SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Extraordinary Attorney Woo
( 이상한 변호사 우영우 / Yisanghan Byeonhosa U-yeong-u)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hiya! Back with a new review before the end of the month, and this was a very much anticipated one! I decided to watch it in-between my to-watch list items simply because I got so many recommendations and I just really didn’t want to wait. I’m glad I made that decision! Even though law dramas are usually not really my cup of tea, I can say beforehand that I still was able to enjoy this drama. I will go into more detail in the body of my review, but I just want to mention in advance that even for people who are not into law themes, this can be a very insightful and enjoyable drama. It’s very interesting that they created this story about someone with a handicap taking on the challenge of such a representative job as an attorney. Showing the viewer the world through the eyes of such a person, through her experiences and perceptions that ‘normal’ people cannot fully comprehend, it creates such an immersive and interesting story. The fact that we are shown how much the protagonist struggles with her own issues, how much she is aware of it, and how much she would like to communicate properly with others, just makes her impossible to get frustrated with. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama with each episode lasting about 1 hour and 20 minutes. It tells the story of 27-year old Woo Young Woo (played by Park Eun Bin). Woo Young Woo has ASD (autism spectrum disorder), and lives with her father, Woo Gwang Ho (played by Jeon Bae Soo) who owns a kimbap shop. Despite her handicap, from a young age on it became clear that Young Woo had a strong affinity with law. Even though she didn’t talk for the first couple of years of her life, when she started talking, the first words that came out of her were law-related; as it happens, she had memorized one of her dad’s old law books from beginning to end. When her father was first confronted with the fact that his daughter was autistic, he struggled a lot by himself. His daughter wouldn’t even look at him, talk to him or hold his hand, and as a single dad this made him feel very lonely. Imagine his relief when she started talking, and about law at that. As he himself has been a law student, he finds a way to communicate with his daughter through legal terms, and it works out somehow.
When the story starts, Young Woo has just been hired as a rookie lawyer at a big law firm called Hanbada. From there on, she will have to face many trials, both professional and personal, as she keeps struggling with her social and emotional skills, while she simultaneously has to learn how to confidently represent clients in the courtroom. At her new job, she meets a couple of new people she will regularly work with, such as the team she becomes a part of. The team is led by Attorney Jung Myung Seok (played by Kang Ki Young), and further consists of fellow rookie attorneys Choi Soo Yeon (played by Ha Yoon Kyung) and Kwon Min Woo (played by Joo Jong Hyuk). She also becomes close with Lee Joon Ho (played by Kang Tae Ho), who works in litigation in the same office and often goes with her to help secure evidence.
Young Woo has one close friend, Dong Geurami (played by Joo Hyun Young), who works at a pub and is kind of the comic relief character of the series as she always tries to help Young Woo get out of her shell in funny ways.

Let me say in advance that in multiple ways, this series reminded me of Move to Heaven. Not just because of the autism spectrum disorder that both protagonists of these series have and their mutual interest in aquatic creatures, but also because of the structure of the series: every episode features a different case, with two 2-part stories as the exception. In every episode, the protagonist faces a new challenge, both personally as professionally, and they both have their own ways of maintaining their daily work routine. The only difference I would point out is that in this drama, they added a romantic aspect between the protagonist and another person. I found it very interesting that they chose to do this, as you don’t often see representation of an autistic person committing to a romantic relationship. I did like that the romance, as important as it was, was kept as a side story. The main plot is really about Young Woo, and how she handles cases, grows from her experiences, and how this also affects her ability to learn about the feelings of the people around her.
Still, there were definitely some aspects that reminded me of Move to Heaven. And that’s why I would like to structure my review similarly to the one I wrote for that one, by briefly going through all cases one by one, pointing out the lessons that Young Woo learned from each case. Before I do that though, I would like to write a bit more about the main characters individually.

