She-Hulk: Attorney at Law just smashed its way into Disney Plus today, hoping to grab hold of the MCU ethos and take it from the enormous to the everyday in a low-stakes, heartily comedic, sitcom-adjacent romp through the life of Jennifer Walters, who juggles work troubles, dating troubles, and now superpower troubles the best she can.
The first episode brought us a nice triple threat of inciting incidents; Walters gets her powers at the show’s outset, turns down the call to action from her cousin, Bruce Banner, to become a superhero (itself an indicator of what the show wants to be, and also refuses to be), and we get She-Hulk’s first proper fight against the hilariously reimagined Titania.
With a healthy pair of approval ratings numbering 94 and 77 from critics and audiences, respectively, it seems that Tatiana Maslany’s MCU debut is off to as good a start as one could hope, and no one is happier about this news than Kat Coiro, director of the first four and final three episodes of the show.
In an interview with Variety, Coiro delved into the workings of making She-Hulk‘s comedic setting work, and what mutual understandings need to be had to use the material effectively.
When you watch the first episode, you see that Mark [Ruffalo] and Tatiana [Maslany] are bantering. There’s a comedic point of view there. So it was about being really prepared, knowing exactly how we were going into it, so that we could then allow them space to have fun. That really is the challenge. You have to have fun. To have a comedy, there has to be a sense of playfulness. There has to be a sense of trust that you can improvise and go off script and explore things.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is now streaming on Disney Plus.