DIRECTOR: Anu Valia
CAST: Tatiana Maslany, Ginger Gonzaga, Tim Roth, Nate Hurd, Joseph Castillo-Midyett, Nick Gomez, Justin Eaton, Trevor Salter, Terrence Clowe, John Piruccello, Jordan Aaron-Ford
RUNNING TIME: 35 mins
PREVIOUSLY, ON SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW: Since becoming the superpowered lawyer She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters (Maslany) has been targeted by enemies that have tried – and so far failed – to take some of her contaminated blood for mysterious purposes. Many of them appear to be active users on a website called Intelligencia, which contains hateful death threats against Walters, and seems to be planning a new attempt to extract her blood. Meanwhile, Jennifer hits it off with a seemingly decent guy named Josh (Salter) at a wedding.
IN THIS EPISODE: Jennifer’s newfound romantic bliss hits a brick wall, particularly when she finds herself stuck at former client Emil Blonsky’s (Roth) retreat…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Poor Jennifer Walters just can’t catch a break, can she? Beyond the whole “being contaminated with my cousin Bruce Banner’s blood and transforming into a giant green creature” thing, she’s faced an uphill battle at every junction, from being undermined at work or at home, to facing the inescapable wrath of misogyny by insecure men who can’t handle a woman being figuratively and literally stronger than them. It’s enough to make anyone want to consult a therapist, and that’s exactly what she manages to get, albeit in a looser sense than normal, in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s seventh episode, titled The Retreat – which, after a number of episodes that have felt more like mild filler than anything truly substantial, actually does feel like it matters in the long run.
We begin as Walters (Tatiana Maslany) is in the midst of romantic bliss with her new match, a handsome and charming enough guy named Josh (Trevor Salter) whom she met at the wedding in last week’s episode. Through a practically wordless opening montage, Jennifer and Josh go on a number of dates, flirt with the idea of wanting something more, and playing into the very rom-com charm of the scene (there’s even a song playing on the soundtrack which is pure rom-com material). It seems too good to be true, and sure enough it probably is, as Jennifer finds herself inexplicably ghosted by Josh after their first intimate night together. To make matters more frustrating, she’s got to travel to the private retreat of her recently-paroled client Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) after his Abomination-preventing inhibitor appears to malfunction, and the following circumstances then force her to stay there for an extended period of time with Blonsky and his fellow superhuman “brothers”.
Whereas previous episodes only flirted with, but didn’t get all that deep into, Jennifer Walters’ insecurities about essentially leading double lives and being treated differently as both herself and as She-Hulk, The Retreat really does put them front and centre, particularly within a central group therapy sequence that sees her venting about some very personal and sensitive issues. This sequence says so much more about the emotional and psychological trauma of this titular character than any other prior episode, from having to deal with guys who seem to like one personality over the other, to representing her gender on the public stage within the world of law, and both the writing and Maslany’s eternally bright performance does wonders at making you really understand and feel for this character as she opens up more than she has yet done. So far, we’ve been comfortable with liking and rooting for Jennifer Walters with her upbeat, fourth-wall breaking energy, but this feels like one of the first times that this series has gotten to the real core of who she really is, and what has been troubling her mind long before she even turned into She-Hulk for the first time. For viewers, whose patience may have been flummoxing as of late due to its seeming lack of focus on the main story strands, it’s a cathartic way of pushing through the thicket and allowing ourselves to know our new Marvel superhero even better than before.
There are plenty of other fun elements to this episode too, such as this group of superpowered folks at this retreat who do get some decent chuckles from some of their weird-as-hell backstories (one is a half-boar who is extremely nonchalant about his genetics experiment failure background, and another is fully dressed in a porcupine outfit with a gas mark covering his face, for reasons we can only imagine). Tim Roth’s presence is also refreshing, as it seems – so far – that the former antagonist has become a genuine source for help for his current subjects and Walters himself; hopefully it remains this way, and that he’s secretly not the one behind that rather sinister QAnon-like site Intelligencia, because as predictable as that would be, it doesn’t seem right to just designate him the villain role once again, especially years after he was first assigned that part.
What matters in the moment, though, is that The Retreat is a likeable episode that features some fun characters, a nicely cathartic look into the inner turmoil of our central hero, and like most of the series does feel genuine enough in its approach as a light-hearted alternative to all of the usual MCU stuff. There are still some lesser qualities that are present, including a disrupted tone where immediately following a very tender monologue there is a sudden onslaught of comedic lines that derail any sensitivity you might have been experiencing. However, it’s all for a decent enough cause, including setting up the forthcoming final two episodes that could very well change everything that we previously thought we knew about this series.
Or, at the very least, finally give impatient viewers that Daredevil cameo that they’ve been expecting for weeks now.
SO, TO SUM UP…
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Episode 7 – The Retreat is a likeable new episode that manages to get much deeper into lead hero Jennifer Walters’ emotional and psychological worries, which allows the viewer to understand her better than most other episodes in this series so far, and features some fun new characters and a refreshingly chilled turn by former (?) enemy Tim Roth.
