One Dollar Lawyer: Episode 11
by missvictrix
With our penultimate episode comes a wake-up call for our one dollar lawyer, and a rift in the team that he didn’t know how much he needed.
EPISODE 11 WEECAP
Before we get to the very tense steak knife moment, we back up a bit in time to see Moo-jang inserting himself into Ji-hoon’s investigation. He takes advantage of being mistaken for a waiter (which was lol) to do some sneaking around. Between Moo-jang’s spying and Mari’s chaebol connections, we learn that this evil dude is CHA MIN-CHEOL, once secretary of the JQ Group chairman, and now the CEO of Cayman Fund, which basically screams money laundering scheme.
Ji-hoon, we learn, dropped the knife, and instead went to the restroom to douse himself with cold water, as one does. But after he reappears on the scene, we get the reveal of our big bad CEO (cameo by Joo Seok-tae who is basically the eternal creepy bad guy). Ji-hoon knows immediately this is the man behind his father’s death, and bids 100 million won for a dinner with him. Ji-hoon can sure throw money around when he needs to.
That night, though, he stakes out Min-cheol, and they quickly go from heated stand-off to life or death fight. Min-cheol pulls a knife, but Ji-hoon has been hiding some seriously stellar combat skills and he easily overpowers Min-cheol. But when he gets the knife in his hands, Ji-hoon is this close to murdering the man. He’s only stopped by the memory of Joo-young, and he tells Min-cheol: the woman you murdered just saved your life.
For a short scene, it was not only really well shot, but it brought a massive wave of repercussions for Ji-hoon. He calls off his 100 million won dinner, and then, in an odd moment in the office with Moo-jang and Mari, he takes off his sunglasses and puts them on her. The question he leaves her with is: what would you do if the person you most respected did an unthinkable evil. Mari thinks he’s referring to his father; we know he’s referring to her grandfather. But it’s the sunglasses exchange that’s more powerful than the dialogue here. It’s as if Ji-hoon is offering her the protection and cover he himself needed to get through a horrible time in his life.
With that, Ji-hoon disappears. Moo-jang and Mari go from outrage to depression, and while we watch them mourn his disappearance (and keep up the office and feed the fish), we learn that a year has gone by.
The two speculate that perhaps Ji-hoon went to France since his French was so good, and sure enough we see him reading a book in a cafe and sipping an espresso. But it’s all a fakeout of the show — and touché on that – Ji-hoon is still in Seoul. Sadly, the one-year time jump wasn’t also the show playing with tropes. A year really did go by, and we have no idea why.
We know very little about what Ji-hoon has been doing, but when he offers free legal services to a village community center, he gets some information on a JQ Group pharmaceutical case, and he’s pulled back into the action as easy as one-two-three. Cue the theme music and the curling iron.
Winning Moo-jang and Mari back over, though, is a different story entirely. Mari spots him in the prosecution office and literally screams across the building at him and later pummels him with a beautiful bouquet. Moo-jang is no better, running up as if to hug his old boss, but punching him instead. It’s all very funny, but these scenes rely heavily on sound effects to up the comedy, and without any story behind it, I find I’m not laughing at all.
The rest of the episode consists of Ji-hoon trying to win his two people over again — Moo-jang is easy, but Mari not so much (despite the tears she’s been crying, and the successful but ultimately unsatisfying year she’s spent working for Baek Law Firm).
In a rare moment of honesty, Ji-hoon tells the two of them what it is that made him leave: he came dangerously close to murdering the man who killed Joo-young. As expected, our ragtag crew still love and understand our one dollar lawyer, and they vow to help him punish Min-cheol and co. appropriately (i.e., legally). So basically, we end this episode exactly where we started it. Which leads to my brief rant.
Why did we even need this episode? One can argue we needed it more than the car depot episode, but at the end of the day, it feels like the assistant writers were like: Okay, we have two episodes left to end this thing all of a sudden. How are we going to make the audience feel the gravity of the final showdown when we’ve mostly used levity to get our characters to this point? This is how, in my head, they decided on the time jump — nothing like a time jump to give gravity and weight (or is that wait) to an important plot point.
And next week, it seems, there’s a heck of a lot to sweep up: the indictment of Min-cheol; the reveal of the truth around the death of Joo-young and Ji-hoon’s father; the takedown of JQ Group’s evil CEO; the hopefully-not-a-twist that Grandpa Baek is also evil; Mari’s reaction to her grandfather’s involvement; and then whatever the heck they’re going to do with Min-hyuk, his father, and Prosecutor Na. I want to leave this drama a satisfied customer, but I’m a little doubtful they’ll be able to wrap all that up in an hour’s time. This might be another drama to add to the annals of: fell apart due to last minute script rewrites.
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One Dollar Lawyer: Episode 11
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily
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