Early Access: Why Her E1

E1. Well, consider me cautiously intrigued.

To clarify, I find myself more intrigued by Soo Jae and her personal journey, than by the actual case which forces her to do time as a law professor, for a semester.

I think Show does a decent job of alluding to the fact that Soo Jae isn't as naturally cut-throat as she appears to be, at work.

We see that she'd been a lot more timid, and showing a lot more in the way of "normal" emotions, back when she'd first joined the law firm.

And, in her more "natural state," she'd been treated poorly, and looked down upon, by basically everyone. People being snide behind her back, AND to her face, as we learn this episode.

Show isn't very specific about this, but it's not hard to make the connection that Soo Jae had decided, somewhere along the way, that the only way to survive and succeed, in this dog-eat-dog world, was to throw away any trappings of humanity or conscience.

And, succeed she does.

When we meet her, she's the most successful and most revered and feared partner at TK Law Firm, and, she's completely different from the younger Soo Jae whom we see in flashbacks.

I'm sure this might vary across the board, but the thing is, I don't see her as a bad person.

For one thing, it's arguable that she's just doing her job. A lawyer's job isn't to decide what's right and what's wrong, and who the victim is. That's the purview of a judge.

A lawyer's job is to defend their client to the best of their ability, and it's an altogether very gray arena in which they play, where the guilty can get off scot-free, while the innocent might end up serving time.

That's.. just the nature of the beast, as it were.

And Soo Jae's decided that to succeed, she will have to play by the rules of this gray arena, and do whatever it takes, to win her cases, because those wins are her street cred.

The other thing is, I'm sure that given her disadvantaged starting point (disadvantaged in the sense that everyone looked down on her and wouldn't give her a chance), Soo Jae would have had to work at least twice as hard, to prove herself.

And, along with that, I'm sure she would also have had to be twice as tough, in order to prove herself as a worthy player.

Putting that together, I feel that Soo Jae is simply doing her job, and that includes intimidating the witnesses, clients or opponents, with her words.

Yes, it's not nice, but it's clear that Soo Jae's decided that being nice is a luxury that she can't afford.

And currently, Soo Jae's in a position where she's damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't. For example, when she chooses not to smile, people gossip about it behind her back. And yet, when she chooses to smile, people pick on that and gossip about her anyway.

It's quite an awful environment, really.

Which is why I do appreciate that we get glimpses of Soo Jae's inner struggle, beneath her effortlessly glossy image.

Like that quick scene of her pouring liquor into her tumbler to drink like coffee, when she has a private moment. It's not explicitly laid out for us, but to my eyes, this indicates that drinking is likely part of Soo Jae's coping mechanism.

Because, if she's switched off her true self to this extent in order to survive, surely it's got to show up somewhere, right?

I also think it's important to mention that I feel that Show is on the stylized, melodramatic side of things.

Meaning, I don't think that Show is saying that all these things are occurring in a normal world. So far, I feel like this is more of a stylized, melodramatic sort of world, and that's why we get the high drama sort of flair, not only in Soo Jae's behavior, but in her surroundings as well.

And in this kind of melodramatic story world, and given Soo Jae's bold moves in such murky, unfriendly waters, it's not terribly surprising, that she'd get dragged into a situation where she's accused of causing someone's suicide.

Certainly, we don't know the truth about this situation just yet, and I'm fully expecting that this is something Soo Jae will continue to investigate, in order to claw her way back up the rungs of success.

I'm also expecting (or perhaps hoping?) that Soo Jae's journey will also involve her finding her way back to her humanity, and to her father's dream for her, to be the kind of person and lawyer to whom everyone would open up.

We are still in set-up mode, so I feel like we haven't really met Hwang In Yeop's character, listed as Gong Chan, properly yet, but I expect that we'll find out more about what makes him tick, soon enough.

I have to admit to feeling rather surprised at how Gong Chan appears to have fallen for Soo Jae at first sight.

I dunno; it.. doesn't seem like much to go on? Particularly with the context of everything that Soo Jae's going through?

Still, I'm withholding judgment on this, since it's early days yet, and Show's got lots of time to convince me of a potential connection between Gong Chan and Soo Jae.

All in all, this was a reasonably effective opening episode, in that I feel decently informed of Soo Jae's context, and am feeling sufficiently curious to find out more, and soon.

Next episode notes will be out on: Tuesday, 7 June 2022!

*This show will be covered on the Early Access Plus (US$10) Tier*