First of all, Woo Young Woo herself. As I have established above, she’s had an affinity and interest in law ever since she was young. The rules and regulations that the law offers make her feel comfortable as she can always rely on it to make sense of the world around her. She claims to love the law and is willing to challenge her own disability to be able to perform confidently in the courtroom, which is admirable. Simultaneously, she has one other big passion: whales. When she’s not talking about law, she’s talking about whales. How exactly this interest came to be is not clear to me, but whales are a major part of her life. Not only is her room filled with drawings, figurines, plushies and other stuff related to them, she also uses a lot of whale analogies to relate to her personal life (like how she feels like a narwhal in a tank full of belugas), and also to make sense of her clients’ situations at times. Whenever she has a ‘Eureka’ moment, as an alternative to a light bulb flickering on, it’s illustrated by some kind of whale or dolphin jumping out of the water. Besides these specific interests and preferred conversation topics, there are various quirks that keep coming back. Her favorite food is kimbap, as it shows all the ingredients and she won’t be alarmed by any unexpected flavors, and it’s all she’s ever seen eating throughout the show (at some point I seriously started wondering if she ever ate anything else), she always wears headphones when she’s on her way to work and back (even though it’s not revealed what she listens to exactly – maybe whale sounds or maybe nothing at all?), she has to count to three before entering a new room as she needs to prepare herself for the transition of moving from one space to another, she doesn’t like holding hands (the longest she’s held her dad’s hand is 57 seconds and that’s already a lot for her), and she panics when people start screaming or get violent with each other. In those situations, it helps for her to be held really tightly, as pressure on her body will help calm her nerves. And, what’s probably most characteristic of her, she always introduces herself in the same way: “My name is Woo Young Woo. Whether it’s read straight or flipped, it’s still Woo Young Woo. Kayak, Deed, Rotator, Noon, Racecar, Woo Young Woo.” This of course refers to the spelling of her name, that whether you flip it around, her name is always read as ‘Woo Young Woo’, and she illustrates this with other examples of reversible words. In Korean, of course, she uses other words, but it must’ve been hard on the translators/subtitlers to literally translate it. Anyways, they brought the point across well enough. I suppose having a name like that must also be comforting to her, in a way, as it has a solid structure and people will always read it the way it’s meant to be read. In regard to her appearance, Young Woo has a clean bob cut hairstyle and she always dresses really plainly, slightly old-fashioned even, in a grey-coloured jacket and knee-length skirt.
As a child with ASD, it was hard for her to fit in at school, and she was also bullied a lot as no one seemed to be able to understand her. There was this scene that made me really mad. I mean, I’m sure at least the teachers were aware that she has ASD? And even if not, it was blatantly obvious that she must’ve had something like it? So when Young Woo was tricked into reading a note out loud offending the teacher, the teacher should have known that she was being pranked and set up. It was SO obvious, as she seemed oblivious and the others were all snickering behind her back. But no, instead, the teacher actually SLAPPED Young Woo in the face. Like, WHAT?! Literally NOTHING was done to give her additional support, it was like no one even knew what was wrong with her, everyone just thought she was being weird for no reason. I can’t imagine the staff wasn’t informed of her condition at all when she enrolled, that shouldn’t have been kept a secret. Anyways, the only person there willing to stand up for Young Woo was Geurami. Geurami was kind of the ‘punky delinquent’ kid in class, but Young Woo was strangely comforted by her and started following her around and the two became close friends after that. Young Woo sometimes visits the pub that Geurami works at to ask for her advice on social situations when she’s not sure how to handle them. The two have their own iconic greeting as well, the by now famous “Woo to the Young to the Woo” – “Dong to the Geu to the Rami”.

Despite her occasionally detached behavior, it’s clear enough when Young Woo cares for a person. She might not be able to show affection by skinship or verbal communication very well, but she has a very clear sense of justice and she’s able to at least try to empathize when people spell out to her how they feel. Especially when the relationship between her and Joon Ho starts to develop, Young Woo is prepared to step out of her comfort zone if it means she’ll be able to relay her true feelings to him properly.

The main dramatic plot twist surrounding Young Woo occurs when it’s revealed that she’s actually the illegitimate daughter of Hanbada’s rival law company Taesan’s CEO, Tae Soo Mi (played by Jin Kyung). She and Young Woo’s father had been dating in secret as teenagers, but as Soo Mi was from a wealthy family, it was considered a scandal that she’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock with a poor guy, so she gave the child to him after she’s given birth and he was asked to disappear from her life, even if that meant that he had to give up his own law career. So he did, and mother dear never ever even bothered inquiring after her daughter again. As it happens, Hanbada’s CEO Han Seon Young (played by Baek Ji Won) has always seen Tae Soo Mi as a rival, and also somehow is an old friend of Young Woo’s father. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure about this as their relations to each other weren’t elaborated on in detail, but it just seemed like they all knew each other from law school or something. Anyways, Han Seon Young eventually finds out about Young Woo being Soo Mi’s daughter and plots to use this against Soo Mi, as she’s just about to be elected Minister of Justice. Both women try to get Young Woo and her father out of the picture when they find out, to “protect them”, but we all know everything they do is to just protect their own images. I couldn’t really sympathize with either of them, I’m just glad their feud kind of blew over in the end (at least for now). But more about that later.

Let me go over Young Woo’s Hanbada team mates one by one.
First of all there’s Jung Myung Seok, who is like her senior or mentor, if you like. He is basically the team leader and although he’s skeptical as soon as Young Woo steps in, he’s the first person to change his mind about her after seeing her skills. He’s able to see through the complications her disability may bring after just a day, and keeps giving her new tasks to develop herself. Throughout the series we find out some more details about his personal life, especially when he gets sick. He’s diagnosed with Stage 3 stomach cancer, possibly caused by being a workaholic. He’s always been so fixated on work that it even ruined his marriage, and even though his ex-wife comes back in the picture after he is diagnosed, in order to give their relationship another chance she actually asks him to quit Hanbada as she won’t be able to take it again if nothing changes when he gets discharged, giving him some serious food for thought. Anyways, Myung Seok is a good guy and a respectable lawyer, although he’s faced the duality of the job more than once. Even when you find out your client is in the wrong, you have the responsibility to defend them, even if it goes against social justice. It’s up to each lawyer to decide in that, but he has always chosen the client’s needs before justice, as he claims when Young Woo asks him for advice towards the end of the series. He’s a good mentor, he doesn’t tell Young Woo what she should do but encourages her to choose what kind of lawyer she wants to be by herself.

Then there’s Choi Soo Yeon, Young Woo’s classmate from law school, who initially is a bit annoyed by Young Woo’s appointment to her team as she’s always seen her as a rival, but who eventually opens up to her more and becomes a good and loyal friend to Young Woo. She initially has a crush on Joon Ho, but chooses to step away when she finds out his affection for Young Woo without too much resentment – she even starts supporting the two of them. I’d describe her personality as trying to be tough while she’s actually really sweet. We also see some out-of-office scenes with her, and this only helps to gain more sympathy for her as we see her struggle with blind dates. She even goes on a date with the owner of the pub Geurami works at one time, but he creeps her out with his relentless food-related dad jokes. When they meet more often on other occasions, it seems like they can put it behind them, though. While struggling through her own stuff and cases, Soo Yeon gets another shock as she suddenly finds herself attracted to her co-worker Kwon Min Woo.

