By: Cameron Tyo
May 16th, 2024
Spoiler Alert: This review could contain mild spoilers for the show “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”
Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a heartwarming legal drama with romantic comedy elements sprinkled throughout. The show ran for sixteen episodes on ENA and was the highest-rated drama for ENA and in Korean cable television history. Later, it became available on Netflix, where many people outside Korea, including myself, watched the show.
The show follows the first autistic attorney of Korea Woo-Young-Woo (Park Eun-bin), as she navigates through hardships and prejudices that she faces while in the courtroom, investigating, or from her own peers but also the amicable bonds she gains from her quirky nature, creative ways of thinking, or her love for whales more or less, etc which gravitate people towards her.
Many cases are shown throughout the show, civil and criminal, and often, while Young-woo is representing her clients, she shows the genius side of her autism, whether it be by being able to point out the exact articles and paragraphs of where certain rules of law are located due to her exceptional photographic memory or thinking outside the box of how to help their clients when all things seem at a lost. She also learns what it means to be an attorney.
This is the show in a nutshell.
There are many characters whom Young-woo interacts with during her time at the Hanbada firm. You have Choi Su-yeon (Ha Yoon-kyung), who was a friend of Young-woo during their time in university, Kwon Mi-Woo (Joo Jong-hyuk), who eventually becomes a rival of sorts to Young-woo as he is upset that she is one-upping him which causes him to do anything in his power to be better than her even if these things may seem immoral, Jung Myung-seok (Kang Ki-young), the senior attorney of Hanbada, and Lee Jun-ho (Kang Tae-oh) who works for litigations and ends up falling for Young-woo. These interactions range from hilarious to severe. Bonds become closer as they work on cases together and learn more about each other.
You have interactions between Young-woo’s dad, Woo Gwang-ho (Jeon Bae-soo), and her high school friend, Dong Geu-ra-mi (Joo Hyun-young), which also lead to sad and sentimental moments.
I will always have the greeting “Woo to the Young to the Woo, Dong to the Geu to the ra-mi” stuck in my head.
I want to talk more about the acting quickly. I thought Park Eun-Bin did a great job portraying someone with autism. Oftentimes, she would feel unsure if what she was doing was right when it came to her uncontrollable outbursts to correct people without trying to be mean. She showed the difficulties people with autism could potentially face while in the workplace. The acting never felt overdramatized for the sake of being so.
Park-Eun-Bin’s character isn’t the only one to be shown on a spectrum or with a mental disability, as it should be called.
Because of how these other disabilities or people on a higher level of the autism spectrum are represented and the interactions between normal people, the show did a good job of purposefully not risking representing these people in a bad light. The show realistically portrays how these people can be seen in a negative light, though. It wasn’t scared of doing so.
I liked the chemistry between Park and Kang Tae-oh. He portrayed a person who was able to identify the signs of autism and comfort Woo-young when she was clearly uncomfortable or distressed. He truly loves seeing her intelligence shine through her and her determination to pursue the law despite the prejudice she faces between her own employers as well as the people she goes up against in court.
I also like the other work relationships shown throughout the show, which keeps it fresh. Yoon-Kyung, who plays Choi Su-yeon, sort of acts as Woo-young’s guide outside the courtroom, trying to make her become less socially awkward, while Jong-hyuk plays the exact opposite role, often becoming annoyed by how Woo-young does her work. There is not necessarily a villain in the show, but he is often the bitter rival who tries to get in her way of succeeding in life, which, considering the legal field is so cutthroat, makes sense.
I also like the relationship shown by Jeon Bae-soo. He plays an overprotecting yet caring father to his daughter, knowing what she’s been through as a young kid—things she doesn’t even know about.
It is the same with Hyun-yong, who plays Geu-ra-mi, who often encourages Woo-young to say and do new things in the office to achieve certain goals in life.
While the main plot shows how Woo-young deals with prejudices as she works as a rookie attorney at Hanbada, you have smaller sub-plots that relate to the main plot. I’m not going to mention these plot points much, as they could lead to potentially bigger spoilers. However, the subplots have almost the same significance as the main point, and their resolution leads to the end of the finale of the main one.
I thought that the show was paced really well. Almost every episode has Woo-young tackling a new case, whether it be fraud, copyright infringement, scams, kidnapping, etc. During these cases, new information is revealed, some shocking and others not so shocking, while the main and supporting characters form greater bonds with each other.
Since the episodes are similar in structure, people might feel that the show is a slog to watch, but each case is dealt with in unique ways, and they all don’t end the way you‘d expect them to. The episodes themselves aren’t that long, either. The longest one is only 1 hour and 20 minutes. There was very little to no filler, and if there was, they were traditionally very funny to watch.
I thought the soundtrack was phenomenal. I really enjoyed “Inevitable” by Suzy. Suzy’s soft and bright voice, along with the humming sounds, sounded like angels. The song plays during moments of romance that can be both hilarious and intimate.
The cinematography was also impeccable. The scenes in which the gang got to Jeju Island or just how court scenes are shot show the liveliness and tension one might be feeling in a scenario.
I honestly couldn’t find anything I disliked about the show. There were some subplots I might’ve liked to see talked about more, but the way the story did it touched upon these points a bit.
Overall, I thought this show was very heartwarming. It showed Attorney Woo’s journey through working with Hanbada, who has autism, in a very reflective manner. For the media’s sake, it was mostly done in an honest manner and true to portray how autistic people are portrayed, at least in Korea. It also showed the hilarious and serious scenarios she would get herself into due to how she acted because of her quirks. If you like legal dramas or rom-coms, I think anyone should give this K-Drama a chance to watch. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed, and with a season 2 announced, there is even more content to look forward to if you end up enjoying it.