She-Hulk is a pretty uneven show. Though it’s shooting for a sitcom tone, it’s rarely all that funny, frequently is pretty cringe, and has the added albatross around its big green neck of having to show its heroine in big green form. Just when it seems like it might be hitting its stride, it has to show us its title character, and whenever she’s on screen you’re in for some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in a long time.
But, as spotty as the whole thing is, there is one area where She-Hulk is consistently successful, and the most recent episode gave us a few strong examples. She-Hulk has generally been good at serving up fun musical montages and “The Retreat,” which found Jen stuck at Emil Blonsky’s house after being left on read by Josh, the guy she met at Lulu’s wedding, had two pretty great ones.
The episode starts with a sequence, soundtracked by HAIM’s “Now I’m In It,” showing Jen and Josh going on a series of dates, which climaxed with her inviting Josh in to stay the night. I wasn’t sold on them as a couple when they met cute at the wedding, but setting their romance against a great song by a great band did wonders for getting me to believe that they were falling in love. And the sequence, which progressed from Jen stiffly closing the door at the beginning, to closing the door then running back out to invite Josh in but seeing that he’s already gone in the middle, to kissing him and bringing him in at the end, had a solid arc to it. And it was helped by some creative visual effects, which composited multiple Jens into a single shot, showing how her happiness with Josh was affecting every aspect of her life and routine.
Later on in the episode, Tierra Whack’s infectious “Peppers and Onions” played as Jen, now stranded at Blonsky’s wellness retreat, searched for signal around the grounds. As she walked, holding her phone above her head, a “No Service…” graphic moved with her across the screen. The song’s lyrics “I’m only human, yeah / I’m not perfect, just a person,” work well to reinforce Jen’s feelings at this moment of rejection and across She-Hulk as a whole. Despite her superheroic status, the things that she thinks will make her genuinely happy, like a good relationship or professional success on her terms, still remain elusive.
And, in last week’s episode, Lulu’s wedding had a fun montage in which Jen got progressively buzzed while dancing to Annie Lennox’s “Walking On Broken Glass.” That sequence was let down by the flat, gray color grading that plagues a lot of Disney’s output, but the song and Tatiana Maslany’s upbeat performance were enough to make it work.
Overall, She-Hulk is still hurt by its writing and by Disney’s insistence on putting out more than half-a-dozen projects a year, which puts a serious strain on its VFX department. Still, great musical picks and some smart direction have made these montages a consistent highlight. She-Hulk can be genuinely joyous and affecting when it lets music and image do the talking.