Remember last week, when there was a mysterious box and we were teased with a tantalizing glimpse of Daredevil’s helmet? Well, this week opens with another mysterious box… only this one has a glitter bomb! And an invite to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of Jennifer Walter’s childhood friend, Lulu!
So, no Daredevil or Matt Murdock this week. The show rather cheekily addresses this via a fourth wall break: “Yes, it’s a self-contained wedding episode. And if you think this wedding is happening at an inconvenient time, you’re right. ‘Cause that’s how weddings always are.” Groan. Another meta-joke: “Who has a wedding on a Thursday?” (Catch a new episode of She-Hulk each Thursday on Disney+!)
Jen is surprisingly excited to go to the wedding of someone she’s barely talked to since high school, mainly because it’s going to give her a chance to show off her new She-Hulk wardrobe. Nikki is stoked because she gets to work with Mallory Book on a new divorce case.
Our guest this week is David Paresqui (last seen on Disney+ as the Major Domo of the Mayor of Mos Espa on Book of Boba Fett). He plays a character named Mr. Immortal, whose power is (you guessed it) immortality. As he explains to Nikki and Mallory, you know how it goes. Love gets stale as you get older, he’s an immortal being who hates conflict, can you really blame him for faking his death instead of divorcing or talking to his partners? It’s easier on them that way! (Technically, he doesn’t fake his death. He walks into traffic and gets murdered Joe Black style and then regenerates.) He hates conflict so much that when his lawyers start yelling at him for being so insensitive to his partners, he jumps out the window.
Paresqui is delightful as the amoral immortal. Even with his few lines of dialogue, he really gives off the impression of being in love with his many exes despite the fact he’d rather get hit by a truck than have a real conversation with any of them. The settlement session with his seven ex-wives and ex-husband gets off to a rocky start, with them arguing how to split up that Apple stock he bought in the 1980s until Nikki takes control. Quickly bonding with all of them, she gets them all fair compensation.. Very funnily, the one Mr. Immortal blanches at the most is the sincere apology with 15 seconds of eye contact, and Nikki makes it 20 when he complains.
At the wedding, Jen is eager to show off her Hulkiness and her fun new dress. She revels in the compliments until the Bride Lulu asks her to knock it off since she wants all the attention on her. It’s her daaaaay! And you know what? Fair. The bride should be the center of a wedding, even a passive-aggressive bridezilla like Lulu.
To make things worse, Jen’s nemesis Titania has weaseled her way into a wedding invitation as someone’s plus one. Jen is furious, thinking Titania’s only there to ambush her, but Lulu dismisses her as sounding crazy. At least there’s a cute guy outside who awkwardly flirts with her while she’s eating the candied nuts. Joshua seems nice and is actually into Jen, so this will undoubtedly end badly. She flirts as badly as he does, at least until Lulu breaks them up to ask them to help clean up. Half the event staff has quit on Lulu because of “how I’m treating them.”
The wedding stuff as a whole is ok, but not great. The humiliations aren’t that terrible and Lulu honestly isn’t the worst bridezilla. (Has no writer on She-Hulk watched a few episodes of Say Yes To The Dress?) There feels like there could’ve been a lot more to be done here.
Things go downhill from there into the realm of bad wedding tropes. The groomsman Jen is paired off with is Lulu’s tiny, sickly dog, Jonathan, with his tongue lolling outside his mouth. It’s a cash bar, so Jen is plunking down $12 at a time to get drunk. (At least she can get drunk since she promised she wouldn’t hulk out.) Of course, since she isn’t metabolizing alcohol quickly all buzz turns into all barf. And while she’s puking in the garden, that’s when Titania attacks her.
This quickly turns into a funny fight, since Jen is too drunk to fight back and also too drunk to hulk out, which infuriates Titania. Jen tries, after laughing about how Titania is obsessed with her. Finally, after first just busting out of her shoes, she manages to hulk up and makes short work of Titania. After she knocks over a waiter, she slips in the spilled ice and falls flat on her face. She gets up with puffy lips and broken veneers, making her look like a buck-toothed raccoon. After yelling at the wedding attendees for filming her (“What, are you streaming that for your eleven followers?”) she steals a layer of the cake and runs off. Jameela Jamil is a hoot as Titania, and I would have liked to see more of her wedding shenanigans.
Back in the office, Nikki and Mallory celebrate the settlement of Mr. Immortal’s many divorces. They surf onto a website one of his wives mentioned, Intelligentcia, where she saw footage of her husband getting mowed down by cars. Nikki notices a section called “Slutty She-Hulk” (for members only), and the two are quickly sucked into a world of misogyny, with posts full of death threats directed at Jen. Mallory makes Nikki promise not to tell Jen, since there’s nothing she can do about it and it will only make her feel bad. Nikki agrees but quickly calls her anyway once she’s out of the office. Some of the posts feel like real-life angry incel tweets about the show (“She-Hulk isn’t even that strong!”)
This leads to some of my gripes about the show, a show that I like but doesn’t always work. I love Tatiana Maslany, both as Jen and She-Hulk. I think the cast is great in general (especially Nikky and Mallory). But the episodes themselves are uneven and some of the show structures are maddeningly inconsistent. Some weeks the fourth wall breaks are well integrated, and some weeks it’s an afterthought. Sometimes the lampshading of the real-life Twitter haters is clever, some weeks it feels labored. Some episodes have sharp gags, some episodes have jokes that the Cathy comic would’ve found hacky. Are the post-credit scenes a thing? They were until last week.
Still, when this show is clicking, it’s really good! When it isn’t, it’s a little meh.
This episode was a little meh.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
RANDOM NOTES:
- Please stop trying to make Ched happen. Where Madisynn was a funny annoying character, Ched is just plain annoying.
- Respect though for DJ Ched using an old-school airhorn rather than a sound file.
- Do you know how the wedding stuff could’ve been more fun? Structure it as a reality wedding show, like TLC mainstay Four Weddings. “It was great when She-Hulk showed up, and Titania gave me some tips on smokey eye, but the cash bar was tacky. So I give this wedding a 6.”
- Again, no post-credit scene this week. We do get an altered title card like last week.
- And that’s it for me! Josh Speer is back next week to recap the rest of the series. It’s been fun doing this, and if you enjoyed my recaps be sure to read my House of the Dragon ones every Monday morning.