Kwon Min Woo, nicknamed Tactician Kwon Min Woo, is the team member who remains suspicious of Young Woo for the longest time. He doesn’t treat her as an equal, but as a rival, and he even strives to work her out of Hanbada for a while. When rumors start spreading about Young Woo being hired by Hanbada because of the CEO’s connections to her father (and the fact that her mother is Tae Soo Mi), Min Woo adds fuel to the fire by starting to write posts on the company’s bulletin board. He doesn’t seem to be a very sympathetic guy until the end, especially when he makes a secret deal with Tae Soo Mi herself to get Young Woo to either quit or get fired from Hanbada. However, Soo Yeon seems to have a good influence on him, as he starts to adapt more and more to behavior that she finds attractive in a man, and in the end he also gives up on his deal with Tae Soo Mi, as he claims he ‘wants to start living like a fool’ – another quote derived directly from something Soo Yeon says to him. So yeah, it seems like he turns around a little at the end, but I still don’t trust him completely.

And then of course there’s Lee Joon Ho. He’s not an attorney himself, but he’s basically the standard litigation officer for Young Woo’s team, as he often helps them out with their cases, drives them to witness interrogations and helps to secure evidence for them. From day one, he’s nice to Young Woo and seems to find her very interesting. He becomes her first friend at the office, and he agrees to have lunch with her every day, giving her an opportunity to talk about whales in her free time. He also helps her concur the revolving doors of the office (the ‘One, Two, Three’ dance they do T^T) and at times when she feels discouraged about representing her clients properly, he’s always there to remind her of her qualities. As he falls for her he’s not even bothered by her ASD, but it does cause a certain tension between them, especially when they visit his sister and Young Woo overhears her telling Joon Ho that he can’t date ‘someone like her’, because it’ll mean he’ll just always have to ‘take care of her’. Because of this Young Woo becomes aware of the fact that, just like with her father, she might make the people she loves feel lonely because she can’t return their affection in the same way. She decides, with her own logic, that it would be better for Joon Ho if they break up, but when she sees that it breaks his heart, she doesn’t know how to deal with it. Seriously, that breakup was one of the most heart-wrenching ones ever because you could just understand both sides so well. Young Woo just states her conclusion to the situation, the resolve she deems most appropriate, as if it were a case. Also, something suddenly reminds her of the case while she’s in the middle of her breakup and she just goes on to talk about the case, as that’s how her mind works. Joon Ho, shocked by the sudden declaration of break-up, is heartbroken to see her move on from the topic to something else so quickly and spells out to her that it really hurts his feelings how she just changes the topic like that, to which Young Woo can only give a simple apology. You can’t be angry with either of them because you know that Young Woo can’t help the way she is, the way her mind works, but on the other side you also really understand Joon Ho’s feelings and frustrations. I’m glad they were able to work it out though, at least Young Woo was able to explain to him her reason for breaking up, making Joon Ho understand that she did it out of concern for him, to which he is able to reflect better on his own feelings. I really liked how they finally got back together, how they had that talk in the car where Joon Ho compared their relationship to that of a cat and its owner, how the cat also doesn’t always return the affection, and how sometimes it can make him feel lonely, but it can also make him feel very happy when they do get chances to connect. And the way Young Woo then says, ‘that’s not a fair analogy because the cat also loves the owner very much’, before she slipped out of the car and how they smiled at each other through the car window while processing that this meant that they were getting back together, that was really cute.

I now would like to go over all the episodes one by one to give a brief summary of how every case taught Young Woo something new and valuable.

The first episode concerned an elderly couple, Young Woo’s old neighbors from her childhood. It was a case that worked out in her favor, as she was able to prove that the wife did not actually cause her husband’s death. The thing here was that these neighbors happened to be the people present when Young Woo uttered her very first (law-related) words as a child. The husband was always very hot-tempered and got in a fight with her dad at the time, which caused her to panic and start yelling law jargon. When her dad found out about her skill to memorize law terms and rules, the wife was there to praise the fact that she might become a lawyer one day. This case ends victorious for Young Woo, and it was so impactful that I couldn’t help but celebrate with her – this was the case that initially proved her skills to her team members.

The second case was about a feud between two families – a daughter from one side and a son from the other were getting married, but as they walked away from the altar, the bride’s dress slipped off, causing a big scandal. Everything regarding this case was handled by the bride’s father, but it was very clear that this was nothing but a political marriage, the bride and groom didn’t even love each other. In fact, the bride turned out to be in love with another woman, and the case ends when she personally calls off the lawsuit altogether to make an escapade with her true love. This case just really proved to me that some rich families only care about throwing around their money on big scandal spectacles and they don’t actually care about the real problem – the daughter never wanted any of it, and was just miserable that she was continuously set up with marriages she wasn’t interested in.

