Summary
By presenting a more intriguing ethical argument in the case of the week, Beyond the Bar feels improved in Episode 10.
Once again I’m confronted with the possibility that Beyond the Bar might be responding to these recaps directly. In the last episode, I complained about the show taking the easy way out of an interesting ethical dilemma; in Episode 10, “Bystander”, a similarly complicated case is instead approached in a much more head-on way. And the romantic connotations of the Seok-hoon/Hyo-min dynamic, which I’ve also moaned about, are brushed aside. It’s a much better episode overall as a result, and better plays to the show’s inherent strengths.
It also has a nice thematic underpinning – the deep psychological effects of bullying, a subject not exactly rare in Korean drama – and effectively splits its time in a dual-case structure, carrying on from the format employed in the previous episode. Splitting the difference works to cover more ground and allow the leads to pursue their own subplots while also developing their relationship in the background. It all works fine.
There’s a personal touch to the case that Hyo-min undertakes in “Bystander”. When a woman named Kim Yeong-mi bludgeons a woman with a rock and then hits her with her truck, killing her, she asks for Hyo-min specifically to represent her due to an apparent connection that Hyo-min can’t recall or explain.
As it turns out, Yeong-mi was relentlessly bullied in school by a group led by her victim, Choi So-yun, and Hyo-min attended the same school and witnessed the bullying first hand. She didn’t recognise Yeong-mi initially since she has changed her name since, but it all comes back to her eventually. And it’s an interesting angle because Yeong-mi is implying that witnesses to bullying – the bystanders of the episode’s title – are in some ways just as culpable as the perpetrators. In Yeong-mi’s mind, Hyo-min, who is now in a position to help her, has a responsibility to do so since she never did in the past.
This is a compelling angle from which to approach an overdone subject. It’s rare that stories about bullying address the mentality of someone who stands by while it happens, or the resentment that victims can feel for those people, which sometimes even outweighs their ire for their oppressors. It implicates Hyo-min precisely because she had nothing to do with it, a unique form of culpability that plays on her mind in interesting ways. And it highlights how people who’re positioned to intervene at the time can be so easily swayed for sometimes the most selfish of reasons.
What it also does is present a scenario in which a person’s actions, while justifiable, are nonetheless still illegal. This is where Beyond the Bar Episode 10 outstrips its immediate predecessor, since that was about essentially getting away with something because everyone was on the same page. Here, Yeong-mi’s guilt is never in doubt, and instead the debate becomes how to appropriately punish someone who did the wrong thing but for a relatable reason. Yeong-mi isn’t inclined to kill anyone else, and she even admits her wrongdoing and is prepared to face punishment for it, but there must be some punishment since civil society doesn’t love the idea of people taking justice into their own hands. It’s decided that two years in prison will just about do it. Some may argue that’s still relatively light given the seriousness of the crime, and thus that Beyond the Bar is still slightly pulling its punches in this regard, but it doesn’t feel like it in practice.
Elsewhere in “Bystander”, we get more development in the matter of Bluestone and Hynic Core, with Na-yeon realising that Mr Ko oversaw the acquisition, and in the romance of Jin-woo and Min-jeong, things get a bit more solidified, although it’s clear them taking the next step isn’t going to just be taken in stride emotionally-speaking. But this stuff admittedly feels supplementary to the core case-of-the-week, which to be fair I’ve said several times is how I prefer Beyond the Bar to operate.
All in all, a welcomely improved episode. Hopefully the showrunners keep reading these.
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