The Law Cafe: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by DaebakGrits

It’s time to say goodbye to our wacky law cafe lawyers and baristos, but like all morally guided heroes and heroines fighting for justice, our characters must face off against the villain before they find their happily-ever-afters. And given our bad guy’s flair for the dramatic, he’s not going to go down quietly.

 
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP

Since last week’s penultimate episodes ended with Jung-ho on bended knee offering up a diamond engagement ring to Yuri, it’s fitting that our final theme-o’-the-week is focused on the ups and downs of marriage — or, more specifically, the downs. And to kick off this particular motif, Yuri rejects Jung-ho’s marriage proposal.

Although Yuri — in true Yuri fashion — serves up several logical rationales for turning down his proposal (e.g., it’s rushed, divorce rates, etc.), her two main reasons for rejecting him are rooted mostly in emotion. For one, she doesn’t like the idea of making promises that neither of them can guarantee they will be able to keep (more on that later), and second, she isn’t ready to become a member of his family because, well — *gesticulates wildly at Pyun-woong, who is, at that very moment, trying to commit patricide.*

The final confrontation between Pyun-woong and Byung-wook is rife with Pyun-woong’s usual brand of chaotic unpredictableness, but at the core of everything he says — sincere or disingenuous — is his unremitting childlike desire to be acknowledged by his father. Of course, both father and son are far beyond the point of any sort of reconciliation, but Pyun-woong’s passionate declaration that his only regret is his recent liver donation suggests he’d still carried — until very recently — a genuine lingering hope that his father would acknowledge him as his son following the transplant surgery. And when faced with the reality that he was nothing more than a convenient organ donor to his father, he laments offering up a literal piece of himself in hopes he’d be called “son.”

Well, that or he’s just bummed he didn’t let Byung-wook die of liver failure when he had the chance. So now he has to kill Byung-wook in a more direct manner — by choking him. I’m more inclined to believe his regret stems from the aforementioned strand of hope that Byung-wook crushed, but either way, the end result is Pyun-woong’s attempted murder of his father. Luckily, Byung-wook is rich and has a house full of servants that rush to his aid and ensure he survives the attack, but Pyun-woong evades capture with a little help from his most loyal goon.

While CEO Hwang freaks out, fearing he’s going to be Pyun-woong’s next target, Jung-ho remains surprisingly calm, so we can assume Yuri’s previous requests for space and trust have finally taken root. Instead of clinging to Yuri like a koala, he channels his energy into locating his uncle, but sadly his undercover operation as a gigolo was more amusing in theory than execution. It also turned out to be a waste of time because Pyun-woong was one step ahead of them, and he had already vacated his hideout before Jung-ho and the police arrived.

Eventually, Pyun-woong comes out of hiding on his own terms, but first he kidnaps Yuri’s mother and locks her in a cold storage unit. With instructions that Jung-ho should come alone — or else — Pyun-woong lures Jung-ho into his trap. Desperate to rescue Yuri’s mother, Jung-ho follows Pyun-woong’s instructions and meets him at a church, where he passively allows Pyun-woong to punch him repeatedly until his hands are sore. Meanwhile, Jung-ho is just biding his time until Pyun-woong leaves him alone with his loyal goon. When he gets the chance, Jung-ho convinces the goon to tell him where they’re keeping Yuri’s mother so he can pass along that information to CEO Gil and the search team.

Once Yuri’s mother is located safe and sound, Yuri, Seo-yeon, and an entire police task force corner Pyun-woong on the outside steps of the church. He holds Jung-ho hostage, a knife to his neck, and Pyun-woong is downright gleeful to see Yuri. He explains that his fascination with her stemmed from what he perceived to be hypocrisy. How can she take the law, which has never been on her side, and use it to save others?

Pyun-woong’s entire kidnapping plan was intended to put Yuri into a situation where both her mother and Jung-ho were in trouble, and Pyun-woong wanted to force her to choose between them. He was curious to know how she would react. Would she still try to save them according to the law? Or would she toss aside her ethics when backed into a corner? Thankfully, she didn’t have to make the choice, but Pyun-woong still tries to force her into a difficult position even though his original plan has fallen through. In exchange for Jung-ho, she has to promise she will use the law she loves so much to defend him.

While Yuri pleads for Jung-ho’s safety and promises to abide by Pyun-woong’s request, Jung-ho jumps in and tries to wrestle the knife away from Pyun-woong, but he’s stabbed mid-heroics. A police sniper then shoots Pyun-woong in the leg, and as the rest of officers converge and arrest Pyun-woong, Yuri rushes to Jung-ho’s side. Before he collapses in her arms, he confirms with Yuri that her mother is safe.

Although there’s never really been any doubt — for the audience, at least — that Jung-ho would survive his wounds, the same can’t be said for Yuri. The experience of watching her boyfriend get stabbed in front of her has undeniably affected her. Not only does she now understand first-hand Jung-ho’s previous fears over her safety, but it’s clear that she’s also started rethinking her rejection of Jung-ho’s marriage proposal. She doesn’t immediately change her mind — that would be decidedly uncharacteristic — but in keeping with the drama’s formula, she unpacks her feelings and comes to an epiphany by helping and talking through her feelings with others.

As I’d mentioned earlier, the theme of our finale episodes is the trials and tribulations of married life, and both Seo-yeon and Jung-ho’s mother came to Yuri with their marital problems and threats of divorce. After first taking both women out for a little shopping and pampering to clear their heads, both women open up about the real reasons they’re unhappy in their marriages.