The third case was one of the heaviest, in my opinion. Young Woo was asked to defend another autistic person, but this person’s case of ASD was on a completely different level than hers. It just really showed that some people might see all cases of autism as the same, that people who have autism all automatically understand each other, which isn’t the case at all. This was one of the most frustrating cases to watch for me, honestly. A severely autistic young man is accused of murdering his older brother, but he can’t communicate anything properly, and as soon as people start asking him questions, he just starts screaming. In the end, it becomes clear that the older brother committed suicide, and the autistic brother was just trying to save him, but as the defendent wasn’t able to testify properly because of his severe autism and just said ‘Yes’ to everything, they couldn’t help him. After this case, Young Woo temporarily loses her confidence and even quits her work for a while as she’s distraught by the knowledge that she’s not able to defend someone like herself properly, that she can’t be dependable as a lawyer. What really pissed me off during this case was that the prosecution really crossed a line by drawing a comparison between Young Woo and the defendent. Seriously, what was his deal making it so personal? He was one of those people who just saw autism as one and the same thing for everyone, and he just went on about how the fact that the defendent couldn’t properly testify meant they should also question the legitimacy of Young Woo’s performance as an attorney. It was disgusting.

The fourth episode was about Geurami’s father, who got himself in a pickle because of a deal made with his two older brothers after their father passed away. They basically tricked him into signing an agreement that would lead to him getting the least profit of the heritage. They used some alleged law rule as an argument to persuade him to sign it, and this was against the law, but they had a hard time getting anyone to witness that they had actually used this argument. This was frustrating because the two brothers just seemed to bribe anyone who could testify against them, even after Young Woo’s team managed to get them to agree to testify. However, here they managed to still get their way as Geurami and her father went to provoke the two brothers into attacking them. Honestly, those two brothers were despicable. They literally used their status as older brothers against their youngest brother so he couldn’t refuse them, and then tricked him into suffering the most less and gaining the most debt, even though he had a family to support. And then when he came to confront them, they only scolded him being disrespectful while THEY had made him lose everything, financially. It just makes me so mad when people who did a bad thing make others feel like they are the bad ones. Like, at least own up to your bad deeds. Anyways, when all was settled they suddenly came crawling back, saying stuff like ‘we also don’t have much, please forgive us’, like, yeah, go to the moon.

The fifth case, the one about the ATM companies, didn’t interest me much content-wise, but it was definitely a case that proved how being a lawyer can be difficult, as you can’t let your own judgement play a part. This is the first case that Young Woo encounters in the series in which it turns out that her client isn’t actually the truthful one, and the outcome leaves a bitter taste. Despite being able to identify all the blatant signs of someone lying, Young Woo still looks past it, and she blames herself for it afterwards.

Then the sixth case, another frustrating one, about a mother that wants to be reunited with her daughter. The mother just happens to be a North Korean defector who is in jail for alleged assault on a woman who supposedly had money that belonged to her. The most frustrating thing here was that there were so many unfair forces working against them. The assaulted was already bruised up because of her abusive husband, but the doctor making the autopsy report just happened to be very biased against North Korean defectors, and he manipulated the report according to his own views. Luckily, the judge they worked with for this case saw the facts for what they were and they managed to acquit the mother of her charges, but not without any emotional process. This was a case Soo Yeon was in charge of in which Young Woo was assigned to help, and this was a good cooperation as Soo Yeon was quite emotionally involved by the mother’s story, and Young Woo was able to look at it more objectively.

The seventh case and the first 2-part arc of the series was about a group of inhabitants that objected a highway being built right through their village. In this case, for the first time in the series, Hanbada was set opposite Taesan, and this is where Young Woo meets her biological mother Tae Soo Mi for the first time. They eventually manage to win the case by proving that the procedure of applying for the village’s beautiful tree as a natural monument was sabotaged, and that with this approval, the highway construction would not be allowed to happen. At the end of this 2-parter, Young Woo confronts Tae Soo Mi with the fact that she’s her daughter, leaving Soo Mi in complete shock.

The eight case was about the self-proclaimed leader of a children’t liberation movement who hijacked a bus of kids on their way to their after-school academy to take them to the mountains and play to their heart’s content instead. This one hit differently as it involved children, mainly children who were denied any playtime, even when they weren’t even teenagers yet. Their parents only wanted them to study, even after school was out they had to go straight to the academy to continue studying. The kids that were on the hijacked bus actually had the greatest time of their lives for once, but the entire focus went to this guy (who was even said academy’s director’s son) being a kidnapper. He just wanted these kids to be able to play and let them be kids, as he also didn’t get that luxury when he was little. His mother, the academy’s director, was forced to reflect on the fact that she was too busy caring for other children’s education than to make sure her own child was doing okay. This case really highlighted a common aspect of South Korean society – the education system that basically forces children to put their academics before everything, even their own physical and mental health. The duality of this case was that this guy, who even changed his name to ‘Fart’ just so he could make children laugh when they said it, was shamed for rebelling against a system that was just wrong. I’m glad at least they got to show everyone in the courtroom this in the end.

The ninth case again hit differently, as Young Woo is asked to defend a client who is accused of sexually abusing a mentally handicapped girl. Despite the fact that the two were in a relationship, the girl’s mother had twisted the story so that it would seem the guy took advantage of her child, just because she didn’t approve of their relationship and there were rumors of him pulling the same trick with other mentally handicapped girls before (we don’t find out if this is true or not). The girl comes to Young Woo to tell her that it wasn’t abuse, that she consented and that she loved the guy and vice versa, but once in the courtroom the pressure becomes too much for her and she’s not able to give the same statement to the judge, not with her mother there. Here again, it becomes clear that a handicapped person will always be seen as some sort of victim, especially when it’s a woman. In the earlier case of the autistic brother, people were quicker to accuse him because of his build and aggressive tendencies, but I think that even if the handicapped girl had been able to testify that she had consented, her mother would have still made sure her story was turned around.

