Summary
Beyond the Bar continues to work well in Episode 7, with an effective core structure shaping each episode, though a part of me thinks the leads work better platonically, and the office politics threaten to become overwhelming.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think Beyond the Bar works better without a romantic component between the leads. Don’t get me wrong, the dynamic is definitely there, but it’s Episode 7 now, and without any concrete progress in this regard, it’s easy to imagine what the entire season might look like without it. And it looks… fine, really. Hyo-min and Seok-hoon work as friends, as colleagues, as a mentor and mentee, and really, the show functions perfectly well in all of these modes.
There’s a will-they-won’t-they romantic angle between Min-jeong and Jin-woo that could probably suffice, if you really need that kind of thing, but what I enjoy most about this show – which, for what it’s worth, is proving to be remarkably solid, if slightly unremarkable overall – is the case-of-the-week structure and how each individual story informs the arcs of the leads. And you can have that whether they’re romantically involved or not.
The case in this episode involves Alzheimer’s Disease, and since – full disclosure – I have a very close relative who’s dying from the same thing as I type this, its emotional underpinnings hit close to home. But I don’t think I’m being biased in my assessment of its handling, which is characteristically good. Seok-hoon is attracted to the idea of exonerating the sufferer’s husband, Chung-hyeon, who has been arrested for aiding and abetting her suicide. Since his wife, Yeong-sun, didn’t want to become a shell of herself before passing away, she explored the option of an assisted suicide, which is always a touchy subject, and especially tough for Seok-hoon to take on in the midst of a scandal that finds Seok-hoon being targeted by Yullim’s senior advisors after Na-yeon’s new salary and bonus structure is given a predictably tepid welcome.
As ever with assisted suicide, there’s more to consider. Chung-hyeon stands to inherit Yeong-sun’s considerable estate over her brother, who filed the complaint, and was unfaithful to Yeong-sun before she passed. In fact, he requested a divorce right around the time she was diagnosed, but withdrew the request upon seeing the mistake he had made. If nothing else, it’s simply difficult to prove in cases like this that the person who died truly wanted to; that they weren’t manipulated or coerced in some way. This is perhaps why Chung-hyeon being sentenced to a year in prison feels right, not in the sense that he truly deserves it, but in the sense that it’s most representative of how the law works.
Where Beyond the Bar Episode 7 excels is not just in articulating this idea, but in tying it to Seok-hoon’s ongoing character development and his feelings about his break-up with Yeon-a. It’s the outcome of the case that enables him to see a different side of that, but also, more importantly, to feel as if he can now walk away from it.
And, of course, this informs his relationship with Hyo-min, who has less to do here but nonetheless fulfils an important purpose for Seok-hoon. She reiterates that time is the best healer when he opens up about his difficulty letting go of the person Yeon-a used to be, which is genuinely good advice that he’s now in a position to receive. Again, I think this works a bit better than the standard will-they-won’t-they romantic angle, even if there’s still a bit of gushing here and there.
Ultimately, all of this is also playing out against the backdrop of Yullim’s internal turmoil, which is the main aspect of narrative serialization at play, threading through each episode in the margins of each new legal case. I’m less convinced by this – while it works perfectly well, it’s not as interesting to me as the cases themselves, which examine specific legal quandaries in really smart and affecting ways that also develop and inform the characters much more organically. I hope this structure is maintained throughout and the office politics don’t become overwhelming, but we’ll have to wait and see.
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