This is a show about a female superhero/lawyer written & directed by women, so their addressing it briefly in Episode 1 is hardly a surprise. I expect/hope it won't be an on-going theme and they'll get on to the main plot now.
The success of this show beyond being a Marvel property ( which carries an implied audience) will be in line with The Blacklist.
James Spader carried that entire show on his back. Obviously the back end of Black List was a downward spiral from the early seasons, but Spader is great at pumping energy and life into a character and a show.
Maslany is a legitimately good actress. She can uplift bad material, to some degree.
Titanic has some really horrible dialogue. But DiCaprio was a pure box office draw and Kate Winslet was able to turn some rough writing into something passable. So you can cover for some failing elements of a show or movie at levels.
But Feige and the MCU are clearly risking inciting a large cross section of their core fan base. Making Captain America the butt of the joke is going to rub some people the wrong way. Not because of toxic masculinity or some pundit hater brigade, but because it's clear there is a tone and method to try to incite existing fan bases. Show runners, producers, directors and writers looking to punish a large section of the audience for things that they are not guilty for at all.
You can't keep going around trying to kick out everyone's kneecaps then keep shouting about being victimized. It's a big FU to the audience.
Notice the most woke in Hollywood never create their own brand or their own icons. They hijack the success of someone else. Woke never creates, it only drags things down into the mud.
None of us would have endured that catastrophic Ghostbusters SNL reboot if not for the wild success of Bridesmaids. Why did Bridesmaids work? It wasn't because it was vulgar at times, it was because Kristen Wiig's character grounded the film. She had to deal with her own demons and her own pathology. In many ways, Bridesmaids is an anti-victim movie. Of course it came out in 2011, and so if it was made today, it would star Asia Kate Dillon and there would be an extended scene of Chris O'Dowd being beaten down with a pipe wrench.
The best argument against "The Message" is that woke naturally crushes any basic character development. You can't show a character learning and growing if they can never be wrong or never be weak because that would enable this "toxic masculinity". If you have an entire category of characters that don't have to show any respect, and the other half being shown as being constantly disrepected, how do you formulate a basic developmental arc?
How about uplifting She Hulk without pissing on Steve Rogers as a punch line?