The tenth case was another frustrating one, it was about three mates who had promised to share the money if one of them won the lottery, but when one of them did, he ended up denying this promise. While it was initially hard to back this case up since it seemed to be just a promise between friends that wasn’t fulfilled, one of these three men takes action to show the lawyers just how much he depended on that promise. He even brings his wife to the office to show how much he loves her and wants to be able to support her financially. As they help him get his share of the money, however, he makes the worst transformation. As soon as he gets his hands on the money, he turns on his wife, files for a divorce, and starts spending it on expensive stuff. It’s also revealed that he’s had an affair all along with another woman, and he becomes increasingly aggressive. The case ends rather dramatically as the guy dies in a car accident when he frantically wants to chase after his wife, but I do think it ended for the best because his wife and their two kids got all the money in the end. Seriously, this man creeped me the heck out.

The eleventh case was about a company that suddenly started prioritizing firing female employees as opposed to their husbands (in the cases of married couples working at the same company), even though several of these women had given their entire lives to the company, even at the cost of not taking full advantage of their maternity leave. Here Young Woo is faced with a very eccentric lawyer who defends these women, who is an activist in female rights herself. The judge from the North Korean defector case returns here as well, but in this case it doesn’t end favorably for the women, on the contrary, all their accusations are dismissed. Young Woo is flabbergasted when she finds out how casual the women and their eccentric attorney when it comes to preparing for their next trial, and how optimistic they remain even after losing the case. At the end of this case, Myung Seok finds out that he’s sick.

The twelfth case of the series, the second 2-parter, involves the team taking a trip to Jeju Island. Myung Seok is by now aware of his diagnosis and therefore has a different motive of taking a trip there with his team, taking the opportunity to visit some places he holds dear from when he went there on his honeymoon. The trip becomes kind of like a holiday, in which Joon Ho also introduces Young Woo to his sister who lives there. But of course there’s also still there for a case. One of Young Woo’s dad’s regular customers has complained that he had to pay 3,000 won just to enter a certain area in Jeju because it was close to a temple with a cultural heritage status, even though he wasn’t even visiting that specific temple. He claims that he’s willing to issue a lawsuit just to get his 3,000 won back (to each his own). Anyways, they will have to defend this dissatisfied man opposite a legion of monks from the temple as the defendants. During this trip, a lot of things happen also outside of the case, such as the breakup between Young Woo and Joon Ho, and the blossoming feelings between Soo Yeon and Min Woo. In the meantime, Myung Seok gets hospitalized there after collapsing in the courtroom, and it becomes Young Woo’s personal mission to track down the chef of a certain meat noodle restaurant that Myung Seok wanted to visit but couldn’t because it closed down. The case closes in their favor at the end, as Myung Seok suggests a service at Hanbada to the abbot through which they can get special funding for their cultural heritage area.

The final two episodes feature the thirteenth and final case of the series, and here Young Woo isn’t just confronted with a very tricky case, but she also has to work with an attorney who goes against everything she stands for – and vice versa.

Which leads me to introduce Attorney Jang Seung Joon (played by Choi Dae Hoon). Honestly, when he was introduced the first time, I thought he was really eccentric and funny. The way he and Myung Seok seemed to have this bromance thing going on, how he turned this electric chair upside down in his office. But when he appeared after that, he only just seemed to be intolerable. He first publicly humiliated Myung Seok in the cafeteria after Myung Seok’s case caused him to lose a specific contract he had with a client. And when he has to take over Young Woo’s team when Myung Seok undergoes and recovers from surgery, he just became the most ridiculous person ever. He turns out to be the classical example of a corrupt lawyer who won’t hesitate to commit to bribes and take advantage of connections in order to get people on his side. As he’s from the same university as Min Woo, he immediately takes a favoritism-based liking to him and even urges Min Woo to follow him into using their alumni status to make a good impression on other seniors from the same college. It aggravated me so much when Seung Joon went along with the plan of the defendant to bribe the judge simply because he was also from the same college – it was only more than right that the judge immediately recognized what was happening and got really offended and walked out. Seriously, what the heck were they thinking, he even asked Min Woo to tag along, dragging him through the mud while he wasn’t even aware of the plan!

The case they are faced with concerns a big investment company (I believe) that gets hacked, losing about 4 million people’s personal data. The plaintiffs want to focus on the fact that the company should have had better security software installed, and Young Woo’s team keeps trying to bypass their arguments, but it’s not easy. And then we find out that Tae Soo Mi’s own son, a 17-year old computer science prodigy, is responsible for the hacking, and that he was urged by the company’s co-CEO himself. Choi Sang Hyun (played by Choi Hyun Jin) feels really bad about what he’s done, especially after he finds out the other co-CEO attempted suicide out of despair and it was never his intention to let it come that far. He comes clean to his mother about it, but Tae Soo Mi tells him to keep quiet as she’s just about to be elected Minister of Justice and this really can’t happen right now. But Sang Hyun is determined to give himself in, and after various attempts (all of which obstructed by his mother), he comes to Young Woo, as he already figured out they are half brother and sister by then. However, entering his confession as evidence goes against their client’s defense, so this is where Young Woo has to decide what kind of lawyer she wants to be. Tae Soo Mi also gets involved in trying to send her son away so he can’t testify in person, but Young Woo manages to persuade her. She even steps away from her Minister of Justice position to focus on being a good mother to her child. In the meantime, Han Seon Young herself also got involved in the case as she reckoned this would bring more shame to Tae Soo Mi and she wouldn’t even have to publish the article about Young Woo being her illegitimate daughter. In the end, she just lets Tae Soo Mi ‘get off easily’ after she watches her renounce her political position.
The story reaches full closure here as Young Woo and her dad don’t have to go anywhere, no one’s reputation will be ruined, and Young Woo and Joon Ho get back together. The series ends with a victorious moment of Young Woo as she finally manages to tackle the revolving doors of the office building by herself and proclaims that she identifies the new feeling/emotion she has unlocked as a ‘sense of fulfillment’.

