My excitement for every new episode often feels more like anxiety. As I wait for the Netflix upload, I feel antsy, almost as if the usual mindless habit of reading through summaries to know what would happen in a story beforehand becomes a compulsion to be addressed instead. This is this strong urge to scroll through Twitter to get glimpses of the latest episode.
Yet I know that I do not want to do that. Not this time. I want to have a chance to experience the next chapter of this extraordinary story for the first time. I want to not know how the case would wrap up or what personal developments the characters would encounter. I want to witness those instead, to experience the story in the most vulnerable state of not-knowing.
Tonight, I succeeded with episode 8.
Granted, I did not have the time to browse through Twitter or elsewhere for updates. My mind as well is simply too all-over-the-place to acknowledge the anxious compulsion or to remember that I have a phone which would have answers to possible questions. Hence, I rewatched episode 7 and then continued to episode 8 without any other workable thoughts—
Except for some ideas I have had after seeing the previews for episode 8, but basically, at the point of watching, I was simply a nonparticipating entity in the EAW universe, anxiously waiting, anxiously experiencing.
The anxiety never leaves even as the latest episode starts playing. The feeling from having to wait would transform into a sort of anticipation that both wishing for certain things to happen but at the same time expects instead that whatever unexpected development there would be is for the better. There is another anxiety there: the desire to want everything to turn out for the better, to have conflicts be solved sooner than later, to have only the good things and none of the unnecessary-yet-inevitable evils that are present in the world outside the show as well (the “real world” as they say).
In my mind, I am fully aware of the philosophical and literary values of conflict. It is the essence of stories, of growth, of existence itself—but the mind can only control the physiological and emotional to certain extents.
So I watched: anxious as another issue that unfairly (but realistically) challenges the main character is developed, anxious still as that issue gets address, and then again as one bomb gets dropped after another. Even as some scenes are presented more lightheartedly, the nervous anticipation is there.
Then as the story progresses, everything just turns into a homogenous sort of worry: that the episode would end soon and there are still so many things I want to see.
The week’s case had been wrapped up pretty cleanly but like the previous episodes, there is something about every ending that feels so painfully unsatisfying in the best way possible. I wish this were a two-hour episode format. It hurts that I have to wait yet another week to know more. It’s greed. I am curious and greedy (but there is nothing to be done except to wait).
The next episode teasers are part of the struggle too. So many things happen in one episode but the teasers! Distract me. I want to know what happens next before I try to process everything that has already happened thus far. Youngwoo and Junho together are so cute (especially with how Junho is behaving in the teaser!) that I had forgotten all the thoughts I had while watching. I just… want to see them together for longer… now… right now.
Ah—
I didn’t know if I felt sad about the Mother situation as I thought about episode 8 before watching. The preview showed another glimpse of what could have been a lovely harmonious relationship between the two, but the 27-year gap is complex bridge to build, if anyone would even be interested in doing so. Episode 8 clarified most of my thoughts on this, and by that I mean what I would want to happen.
The show is at the halfway mark and yet its so mindfully written that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to know what would happen next. I mean, some things are obvious. Just a few more scenes with Tae Sumi made it clear that she’s a central figure to Woo Youngwoo’s personal life. The end of episode 6 puts the fact in all-caps, boldface, and the largest font size, but I am willing to bet no one would have guess when it would be revealed in the show itself.
And I love how they did. Anticlimactic! It was anticlimactic but followed by a major drop (heh) which kept the tension running even as one mystery gets uncovered. And if it was not enough to know of all the pertinent facts about this mystery aspect, the personal drama gets connected back to the case at hand. One could have expected it, but the watching the show is too riveting of an experience that one would not have the space to expect.
It is like being on a rollercoaster: you know where the twists and turns are going to be but that does nothing to the experience itself. You would be better to have joined the ride without knowing anything at all. It is all the same because the experience of the ride itself is that captivating.
“Extraordinary Attorney Woo Youngwoo” drops a lot of bombs in an anticlimactic matter that just… works. I have yet to process how it works. It just does. They tell you things when you least expect it and when you look back, it was obvious. That just made it more impactful.
Words from Youngwoo’s dad in episode three finds another application here: the answers are obvious, but executing them is where the true difficulty lies.
Then there is Kwon Minwoo hiding behind criticism and anonymity. One way to look at it: he feels powerless, probably from the time of growing up and still as he had already gotten accepted into the adult world of work (maybe even more so), seeing WYW exacerbated his insecurities (she’s amazing, everyone gets it), so he bullies her with the “truth” and when that isn’t enough, he manufactures some power for himself by going anonymous.
Why people would let themselves judge another person with the words of someone they do not even know is another matter altogether.
So that’s two: there is Kwon Minwoo who is desperately trying to pin all his insecurities onto one individual who is minding their own business, and then there are the people who get swayed by random people on the Internet with ulterior motives, maybe pain and more insecurities, they hid together with their names and faces.
This is not the first time they showed the effects of “online discussions”. What could have been an opportunity for humans to share in their humanities through technology has been becoming a way to do the exact opposite. Does anonymity online really only bring out the worse in people (Lanier’s “10 Reasons for Deleting Social Media” is in mind)? There is not black-and-white answer, I know. It is just frustrating. This time of “post-truths” supposedly where it doesn’t matter the facts or how these facts should be properly comprehended as people can simply believe whatever and they do so haphazardly.
Then again, there are people like Choi Suyeon. There is hope.
I love Choi Suyeon and Dong Geurami. True friends: would hug you whether you like it or not, would shout at you when you need the scolding (and other people need to hear for their own scolding as well), but all these with the purest intentions without losing realism. Or something like that. It is hard to explain why they are good friends based on the things they do. Those things only describe something beyond their actions.
And then Junho. Once again he takes over the next episode’s teaser.
It will be another week, I guess?
How this show keeps getting better and better I have no idea but it does.