(I got cut off on my original post but anyhoo)
I was just gonna end it there because the whole thing is hilariously unimpressionable but now I've decided I am annoyed enough to rant about it.
Firstly, the VFX is terrible. And I don't mean that it looks like crappy game animation (although, it objectively does, but that's actually not the point), but that it destroyed the saving grace of this show -- Tatiana Maslany and Mark Ruffalo. I haven't watched Maslany previously but I've heard amazing things about her. I have watched Ruffalo outside of the MCU and he is one of those subtle actors who is capable of incredible emotional nuance with very small adjustments to his face and posture. This is lost because of the VFX. The Hulk animation is nowhere near the quality of the movies - which is fine - but it places Ruffalo (and I highly suspect Maslany too) at a severe disadvantage.
As such, both Bruce and Jen come across as insufferable. The lines were insipid, sure, but if the two talented actors were in their natural skins, they could have wrangled that into a playful banter between two competitive cousins. When CGI adds a new dimension of emotional and physical distance into their interaction, it comes across as awkward and grating.
Secondly, this show reeks of the same problem that was plaguing TFATWS. It either has very little idea of Bruce's canon past or it doesn't care. Its focus is on introducing Jen as "the better Hulk", and it doesn't shy away from shoving that down your throat at every opportunity.
Not that, mind you, Bruce is actually likeable in this. No. He apparently takes it upon himself to lecture Jen at every turn about superhero life and tries to stop her from leaving, like he has any right to. Just like TFATWS, the conflict feels manufactured and unnecessary, there to illustrate an ideological point - with Bucky it was to make him the token ignorant white person, with Bruce it's to make him the token self-important man - which is at odds with what previous canon had suggested of this character.
Shall we rewind back to Avengers 1? Bruce is hiding out in India, helping sick people and orphans. Natasha has to flirt and barter and blackmail him into coming with her to see the Avengers, and even then for half the movie he's nervously hiding himself in a lab, determined to only contribute his scientific expertise and to get out of there before anyone can make use of Hulk.
You're telling me that Jen has to tell this Bruce that you can help people in other ways that doesn't involve being Hulk? Bruce who didn't see himself as a superhero and called himself a monster now wants to spend days lecturing Jen that she's obliged to be a superhero?? Bruce, who's spent years trying to run away from that superhero life, who's spent years around other people trying to get out of the superhero life (Tony, for one major example, who closed up shop and built a family after the Snap), wouldn't understand why she doesn't want it?? Bruce who spent years on the run from the government and is continuously referred to as a "misplaced weapon" doesn't understand why Jen wouldn't want to be seen as a Hulk at all? And where does the Accords fit into this?? Suddenly it doesn't matter there's a new miscreant super-powered person running around?
Bruce's story - like the story of other super soldiers before him - is one that is fraught with trauma and discrimination and tragedy. I am not opposed to creating a light-hearted spin-off, but when that spin-off is based on completely misconstruing or dismissing what Bruce went through for an entire decade of his life...it just feels like every annoying franchise that preceded it. Stop putting down the original Avengers to make your new shittily written hero/ines look good. It doesn't make them look good.