All in all, I really liked that this series dealt with all sorts of cases. From murder suspects to copyright infringement cases, from emotional to political cases, all sorts of themes came by and that was very interesting to see, as each case of course asks for a different kind of approach and defense that can be used. I also liked how for every case, the judge and opposing parties were different, it just gave a very real insight in how they’re faced with different people with different mindsets and approaches for every single case. Some prosecutors are more complacent, some judges are more susceptible to kiss-assery, some people let themselves get bribed, others are more lenient. It’s always so easy to think in black and white, to feel like ‘justice should be served’, but this drama definitely showed that that’s not as easy in practice. As a lawyer, you must be able to set aside your own feelings and thoughts about a person, you must be able to defend someone even if you know they’re in the wrong without feeling bad about it. And even if you do, you must be able to justify it as you’re ‘simply doing your job’. It’s definitely not an easy job and I’m still flabbergasted at how Young Woo was able to take this challenge on, especially since being an attorney is such an important job. You have to be representative, you have to present eloquently and confidently, and she is not even able to look people in the eye directly. I can imagine how that would not seem very trustworthy, how people wouldn’t opt for her as a person to defend them, and that’s just one thing that she has to prove to the world, and to herself. It’s heartwarming to see how she wants to challenge herself in that, how she strives the become a dependable lawyer to her clients, and how simultaneously the strives to be a good romantic partner to Joon Ho, even though she knows she will never be able to return the affection in the same way. In this way, her romantic life and professional life drew a kind of unexpected parallel, as she was exploring them both equally at the same time.

I went through many different emotions while watching this drama, one moment I would be so frustrated and mad, and the next I would be enjoying myself so much. I felt the butterflies between Young Woo and Joon Ho, how they gradually got closer and it just felt right. There were a lot of interesting characters, both main and side roles, and it was just really interesting to see so many people in such different situations and how everyone always responds differently to things as well. I remember also mentioning this in my Move to Heaven review, that it was very realistic to see how simple-minded some people could be, how money sometimes meant more to people than other (seemingly) more important things.
How laws and rules can be so convenient until the point where they are used against you, and you have to figure out a way to get around it as they can also be relentless against less fortunate people that can’t fight for their own justice.

I will make some cast comments before I conclude.

I only know Park Eun Bin from Age of Youth because she was my very favorite character there, but even between her role there and here, there is an ocean of difference. I’m more interested to see other dramas with her now, because I feel like she has really impressive versatility in her acting. My first choice would be The King’s Affection because it’s a historical drama and it would again show her in a completely different setting and concept which I’m excited for. I think she did a really good job, I can’t imagine it must have been easy at all to portray this kind of ability when you don’t have any personal experience with what it must be like. As I mentioned in my introduction, people with ASD are usually not considered to be ‘normal’ people, and I have to admit that I too am not very good with certain autistic people because I also tend to get frustrated and impatient with them easily. However, there wasn’t a single moment that I got frustrated with Young Woo because it was so clear that she was aware of her own issues and she really did her best to still challenge herself in them, she put herself outside of her comfort zone multiple times in order to do her job as an attorney and to convince the guy she liked that she really liked him. Even during their breakup, while from our perspective Joon Ho’s feelings would seem to be most understandable, I couldn’t help but feel really bad for Young Woo as well when she simply apologized, because it was just so clear that she didn’t know how else to respond to hurting someone else’s feelings as she’s just wired differently. I think this series did a really good job on putting in perspective the whole notion of handicapped people being seen as an inconvenience, as a burden. No person is the same, even within the autism spectrum, and it’s not right to just dismiss them just because they don’t experience things the same way as ‘normal’ people.

Have I mentioned before that I love Kang Tae Oh? I believe so, in My First First Love, Short, That Man Oh Soo and Run On. There’s also still plenty of dramas he’s in that are on my watch list, so I won’t have to say goodbye to him just yet, haha. Boy oh boy, if ever there was a good guy, it’s Lee Joon Ho. I’ve seen so many reviews and comments referring to him as ‘walking Mr. Green Flag’ to show just how perfect he is. I loved how uncomplicated he was, he didn’t have a real backstory or baggage, and he just was instantly drawn to Young Woo, not even bothered that she was autistic. He was just so sweet, always. And so helpful in the cases, as well. He wasn’t just a love-struck puppy either, he really contributed to the show in his own way. I’m really glad they’re going to wait for him to return from military service before they proceed with season 2, because he can’t be left out!

I was really happy to see Kang Ki Young in this drama. As I’ve mentioned before multiple times, I’ve become so used to him being cast as the comic relief role that I sometimes forget what a great serious actor he can be. I’ve seen him in several things, like High Schooler King of Life, Oh My Ghostess, Let’s Fight Ghost, W- Two Worlds, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, the Three Colors of Fantasies series, Tunnel, While You Were Sleeping, I’m Not a Robot, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim? and Wife I Know. With his role as Jung Myung Seok he definitely proved his quality again, not just as a comedy actor, but as a real serious actor. I wasn’t sure what kind of character he would be, but I really liked that he become Young Woo’s mentor and that he was immediately prepared to change his way of thinking as well, he was the first person at Hanbada who put aside his bias about her as a person with ASD to give her chance based on her abilites. I really liked his character and I hope to see more of him in future dramas!

