K-drama midseason recap: Extraordinary Attorney Woo – drama series about lawyer with autism will give you all the feels

The gift that keeps on giving, word-of-mouth hit Extraordinary Attorney Woo continues its ratings climb, with viewers glued to their screens as they follow the legal and romantic adventures of intrepid autistic lawyer Woo Young-woo (played by Park Eun-bin).

Providing a compelling balance of colourful episodic stories and an overarching narrative that is both heart-rending and heart-stopping, the show has gone from strength to strength and charmed a global audience.

Boasting many sterling attributes, including a sensational lead turn from Park and a breathtakingly sweet central romance, the show operates at the cross-section of legal drama and human interest story.

While the show unabashedly wears its heart on its sleeve, it would be criminal to write it off as heartwarming fluff.

Wading into tricky moral territory, this story has been even-handed in its legal stand-offs and it is not afraid to challenge its audience with contrasting sympathies.

This is a legal drama where our lead protagonists sometimes represent the wrong people, and do not always win their cases.

The most complex of these individual cases is surely the most recent one seen in episode 10. Young-woo witnesses detectives chase and apprehend a suspect on the subway.

She embarrasses the officers by pointing out the illegal manner of their arrest, compelling them to read the suspect his Miranda rights and state the charge for which they are arresting him.

Now it is Young-woo’s turn to be flustered – the man is charged with the “quasi-rape of a disabled person”. The Hanbada Law Firm for which she works takes on the case, but it soon becomes clear that they may be on the wrong side of the moral trenches.

The man claims that his sexual encounter with a woman, who possesses a mental disability, was consensual.

Furthermore, he maintains that they love each other. The prosecution, and particularly the girl’s mother, strenuously refute that notion.

The man is revealed to have a history of taking advantage of women with disabilities. Young-woo almost walks off the case, but remains on the team when the victim tells her privately that she loves the man, that their sexual encounter was consensual, and that she was forced by her mother to say otherwise.

Yet when the woman takes the stand, Young-woo does not get the testimony she expects, and the truth about their relationship becomes even more elusive.

This is an especially confusing case for Young-woo, as it mirrors her current private circumstances.

She and Hanbada colleague Lee Jun-ho (Kang Tae-oh) recently confessed that they like each other and they are awkwardly (and adorably) trying to transition to the dating phase of their relationship.

Young-woo has autism spectrum disorder and, while Jun-ho’s intentions towards her appear to be perfectly genuine, it’s not clear to either what a relationship between them would look like.

Through her case, Young-woo learns the hard way that the world may take a dim view of their unconventional relationship, but also that the meaning of words like love and dating could be interpreted differently in a couple comprising neurotypical and neurodivergent partners.

Young-woo received an even bigger personal shock a week earlier when she went head- to-head with Tae Su-mi (Jin Kyung), the CEO of the powerful Taesan Law Firm, during the two-part Sodeok Neighbourhood trial.

In this David-vs-Goliath case, the Hanbada Law Firm helped the leaders of the Sodeok neighbourhood petition the government to stop a highway being built straight through their district.

Young-woo is awed by the cool Su-mi and, after seeing her in action, Su-mi is also impressed with Young-woo’s unique abilities. She even offers her a job at her firm.

But when Young-woo’s father, Woo Gwang-ho (Jeon Bae-su), learns of this he finally comes clean about where she came from. Su-mi, though she does not know it yet, is Young-woo’s mother.

When Young-woo goes to visit Su-mi, who thinks she’s coming about the job offer, she asks her mother if she recognises her.

In the show’s most heartbreaking scene, Young-woo reveals their connection. At the end of their difficult conversation, Su-mi asks Young-woo if she resents her. Her response? “It was nice to meet you.”

Meanwhile, fellow lawyer Kwon Min-woo (Joo Jong-hyuk) has steadily grown to become the real villain of the show. He is not a monster, merely a recognisable and prosaic kind of antagonist, which makes him all the more effective.

He is a thin-skinned office rival who resents the attention Young-woo receives, and his resentment steadily morphs into hatred after he learns of her connection to Hanbada’s CEO, Gwang-ho’s former law school classmate, and eventually to Su-mi, whose bid for the post of justice minister in the South Korean government would be jeopardised if news of her secret daughter ever got out.

Among the many other highlights of the show has been a hilarious episode featuring Bang Gu-ppong, the self-appointed “Commander-in-Chief of the Children’s Liberation Army”.

Played by D.P. star Koo Kyo-hwan in a ridiculously entertaining guest role, Gu-ppong is a delightful creation who balks at the world of adults.

He makes a mockery of the court with his bizarre legal name, which “makes children laugh and adults angry”, and when asked to confirm simple things like his address, he responds “in children’s hearts”.

Only three weeks remain of Extraordinary Attorney Woo and this reviewer is already dreading saying goodbye to the summer’s most uplifting character.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is streaming on Netflix.