cell.
All in all, this episode is fairly solid. It had a lot of exposition and set up for the next episode to come. There aren’t as many fun allusions to the rest of the MCU as there were in episode one, but the ending of “Superhuman Law” leaves viewers in suspense and with a definite sense of eagerness to see how the cliffhanger will be resolved in episode three.
Rating: 6.5/10.0