I didn’t know Ha Yoon Kyung from anything yet, but I’ll probably see more performances of her in the future! I really liked her as Choi Soo Yeon, how her character grew as much as the main character, and how she also had to deal with her own issues, both personally as in her career. It was really nice to see her become such a supporting figure to Young Woo, and even though I didn’t like Min Woo I still couldn’t help myself finding it cute if they’d end up together, especially seeing her fight it so much, haha.

Apparently, I know Joo Jong Hyuk from My ID is Gangnam Beauty and Clean With Passion For Now but I can’t remember him from either drama (whoops). I did feel like I’d seen his face before, so I guess that’s why. His character was very interesting in his duality, because I just couldn’t find him sympathetic until the end, but I still kept hoping he would change and I still liked that he would change himself for Soo Yeon. I think he let go of his stupid intentions at the end of the series, but I still am not 100% sure about it. If a second season comes, I would like to see the relationship between him and Soo Yeon deeper, that’ll be interesting to watch! He was kind of the antagonist, the rival that Young Woo wasn’t even aware of, trying to bring her down behind her back. I do like that Young Woo never gave him any kind of attention, even when she found out that he’d been spreading rumors she never fully let it get to her, and she didn’t go all desperate on him why we would do that to her, either. I guess he could only just give up in the end because it wouldn’t make anything better, and I’m glad that’s what he chose to do.

I haven’t seen anything with Joo Hyun Young before, but Geurami was definitely one of my favorite characters in the show. It was nice to see Young Woo having a friend that was so innately different from her and still allowing her to step into her comfort zone. Like, Geurami even occasionally just hugged Young Woo and she let her – that must be a next level of comfortability for her. I liked that we got to see how they became friends and that Geurami always has Young Woo’s back. Also, when she and the pub owner joined them on their trip to Jeju Island, she just made everything better. I cracked up when she started moving to the sounds of the temple ritual while they were supposed to pray, lol. Her eccentricity and casual attitude just softened a lot of the tension in certain situations, and it really helped make things more entertaining and enjoyable. I also found it funny that she had a small crush on Min Woo in the beginning, even though it never turned very serious and she was forced to step back when she saw him and Soo Yeon caught in a gaze this one time, she was just like ‘looking at the way they’re staring at each other, it’s over for me’, lol. I really liked her, hopefully she’ll do more dramas in the future!

I realized I knew Baek Ji Won from Encounter, where she played Park Bo Gum and P.O.’s mother and I remember because I thought she and P.O. looked so much alike, haha. Anyways, I didn’t realize it before because her character was so different there, but I know I was also very frustrated with her character at that time. Here, she was next level frustrated, though. At first I was all like, hell yeah, a female law firm CEO, and she seemed nice enough too when she took in Young Woo at Hanbada, but then her whole rivalry with Tae Soo Mi came out and that she hired Young Woo knowing she was her daughter because no one else would hire her… and then she actually wanted to use Young Woo to get back at Tae Soo Mi. Honestly, I don’t even know what this feud was about, and I don’t even think Tae Soo Mi ever even acknowledged her, like they never actually came to stand face to face or anything, so what was this about, really? I hope they will get in more detail about this in season two, as the ending did not give me the feeling it was over between them. Anyways, I liked how, despite her kind her face can like, there was a darker side to her acting and it made me really notice her for it.
On a side note, I now see she was also in Fight For My Way, Reunited Worlds and About Time and I don’t remember her from those series, so I should really pay better attention.

It’s been a while since I saw Jin Kyung in a drama! I don’t even remember what the last drama was I saw her in, but I know her from Pinocchio, Blood, Oh My Venus, Gogh The Starry Night, Uncontrollably Fond and Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim (season one, still haven’t seen the second one yet). I guess it’s my first time writing a review on a drama with her in it. Despite my dislike for her character, she really blew me away with her acting in this series, especially in the scene when Young Woo revealed to her that she was her daughter. The way her face changed was incredible. I had hoped that that would’ve made her respond differently, especially when she asked Young Woo if she ever resented her for leaving her, but then the next thing she pulled was visit Young Woo’s father and try to get them to move to Boston?! Like, seriously?! She even went as far as to go all, ‘you promised you would disappear, why are you showing your face again’, like WOMAN. He DID disappear, he gave up his entire law career just so you wouldn’t get into any scandals, what gives you the right to come to him with this BS now?! Damn. At least she decided to be a better mom to Sang Hyun than she ever was to Young Woo, but damn. Anyways, in Jin Kyung’s case I’ll just say that, again, if you hated the character, it just means the actor did a good job. And nothing can make me hate Jin Kyung, so there’s that.

I really liked Jeon Bae Soo as Young Woo’s dad. I know him from Fight For My Way, Revolutionary Love, Thirteen But Seventeen, and The King: Eternal Monarch, and in ALL these dramas he played the female lead’s father, lol. He has a really friendly face, and I liked that in this series we also got to see how much he struggled with raising Young Woo as a single father, how hard it must have been for him to raise a daughter that wouldn’t speak or even look at him, and that didn’t like to be held by him. And still, he’s her father, so he can’t get frustrated with her. He still is the single most supporting figure in her life, whether she will acknowledge it or not. I liked his character, also how he got justifiably mad at Han Seon Young and Tae Soo Mi for trying to mess with him and Young Woo, because he just wanted to stay out of that feud, and with good reason. It was sad that he even started considering taking Taesan’s offer to move to Boston, even if it was just to get away from the shit that would hit Young Woo and would make it impossible for her to get another job at a respectable law firm. He had no choice but to let Seon Young take her for the reasons she had because he knew his daughter wouldn’t be able to get such a chance anywhere else. There were some serious layers to his role, he wasn’t just the happy supportive dad, he also got his own backstory explained, and I really felt for him.

