Summary
Beyond the Bar feels pretty familiar in Episode 1, with an opposites-attract lead pairing and earnest interest in the justice system (and its failings), but it needs a little more to truly stand out.
The opening episode of Beyond the Bar is fittingly titled, since it really is an induction; yes, for protagonist Kang Hyo-min, who gets a job at the prestigious Yullim law firm, but also for the audience, who’re being welcomed into another legal K-Drama with its own particular quirks and characteristics. Less of a crowd-pleaser than Extraordinary Attorney Woo, this is slicker, more conventional fare, but the main character’s obvious brilliance and slight underdog status feel familiar in Episode 1, perhaps to the show’s overall detriment.
Though perhaps not. If nothing else, “Induction” teases out a wider, richer story beyond the impressive minutiae of what seems like a brewing case-of-the-week format, so there’s every chance that it’ll become more uniquely character-driven as it goes. Outside of the female and male leads — and the balance in this premiere leans very much towards Hyo-min — there’s little in this regard to grasp onto for now, but there are hints all over the place that there’s much more to these characters than outside appearances suggest. How their particular quirks inform their careers and their interpretations of the legal system and its applications will presumably be a big theme as we go, or at least that’s very much the implication.
It’s an odd-couple story, essentially, though there isn’t a romantic contour yet, and if that emerges, it’ll presumably be a while down the line. But a lot of the drama here comes from how fundamentally different Hyo-min is from her new mentor, Yoon Seok-hoon. Hyo-min is undeniably brilliant but constantly late, easily distracted, and prone to being a maverick, whereas Seok-hoon is famously productive but also immovably rigid in his approach. Around the offices of Yullim, he’s legendary for always arriving and leaving at the same time every day, somehow managing to get everything he needs to get done accomplished within that time.
Seok-hoon applies his own rigorous standards to everyone else, so he can’t stand Hyo-min initially. In her first interview, she’s about 30 seconds late, so he denies her the job outright. It’s only her lingering around in the waiting room on the off-chance, and another of the firm’s senior partners recognising her from an award-winning mock trial in her academic career, that she’s given another shot, and even then, she impresses mainly on the strength of a contrarian approach. She understands the law as written isn’t always fair or logical, and she wants to advocate on behalf of people who have been mistreated by it.
But this involves constantly doing whatever she feels like she needs to do, even if it means disappearing from the office for days at a time and finally showing up with her hair still wet from the shower. Seok-hoon resents this approach but can’t ignore Hyo-min’s abilities, which is the push-pull dynamic a drama like this needs. Episode 1 of Beyond the Bar provides a win for her in a case of gas being illegally siphoned off by a greedy business owner, a scheme she’s able to figure out through attention to detail and an obvious facility for numbers, but they won’t all come so easily.
The romantic lives of the two leads are also explored, but briefly and obliquely. Hyo-min seems to be in a relationship with a guy who’s roughly ten times more committed to it than she is, but there’s no wonder; he only seems to see Hyo-min in terms of her accolades, her parents — one of whom is a famous judge — and her genetics. She’s a means to an end for building his own reputation and siring perfect children, which I’d argue isn’t particularly romantic.
Seok-hoon, meanwhile, is clearly much more lonely than he lets on. Towards the end of the premiere, he sits in his nice but sterile apartment and watches an old home movie of his ex and her dog waking him up. Neither live with him anymore — we even get one of those obligatory fake-out moments when what is clearly a vision of the ex asks him if he misses her; he claims not to — and the circumstances around why that is remain unclear. I suspect it’ll be a work-related thing, but it could be a bit more tragic than that. We’ll have to wait and see.
Anyone halfway familiar with K-Dramas won’t have missed that the show makes it clear Hyo-min is unhappy in her relationship and Seok-hoon is single. Some things are unavoidable. I hope, though, that we start to move in that inevitable direction a bit later, once both characters and the world they inhabit have had a little more time to bed in. First impressions are promising, though, and there’s no reason to suspect that Beyond the Bar won’t have fun things in store. But it might be nice if it lightened up just a tad.
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