"She-Hulk: Attorney at Law"

The Marvel projects with female leads are ... different.  Some ("Captain Marvel") are flops, while others ("WandaVision") are brilliant.  I would put "She-Hulk" in the latter category.  Like most female takes on the superhero genre, it gets dragged by reviewers -- mostly young males.  One, in my area, dismissed it as action-lite and boring.  Well, yeah.  If you are a guy who has seen 35+ Marvel films and love the "bad guy -- destruction -- make a plan -- stop bad guy with lots of fisticuffs" kind of viewer.  Personally, I turn these films on and check my email while they play in the background.  The good Marvel female-made productions?  They explore things in a deeper way.  "WandaVision" was about the persistence of grief.  "She-Hulk" is about some of the essential issues of womanhood.  I love an early line -- Bruce's cousin reveals her new identity and is asked who she is.  She doesn't respond with "She-Hulk".  She says "Jennifer Walters, Attorney at Law."  The statement is powerful.  The point is that she is an educated, hardworking professional.  Her personhood is full and complex, not something to be boiled down to a catch phrase.  This sets up the struggle of the first season.  It is expected that a woman, a professional woman going into an office environment, will have attractive, well-fitting clothes.  That she will have groomed hair and wear heels and have makeup on.  This differs from men, who can show up with beer bellies, ketchup stains and stinking of whatever they choose to smoke outside the office.  It's a different standard and women know it.  Women are seen and judged, men are not.  Which leads to confusion.  Is this persona in the mirror an illusion?  Are women "who they are" based on their outward appearance?  It's a never-ending morality play, performed brilliantly by Tatiana Maslany, who turns to the camera and breaks the fourth wall with sassy asides.  In this first season she works to find her center not because of the Hulk persona, but because she can't figure out whether people want the superhero or the woman.  In the course of becoming Hulk she realizes she is losing herself.  Men reject her, use her, and she doesn't know how to direct her life.  The season ender is ironic and perfect in that sense, collecting all of these threads and encapsulating them well into something ... fresh and unexpected.  Will your average rock em sock em Marvel fans be drawn to this series?  No.  And Disney is doing it no favors by releasing only one half-hour episode a week (not to mention the beyond-irritating lack of a prompt to skip recaps and credits).  But the series resonates a bit with those it is actually targeting -- women.  Which explains why reviews are all over the board.  Either you get it or you don't.