Episode 2 of Extraordinary Attorney Woo starts with a big marriage celebration. Only, the bride gets distracted and in doing so, steps on her dress, which slips down and… oh my goodness! Scandal! The whole room falls to stunned silence, as this woman’s back is shown off to reveal a tattoo of Guanyin Bodhisattva. More on that later!
This makes the mainstream news too, which Woo Young-Woo and her father end up seeing. Anyhow, Gwang-Ho contemplates whether Young-Woo will ever get married but for Young-Woo, she’s busy with work and is far more interested in the mating rituals of whales than humans.
At work, the father of said bride, Kim Jeong-Gu, shows up. He’s livid about what’s happened and wants to sue the hotel for damages. He wants 1 billion won from Daehyeon Hotel. It’s quite the hefty amount, especially as the hotel are even offering to give a refund for the marriage and a complimentary voucher too. That’s something Myeong-Seok is quick to point out, given the hotel are not actually acting unreasonably here.
Myeong-Seok brings this case to the rest of the team, and reinforces how difficult this is going to be to try and get 1 billion in damages. The thing is, is this really Daehyeon Hotel’s fault?
Well, Kwon Min-Woo and Choi Soo-Yeon are tasked with going undercover, trying on a wedding dress while also broaching the subject of dresses and the issues arising with the calamitous wedding.
Young-Woo heads off with Min-Soo where they talk to the bride, Kim Hwa-Yeong. She mentions her tattoo of Guanyin Bodhisattva. Apparently the wedding dress was loose when she first tried it on and so the hotel staff used pins to try and tighten it. As for the guestlist, that was all handled by her father and it appears none of Hwa-Yeong’s acquaintances were invited.
“Do you love your husband?” Young-Woo suddenly asks. She’s noticed that none of the pictures of her husband are actually around the house, and she’s even removed her wedding ring. This would seem to indicate that it could well have been a planned wedding and not one made out of love.
Meanwhile, Choi heads out with Jun-Ho, who reveals that Young-Woo has been excitedly chirping about whales for a while now. Su-Yeon ends up with a bad stomach, leading to a big ol’ fiasco as Young-Woo brings her new trousers to wear in the female toilets. However, Su-yeon isn’t able to go to the wedding reservation thanks to her bad stomach. Young-Woo takes her place.
The rookie lawyer memorizes her lines, including that they need to hurry along as she’s expecting.
Meanwhile, Su-Yeon overhears an employee talking in the toilets about how Ju-Hui [one of the employees at the hotel] was fired because of the dress mishap. She lets Jun-Ho know, who in turn quizzes one of the employees, Ji-Hye, about this.
Ji-Hye claims that Ju-Hui has left the country but does agree to testify in court, where she reveals what’s happened. Apparently there was a mix up with the dresses. On the morning of the wedding, Ms. Kim’s dress was actually torn. This was a mistake made by Ju-Hui but with no time to fix it, the staff scrambled for a replacement. The Team Director fired Ju-Hui to try and keep everything quiet but they never expected this to escalate the way it has.
With everything looking grim, and Hwa-Yeong not wanting to marry Jun-Ho, Young-Woo suddenly stands up and decides on a solution to this. Remember the 1 billion won in compensation? Well, Young-Woo brings up how there was more at stake than the marriage itself, there was also the promise of land and business stakes.
Young-Woo is tasked with writing up a statement of opinion for this, which they can then show to both families. This would raise the amount of compensation from 1 billion up to 3.32 billion, at least as a “reasonable” stake of 10% cut from the offered 33.2 billion which would be the appraised worth of the property Hwa-Yeong would have got had the marriage gone through. Jeong-Gu is delighted.
Hwa-Yeong suddenly stands up for herself in court and decides to withdraw the lawsuit. This was actually something Young-Woo gave her advice on when asked earlier on in the episode. It turns out, Hwa-Yeong is actually in love with her friend, as they walk off together hand in hand, while the whole lawsuit is thrown out.
With the case all wrapped up, the team head out together for a meal. Afterwards, Jun-Ho watches as Young-Woo heads home, headphones on. She even brings some seaweed sushi home for her father too.
Young-Woo sits and talks with him about marriage, including how she’d given him the bouquet and wants him to get married too. When Young-Woo heads off to have a shower, her father tries to hold back tears.
The first week of Extraordinary Attorney Woo comes to a close with a great follow-up chapter, even if it does lean a little too far into potty humour. I’m not a massive fan of Su-Yeon being the butt of all the jokes, needing to use the toilet all episode long, but it at least serves a purpose to allow her to eavesdrop on the employees.
However, the rest of the episode is pretty good and the case certainly has an unexpected outcome at the end. The acting in this show is excellent and the individual cases work really well to develop these characters in interesting ways. I’d like to see more from Young-Woo and her father, if I’m being super picky, but there’s lots of time to examine that in more detail across the coming weeks.
For now though, the wedding comes to a pretty satisfying conclusion and it certainly sets a great foundation for the rest of the series. Of course, at the same time there’s always a danger that Park Eun-Bin could overact and play up the autism and as someone who unfortunately doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with this, it’s tough to know if she’s overselling it.
Do let us know in the comments about this though guys. Are you enjoying this? Is Park Eun-Bin overacting? Or is her portrayal of Woo Young-Woo accurate?