Now that I looked it up, I see that I know Choi Dae Hoon from Big, Are You Human Too? and Crash Landing on You, and I guess I remember him mostly from the latter because his face looked really familiar to me (also, I’ve suppressed most of Big since it was just so bad). As I mentioned before, I initially thought he would be a really cool eccentric attorney when he appeared in the first episode, I loved his bickering love-hate relationship with Myung Seok and I had no idea that he would actually be such an insufferable person. Seriously, what DIDN’T this man do that wasn’t bad? He tried to bribe a judge based on connections, he took credit for his employees arguments even after initially dismissing them himself, he left his juniors to the journalists while sneaking away by himself, he screamed at Young Woo for correcting him on his jargon even though later on the judge in court did exactly the same – he just seemed really incompetent at his job in practice. The cases where he defended his client that we get to see, he was constantly slipping up and getting in over his head, and then when his juniors would step up to correct him, he would just get mad at them for challenging his authority, like, seriously man? I had hoped he would be a cool character, but he was one of the most frustrating recurring characters in the whole show. But yeah, I guess that means he also did a good job as an actor, haha. I bet that if he’d been like his first appearance during the entire show, he would’ve been really cool. Now his eccentricity from the beginning kind of stopped making sense to me when he turned out to be such a jerk.

Lastly, I just want to mention that the opening sequence was so soothing but addicting to watch. I never skipped it, purely because it’s so satisfying, even with the happy little music in the background. It just gives such a clean and innocent view of Young Woo’s daily life and how structured it is, from her breakfast kimbap to how she makes her way to work. I also liked the recurring element of whales, orcas and dolphins flying through the air, and how they popped up whenever she had a brilliant idea. It reminded me of that scene from It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, in which they showed the older brother’s excitement through pictures on the street coming to life. He also had ASD, if I remember correctly. The use of whales to add to her perspective and the way she analyzed things and people was very refreshing. I hope that she’ll get to see some whales in real life in the second season, because I was so sad that she and Joon Ho didn’t get to see them when they were in Jeju Island because of their breakup.
Regarding the title, I also want to add that I like how they interpreted the English translation of it. I believe the Korean word ‘isanghan’ can be translated to a variety of words, from ‘strange’ to ‘suspicious’ to ‘unusual’, but many of those words have a slightly negative connotation if you ask me. I think a translation like ‘extraordinary’ fits it much better, because it immediately gives a more positive feel to it, rather than the title referring to the main protagonist as ‘unusual’ or ‘weird’.

With that, I would like to conclude my review, it took me a whole day to write this, haha. I think I’ve now managed to write down the main points I wanted to make about it, and I hope it’s worthwhile to read.
All in all, I found it a very interesting series. I understand the recommendations I got, and although I was prepared to be underwhelmed – as often happens when a series gets overhyped – this wasn’t the case. I find it very impressive how the series was structured, and how, despite its unusual protagonist, it didn’t necessarily became ‘funny’. There’s much to be said about Woo Young Woo’s character, and I get that there may be a funny or amusing aspect about how she was portrayed, but I never stopped taking her seriously. It was fascinating to me how someone with such a handicap would be able to take on such a challenging and representative job as an attorney. It was very insightful to get a different type of look inside the career of a lawyer, even though I’ve seen other law-themed dramas before, but this one still hit differently. I’m very curious what they’ll make of the second season, because I believe it’s been confirmed there will be one. I hope the relationships between Young Woo & Joon Ho and Soo Yeon & Min Woo will be further explored, as well as the origin of the rivarly that Han Seon Young has towards Tae Soo Mi, because that still isn’t clear to me.

All the different cases and the different people and situations featured in those cases just made me realize again how relative everything is. Situations and stories are never black and white, there are so many grey areas and you just have to see who is telling the truth in the end, even after it’s too late. For sure this is a big reason why I’m not that interested in law, because it’s never just about justice, it’s about so much more than that. I liked how this series dealt with all these different cases, and also how there were good and bad ones, and how it wasn’t just about winning a case, but more about becoming aware and learning from your own experiences and mistakes to grow as an attorney, no matter what kind of attorney you wanted to be. To place a person with ASD in such a position seems tricky to me, but I think the writers did a very good job. I haven’t seen any experts or people with ASD react to this, so I can’t say for sure if it’s all entirely accurate, but from the ASD characters I’ve seen portrayed in K-Dramas so far, there are always at least several similar aspects that keep popping up, so I suppose they do have a general idea of certain known symptoms that these people cope with.

I will now go on with my ever growing to-watch list, moving on to a slightly older series from 2018. I hope my reviews remain to be interesting enough to read, I will keep putting my hard work into them! It was nice spending a day on a review again, it’s really felt like a long time since I wrote my last one even though it was within the same month – I’ve just been dealing with a lot of stuff in the meantime, which also caused me to finish the final episodes of this series later than I planned, as I initially went through it quite fast. Anyways, I will keep taking my time to write worthwhile reviews and I’ll be back soon, so stay tuned!

Bye-bee~