The show has been criticized for being 'man-hating', and of pushing a 'female' agenda, but episode 7 clarifies that it is doing neither. It's not because of a simple inclusion of a few identifiable 'good' guys whom we'll probably never see again. There's a much stronger undercurrent, the foundations of which have become more apparent since the previous 'wedding' episode.
First, this show is very good at manipulating the audience through misdirection, and pushing, not an agenda, but emotional buttons. Episode 6 looks like it's a wedding. It is, rather, a look at Jennifer Walters as a high school student, but without breaking the timeline via a flashback to over a decade ago. No offence to Tatiana Maslany, but she would not pass off as a high school student if she were surrounded by a teenage cast.
A high school reunion would have been too obvious, but a wedding is the perfect occasion to bring all her high school friends back together and treat Jen like they used to way back then. Lulu is the queen bee who doesn't want anyone else to steal attention from her, while her 'mean girls' entourage continue to dump on Jen, who back then would have been happy to get any attention at all. Despite their age, Lulu and friends are written as high schoolers, with their obsession over boys (Lulu only wants to know about Jen's dating status), and her friends still talk about Team Edward or Jacob, which is what they would have been talking about a decade or so ago. Titania shows up as the school bully, and the fight is as juvenile as the characters they are symbolically playing. At the end, the bully defeats herself, which is usually how it plays out. And worst of all, no Daredevil in sight! Audience response: the wedding episode sucks. It's a horrible wedding because it doesn't feel important to the MCU storyline, and why tease DD when he's not going to show up? Rawr!
The show also occasionally brings up online sh*tposts from supposedly "hateful man babies", which are roughly analogous to people in our real world who identify themselves as 'incels'. The impression is that the show is making fun of its own of insecure, comic book reading, male fanbase, and that is a fantastic misdirection that draws the ire of the audience. Yes, the show is baiting the audience to hate it. In that red mist, what we overlook is that Jen, too, can be considered a female incel. Jen is unpopular, nerdy, and bullied in school. In adult life, she is insecure, unable to get a date, and seemingly defines herself by the lack of men in her life. The few who do date her put her down, none interested in a second time. These are all traits that resonate with people who identify as 'incel'.
Jen is plausibly about to give up dating when she meets Josh who likes Jen for Jen, and not for She-Hulk. But after a few dates, Jen, um, opens herself up to him, and he ghosts her immediately after. Jen's experience at Blonsky's 'Summer Twilights' retreat in episode 7 explains much of this show's philosophy, showing us how meta it gets. The emotional state that Jen is in when she joins Blonsky's therapy group mirrors ours by this time. Like Jen who ignores the group to look for a phone signal, we've also got better things to do than watch this boring show, but since it's on we'll just put it in the background. We've been promised an MCU fest, but we got an awful 'lawyer show' which has little 'lawyering' and a lot of one whiny woman griping about how unfair life has been for her. When Jen identifies the Wrecker in the group, she feels as attacked by him as we feel attacked by whatever agenda this show's been pushing that isn't to our liking. We feel as betrayed by the 'M-she-U' for making us watch this garbage as Jen feels betrayed by Josh ghosting her.
So what do we do? Do we, like Jen, instinctively Hulk out and immediately rage on the Internet, pouring out our hate and disappointment at this poorly written TV show? Do we make personal attacks on the female writers who care nothing for the source material and are themselves probably drunk, depressed, and are pushing a 'woke' agenda? Or do we sit in the 'calming chair' and work through our personal issues, and the real issues that this show raises for us to think about?
Like, can we spend time to listen to what another human being has to say about their pain, instead of valuing them only for how much they entertain us, make us laugh, or enact our revenge fantasies on our behalf? Can we empathise with them, accept them for themselves, and support them, instead of wishing She-Hulk would hurry up and punch something, but ignore Jen because her life is uninteresting?
And speaking to those in the audience who are feeling as lonely as Jen, She-Hulk is to Jen what Josh is to, well, someone who identifies as an incel. Josh is attractive, confident, successful, able to strike up and continue a conversation with their target, even from a cheesy pick-up line. But in the closing flashback, the show asks if we really want to be that guy, to use another human being and leave them confused and emotionally devastated once we've got what we want from them? Instead, the show assures us that there are people who will accept us for who we are, even if they look weird, or smell, or may even have attacked us once before. They may be awkward in how they express themselves to us, but their support is heartwarmingly genuine, if we, in return, accept them for who they are.
The huge MacGuffin in the room is Hulk blood, which @HulkKing is after. This group, I believe, is hiding behind a 'hateful man baby' mask. Their agenda is not against women, but against super-powered individuals, and it's just that She-Hulk is coincidentally a woman whom they are targeting. We don't know yet if this group wants to create more Hulks with Jen's sample, but this show has been hugely successful at making a lot of its audience Hulk out at their keyboards. How better to create an immersive narrative that encourages mass audience participation illustrating IRL the very themes it wants to raise for discussion? It can't get more meta than this.
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