Look, I love Park Eun Bin (The King's Affection, Do You Like Brahms?) as much as the next person, but when I read she was going to appear as a brilliant lawyer who is on the autism spectrum, I groaned. The last thing I wanted to see was Park doing her version of Dustin Hoffman as the autistic savant Raymond in Rain Man. When the trailer for Extraordinary Attorney Woo (EAW) popped up on my Twitter timeline, it didn't allay my concerns. There was Park as attorney Woo Young-woo — head tilted, repeating phrases, bobbing her way through a crowd, struggling with a revolving door, brandishing an umbrella like an awkward He-Man. Even though Park's tics weren't as pronounced, it seemed like Raymond's shadow was looming large over her Young-woo.
This is a problem. Ideally, you'd want an actor who is on the autism spectrum to play this role, but that's perhaps too much to expect from a mainstream television serial, even if it is a K-drama (though let's not forget, Our Blues did have an actor with Down's syndrome in its supporting cast). Let's say we accept that the show needs a star in the lead role. It's still worth questioning how EAW shows autism. Hoffman's performance in Rain Man went a long way in popularising the (baseless) idea that all autistic people wobble when they walk, speak like automatons, and have obvious tics. You'd think that 34 years later, popular entertainment would have broadened our worldview. After all, there are many entertainers on our screens who have been diagnosed with autism. Hannah Gadsby, Jerry Seinfeld, Anthony Hopkins and Dan Ackroyd are all famous and on the autism spectrum. The Netflix show Love on the Spectrum — about autistic people looking for romance —shows there's a range of behavioural quirks that those with autism may display (if you haven't seen Love on the Spectrum, you must. It's one of the sweetest and most heart-warming shows you'll ever see). With all this at her disposal, Park chose to keep Young-woo true to stereotype and that, for me, was reason enough to avoid EAW.
Yet here I am, two weeks later, not just hooked on this K-drama, but also loving Young-woo despite all my (valid) reservations.
A lot of the credit for EAW goes to writer Moon Ji-won. The show is a courtroom drama in which each episode is about a different case and features Young-woo as a genius, rookie attorney. EAW wants the audience to understand that Young-woo's autism is both her strength and vulnerability. Without it, she wouldn't be the lawyer that she is and neither would she have to fight the prejudices that she does. Each episode is designed to reduce you to a blubbering mess of emotions, but as you sniffle, you also learn about Young-woo, just as she learns about herself. She makes new friends, grapples with self-doubt, develops a crush, and even discovers a rival. The stories that EAW tells through the court cases are often devastating, like the one in which a severely autistic young man is accused of murdering his brother. In one episode, Young-woo unwittingly helps a young woman come out to her homophobic father. In another, through the story of a browbeaten man who is conned by his brothers, EAW reminds the audience that one needs to stand up for themselves, even if it's family that you're up against. Last week, Young-woo tried her damnedest to defend a North Korean defector, who had been charged with assault.
At one point in the episode, Young-woo asked the North Korean defector why she'd evaded the law for a few years before surrendering herself. The other woman replied that she wanted to spend time with her daughter and make sure the little girl had memories that she could hold on to while her mother served a prison sentence. Young-woo's own story offers a poignant contrast. She has a photographic memory and can remember every legal clause that exists, but she has no memory of her mother who left Young-woo and her father for reasons unknown (so far). It's yet another example of K-dramas subtly suggesting North Koreans may value emotional relationships more than South Koreans who are focused on wealth and acquiring markers of success. We saw a similar parallel drawn in Crash Landing on You, where a South Korean business mogul — who has barely any connections with her family or any friends — discovers a community while stranded in North Korea.
EAW's writing is excellent and its supporting cast is fantastic, but the heavy lifting in the show is being done by Park, whose performance of oddness is rich with tenderness, sensitivity and humour. She is able to lift Young-woo out of the clichés surrounding autism despite her performance being rooted in those very same clichés. As Young-woo, Park holds her body with a certain tension that suggests awkwardness and makes you want to protect this peculiar, beautiful woman who relates more to whales than humans. For Young-woo's voice, Park has found an even pitch that despite its flatness, sounds richly emotive, particularly when she's delivering punchlines in a comedic setup. But it's in the moments of stillness, when Young-woo is quietly trying to decode the world around her and her place within it, that Park really shines. In a recent interview, Park said that she rejected the role of Young-woo multiple times because she was afraid and didn't want her performance to "hurt others' feelings". Director Yoo In-shik waited a year for Park because he was convinced she was the right person to play the role. Watching EAW, you can see why.
This is a show that requires sensitivity from its audience and as it gains in popularity, there are already people trying to exploit EAW's buzzworthiness. Instead of appreciating how the drama emphasises the need for society to be more flexible about what it considers normal, there are parodies of Young-woo gaining virality in the Korean internet. As far as the mimics are concerned, their performance is just as authentic as Park's since neither (as far as we know) is on the autism spectrum. This is a shame because Park has managed, so far, to portray Young-woo in a way that makes us care about her, rather than laugh at her. Let's hope the story sees Young-woo and Park go from strength to strength.