What is the worst thing about Extraordinary Lawyer Woo Young-woo?

The drama’s worldwide audience.

I am not the first person to make this claim. A Twitter account @beingjanee_ has said similar things…but for reasons that are very different than my own. Although, hers are definitely worth a gander.

The audience response to this drama took a specifically negative turn at its mid-point. Following episode 7 and 8, there were so many complaints about the “legal cases” and how the audience “didn’t like” them. Yet, let me ask you: are viewers supposed to “like” the cases? They represent shitty moments in peoples’ lives. So, whether one “likes” them or not may be a rather inappropriate question. There were also charges that the cases weren’t interesting. I suppose that is debateable but I suspect that in some regards, they were unsettling and closure was difficult to find so that could be read as “boring”…I guess. Yet, justice (where it exists) by its very nature is rarely a climactic triumph or a dismal loss but usually something in the middle that is for the most part exhausting and incomplete. Yet, I feel that the the audience of this drama wants to witness this imagined triumph or defeat and insists on linking the character’s “growth” to these narratives.

But she’s a lawyer. This is her job. And she’s a competent one at that which means she is highly sought out. This means that she is going to have to represent guilty people and screw over innocent ones at times. And not every case is going to “change” her. These things make the drama even more difficult to swallow if the audience is looking for a pure moral and innocent hero to hold up the sanctity of the law. Yet, the fact that there are demands that she use the law to be some sort of saviour is exactly what contributes to this character’s infantilization (there are other things about the show that do this as well but I think they have been examined by others). I think a good legal drama should represent the messy complications of life, or at the very least, demonstrate how two things can be true at the same time. When this drama tried to this, people rejected it.

For instance, in episode 7, I saw a lot of commentary about how it was inappropriate to portray the parents of the kidnapped students as “selfish”. Yet, I don’t think that is what the drama did. The drama portrayed that particular set of parents who were invested in that particular type of education as selfish. And they were.  Also, here’s the thing: if being a parent means that you are not selfish…then why is the world so fucked up? Because the population of the planet is made up of a lot of parents. Could it be that maybe some parents don’t actually want the world to be a more equitable place and instead only want their child to have advantages in an inequitable one? Was that maybe the point of the episode? Like I fully recognize that kidnapping someone is not liberating them in any circumstance precisely because it is based on deceit and that is why that dude had to go to jail. His actions were punishable, but his point was still legitimate. Two things can be true.

Or the following case where a member of the disabled community had to negotiate her autonomy and desires while being trapped between a predatory volunteer (he clearly was given the way he spoke to Woo Young-woo so casually) and an overbearing mother. Even more unnerving is the fact that within the courtroom itself, the woman was defined by other peoples’ assumptions and fetishes to create legal narratives that I agree are limited and unfair…but it is also a reality that the show was trying to be critical of. For instance, there are very few people in Canada who get a fair shot in a trial scenario outside of rich, white men and women…precisely because most lawyers are also rich, white men and women. It is a closed system that is created to protect certain people and ostracize and penalize others. The law works for very few people in a robust way and I am sorry if this reality makes the audience uncomfortable. But actually, I’m not. I’m not particularly concerned if the audience’s consumption of another’s pain was interrupted by nuance. Or that these episodes didn’t provide the “dopamine fix” (as my kdrama bff calls it) derived from clearcut heroes and villains that they were hoping for. There will be people who dislike My Liberation Notes because the lead was an addict but…you need to deal because people are inherently imperfect (he’s also super handsome so people are more forgiving). Properly constructed characters contain multitudes. If you are not into this kind of complexity, go watch A Business Proposal then. There are other options. One can’t expect that same thing from every drama they watch, and herein, lies the greater problem.

These episodes got me wondering about some chicken and egg questions that I often have bumping around in my head. Firstly, have audience demands and reactions to dramas led to the creation of redundant conservative cultural production? Or is pop culture just generally conservative thereby disciplining audiences to expect simplified stories that they can project all their desires onto? In the case of this drama, I think the answer is obviously both. The result of these conservative desires and approaches to creative projects is that a neurotypical audience gets to consume a character with autism in a very limited way without the complications that pursuing and enacting justice (for the character herself and the people she represents) actually entails.

In the case of the commentary, I feel like the audience expects the drama to “come to them” without the responsibility of actually having to engage with the culture being produced. I understand that cultural production is also about escapism and relaxation but art is also about pushing boundaries or at least asking questions. Can’t a drama do both? I wonder if the next time one isn’t enjoying a show, one could ask if the drama is at fault for the dissatisfaction felt or if it is that one hates the feeling of being challenged of having to negotiate depth? To me, the audience reaction to this drama demonstrates how much people love consuming “difference” until it makes them uncomfortable; then they discard it or demand something that suits them and is spoonfed to them, and frankly, this scares me. 

I enjoyed the drama at first even though I was skeptical of its merits, particularly the representation of autism and the conflation of morality and justice. It is also deeply flawed and it is perfectly reasonable that it has engendered some criticism. I really don’t love this drama anymore because it is too all over the place. Part of this is the responsibility of its writers and producers because in some ways, it is utterly reductive in character development (much more research should have gone into the lead portrayal) and conflict, but I also think it is trying to engage with an audience (though not very well) that isn’t really interested complicated ideas….despite their protestations. The plot needed to stick to a vision instead of trying to convince people to “like” it or [shudder] heal from it.  I think in the end, it will rely on the construction of straw men villains, a ham-handed illness inserted for filler, a mean mommy and a boring love story so the main audience can enjoy their virtue signalling in overdrive. I think this drama was some great potential squandered.