Episode 6 of She-Hulk, “Just Jen“, is a fun departure from the show’s legal procedural format. Jen, who acknowledges that weddings always come at the most inconvenient times, is invited to be a bridesmaid in her friend Lulu (Patti Harrison)’s wedding.
And what a wedding it is! This shindig manages to pack in every flavor of toxic frenemy there is. Lulu is so threatened by Jen’s beautiful hulk body that she forces Jen to shrink down, even though it makes her hulk-sized clothes look ridiculous on her. The other bridesmaids joke about how they force Jen to do stuff like iron shirts, and then promptly give her a pile of groomsmen’s shirts to iron. Jen isn’t allowed to bring a plus one, and finds out that she has to walk down the aisle with a dog.
Wow, what a hotbed of sublimated hatred and seething resentment! Sounds like an average wedding!
Because come on, what makes Lulu’s wedding so funny isn’t that it’s unrealistic. It’s funny because we’ve all been there. We’ve all had to deal with narcissistic brides and grooms. We’ve all suffered through the antics of petty, backstabbing friend groups. And there’s so much wedding awfulness that the episode didn’t even cover! There’s condescending relatives hating on your career, old schoolmates making passive aggressive comments in their toasts, obnoxious cousins blaring airhorns while they’re DJing … oh, wait, the episode did have that last one. The point is, weddings seem lovely on the surface, especially when they’re in some rich person’s private barn in Napa or wherever, but at their core, they’re massive hate bombs waiting to go off.
And did you notice how much better Lulu’s wedding gets when that bomb finally detonates?
In case you need a recap: it turns out that Titania really did weasel her way onto the guest list just so she could fight Jen, and she sucker punches Jen the first chance she gets. Jen hulks out, Ched shouts “WEDDING FIGHT!,” and the two have a proper brawl. After Titania slips on broken glass and breaks her veneers, she makes off with an entire cake, but no one seems to care.
Because everyone is suddenly way more relaxed.
Lulu suddenly loves the idea of having a hulk at her wedding. Jen gets to be her hulk self and goes out for fries with Josh. The bridesmaids probably become better people, I don’t know. And I bet Jonathan benefits somehow.
Granted, there may be other factors at play, but as far as I’m concerned, the fight fixes everything. It allows everyone to finally get all that rage and bloodlust out of their systems. The moral of the story is clear: every wedding should have a wedding fight. We could even ritualize it a bit! Like, ceremony, cocktails, WEDDING FIGHT, dinner, dancing. Think about how chill everyone would be by the time the chicken was served.
Wedding fights may take awhile to really take off as a tradition, but you have to admit there’s a lot of potential here. Next time I attend a wedding, I’m taping my hands and bringing my mouth guard.
(featured image: Marvel/Disney+)
