Kevin C. Wong

TV Series - Extraordinary Attorney Woo s1 (2022) [+]

Extraordinary Attorney Woo is a South Korean legal drama with 16 hour-long episodes in season 1. The titular protagonist is Woo Young-woo (Park Eun-bin), recently graduated from the top university and now a junior lawyer at the prestigious Hanbada firm.

Woo is also autistic so the themes are about how she, her coworkers, and others deal with her disability. Woo brings a photographic memory and a love of whales to her work but at times she lacks empathy and social awareness. She does quickly win over her boss, senior attorney Jung Myung-seok (Kang Ki-young), and forms a stronger bond with former classmate Choi Su-yeon (Ha Yoon-kyung) who is also in Jung's team. Unfortunately there's Kwon Min-woo (Joo Jong-hyuk), a fellow junior attorney who resents Woo's rise and is kind of the bad guy in the group.

Finally there's Lee Jun-ho (Kang Tae-oh) in the litigation team, sort of a fixer/legwork guy who is often attached to the team on cases. Lee is quite attracted to Woo though it takes her a long time to realize this. Then it's an awkward relationship as she tries to be a good girlfriend but doesn't know how. Their relationship has ups and downs throughout the season and a highlight of the series.

Every episode has a court case and almost all of the cases last one episode. It kind of follows the format where the team goes in and starts arguing the case and there's a setback that they have to solve during the break before the next day's court session (these are big cases so they take several days). There's investigation and interviewing people and negotiating and usually Woo ends up connecting a few facts to achieve the breakthrough needed.

This is an entertaining series even watching with subtitles.