Review: Extraordinary Attorney Woo

Yet another enthralling show on Netflix.

This show is a wonderful Korean legal drama that needs more people watching it, discussing it, and learning lessons from it, and makes it apparent, as do so many other shows on Netflix, that Netflix is not dying, boring, etc. There are tons of really entertaining, enthralling stories on it, and this one has surprised me.

This show is a prime example of how to have diversity in a show in a way that isn’t somehow token or feels over the top or shoehorned in. First off, the actress who plays Attorney Woo, her name is Park Eun-bin, deserves all the awards, all of them.

The plot of the show is that Attorney Woo is autistic, and she is the first autistic person in South Korea to have graduated from law school, and not just graduated, but at the top of her class. This show is about her life, getting a job, handling cases, struggling with presenting in front of juries, and navigating the world as someone who has a disability that many people still do not understand, even medical professionals.

The show is actively putting out new eps every week, and I am not completely caught up to where it is but from what I have seen, I am hooked.

I, personally, don’t know someone who is autistic on the same level that Attorney Woo is, and I know autism has a wide spectrum of how it displays and affects people. Attorney Woo has a photographic memory, and she loves the law, and has from an early age. It the early eps you see that her first words were sections of the South Korean Criminal Code.

Her autism manifests in how she moves, her physicality, and interactions with objects, a revolving door utterly stumps her but she can link together obscure parts of the criminal code in ways that help her win cases other attorneys think are unwinnable. She also is very dependent on routine, things like her food choices and her certain pauses and movements she has to perform before entering a room.

What I find very interesting in this show is that while she is autistic, they don’t make the show only about that. The show is technically a legal drama so each episode highlights a different case and how it affects her, how she handles it and how her coworkers, family, and friends support her, learn from her and adapt to her disability.

Yes, she struggles with many things, but they also put her in situations where she shines and the writers and cast do an incredible job of covering a wide range of responses to her with regard to her coworkers and bosses. There are some mysteries as well, like what is the backstory between the female CEO of Hanbada, where Woo works, and Woo’s father.

There is also the mystery of how Woo’s mother died, she has been raised solely by her father, who seems to have gone to law school at one point but had to give up his career to raise his daughter. At least that is the assumption I am working off at this point, since he had stacks of law books in their house that Woo started reading, unbeknownst to him.

What keeps me coming back to the show, is the gentleness of the characters, even the ones who are meant to be mean and the “bad” guys. Unlike a lot of American writing, there isn’t, as of yet, a character that you hate. There are characters that are jerks, sure, but it is not so over the top that you want to punch them.

The earlier episodes show one of the attorneys as one of those less talented, spiteful types but even he starts to come around somewhat and be less of a dick to people as the show goes on. I feel that one of the central themes of this show is and hopefully will continue to be, one of growth and acceptance. I haven’t watched enough K-Drama to know if the genre tends to take a hard turn into ragey angst-filled vibes but I hope this show doesn’t.

I feel that this show could easily be used as a teaching tool to build tolerance and understanding of people with autism, and show how you can adapt yourself to their disability in ways that are mutually beneficial to all sides. Shows like that are rare and we are in desperate need of them.

I do have a few quibbles, and some of them may be because I am not used to K-Dramas but, well, she loves whales. Obsesses over them, which is adorable, but the constant use of whales as a symbol of her getting a great idea gets a bit overdone by the third or fourth ep.

Also, either Korea has a lot of horrible medical examiners or something because in several of the earlier eps the MEs fail to ask even the most basic questions with regards to the victims in the case. I think at times the writers are making others seems a little less clever as a plot point to elevate Attorney Woo’s genius, when that really doesn’t need to happen. That trend seems to disappear in the later eps though.

There is a depth of emotion to the stories and the characters and all the cast do a wonderful job, but the lead manages to pull off portraying a character that has a low emotional IQ in a way that sucks you in and makes you feel all of her emotions. She’s phenomenal!

If you’re looking for a unique take on a legal drama that can also serve as a way to learn about autism and perhaps be watched with children or others to teach them tolerance and acceptance, this is a good one. Go watch it.

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