Seo-yeon mostly has a mother-in-law problem, but she also failed to communicate with Jin-ki that her recent conversation with his mother left her feeling insecure and guilty that she returned to work so soon after giving birth. She fears that there may have been a kernel of truth in her mother-in-law’s accusations that she has clipped Jin-ki’s wings and emasculated him by having him be the primary homemaker and caretaker of their baby. Once Seo-yeon, at Yuri’s encouragement, speaks with Jin-ki about what’s bothering her, though, she discovers that his opinion does not align with his mother’s. Instead, he wished she’d told him about the conversation sooner so he could have assured her that he’s happy with their current arrangement, especially since it allows him to spend more time with their child.

The situation between Jung-ho’s parents, however, is a little more complex. Their whole dynamic has been thrown out of whack now that Seung-woon’s involvement with Jung-ho’s maternal family has been exposed, and neither of them knows how to speak to one another anymore. The solution: Seo-yeon handcuffs the two of them together. The forced proximity compels them to be honest about their feelings and the wall they’ve unintentionally built, and they come to the conclusion that they should temporarily live apart until they can comfortably face each other. Although it sounds like the beginnings of a separation, there’s an optimistic thread to it, as though they plan on starting anew.

After helping Seo-yeon and Jung-ho’s mother with their respective marriages, Yuri is almost ready to admit that she wants to marry Jung-ho. Aside from her hesitation to become a part of Jung-ho’s family, the biggest hurdle Yuri faces is her unwillingness to make promises that cannot be kept, and marriage vows are the forever kind of promises. Her insecurities about this particular issue are rooted in her father’s death. He made promises to her mother — like always being there for her — that he wasn’t able to keep.

I mean, it seems a bit unfair to blame a dead guy for not upholding his wedding vows, but after Yuri speaks with her mother, it becomes apparent that it’s not really “unkept promises” that give Yuri cold feet. Instead, it’s all the unknown variables and possible ways a relationship could potentially end. She’s afraid to commit to a long-term relationship without an assurance it will last forever, but as Yuri’s mom points out, nothing lasts forever. Unfortunately, Yuri’s fears are preventing her from living in the moment and embracing the love that’s in front of her.

With her mother’s blessing and sage advice in mind, Yuri rushes to find Jung-ho, and when she locates him — wearing, I might add, what looks suspiciously like a Squid Game tracksuit — she proposes to him. Obviously, he accepts, and from that point on, our story winds to a close.

Time between their engagement and wedding passes, and we get small snippets of information about our characters. Yuri and Jung-ho visit Pyun-woong in jail and tell him to find a different lawyer because Yuri is not keeping her promise to be his legal representation. Eun-kang and Joon continue to work at the cafe, and after Joon passes the bar exam he interviews for a pro-bono position with CEO Hwang, who’s immediately reminded of Yuri based on Joon’s answers to the hiring committee’s questions.

Jung-ho decides he’d rather continue working as a lawyer at Yuri’s cafe than become a prosecutor again, and the day before his wedding, he has a beer with his father and encourages him to come to what turns out to be a very windy ceremony. But even with a storm brewing, Yuri is unaffected by the impending rain or her guests’ frantic faces as they try to tie down the florals and decorations.

Always one for bold fashion choices and bucking traditions, she wears a stunning red wedding dress, and after they exchange vows, we skip ahead one more time to see their bustling law cafe, where customers must now choose between a “mild or spicy” coffee theme. Will they pick mild and have their legal consultation with the sympathetic Yuri? Or will they select spicy and be paired up with the no-nonsense Jung-ho?

To be honest I didn’t enjoy this drama as much as I wanted to enjoy it. My first impression — that the plot was the embodiment of the idiom “to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” — proved accurate, and The Law Cafe suffered by having too much going on. Admittedly, when picked apart, the individual pieces were fun, engaging, and — in some cases — groundbreaking, but none of them were given the attention they deserved. Instead, they competed against one another for air time, leaving us with awkward pacing and a dissatisfied sense of what could have been.

I’m not sure how I would have doctored this drama to have made it more palatable, though. The obvious choice would be to remove the Big Bad Villain plot line because it’s the easiest to lift out of the story, but I enjoyed having Pyun-woong’s chaotic evil provide a foil for Yuri’s lawful good. When Pyun-woong faced off against Yuri on the church steps and revealed that he’d wanted to test her unwavering faith of the law by inserting her into a high-stakes scenario where she’s forced to choose between her ethics and a loved one, it made me wonder what the story would have looked like if that line of conflict had been prevalent from start to finish.

In some ways, Yuri’s positivity and hyper-focused faith in the law were unrealistic and borderline annoying, especially when you realize that it’s easy for her to take the moral high ground when she’s only represented — to our knowledge — clients who have been victims. I’m all for her fighting for the underdog and sticking it to the man, but her personal practice of only defending the innocent seems at odds with her supposed straight-edged faith in abiding by the law, which also states that everyone is owed the right to legal representation. So even though it’s completely understandable that she wouldn’t want to defend Pyun-woong because of their personal history, I also find myself curious to know if she could set aside her personal morals and defend a truly guilty party.

I guess it’s good, then, that Yuri opened up her law cafe and has the ability to be a little more selective of her clientele, but sixteen episodes later, I’m still shaking my head over the absurdity of this business model. But what do I know? Certainly nothing about being a lawyer or running a cafe, so maybe a real life law cafe would work out better than a K-drama that features one.

 
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