Divorce Attorney Shin: Episodes 3-4

by lovepark

Our hero’s small circle rapidly expands as he finds his office teeming with potential clients and new allies. While most lawyers would be thrilled about the increase in business, our divorce attorney runs from the spotlight since he never chose this profession for money or power. Rather, the shift in career comes from a deeply personal reason involving loss, and the anger burning inside of him continues to grow.

 
EPISODES 3-4

We pick up the morning after Sung-han’s drunken antics, and our divorce attorney wakes up with a massive hangover. While he rolls around the couch in pain, he receives a video from his friend and screams in mortification as he watches his drunk self playing the piano. Paranoid about people identifying him from the clip, he sends angry messages to the uploader to take it down but gets no reply.

While Sung-han waits for Hyung-geun to come in to work, a surprise visitor appears: the building cleaner PARK AE-RAN (Hwang Jung-min) a.k.a., the client of the week. As established in the previous episode, Ae-ran hit her mother-in-law after witnessing her daughters get mistreated, and she explains all of this to Sung-han. She tells him that she wants her share of the building that her mother-in-law “owns” since it originally belonged to her husband. Though her request is difficult, Sung-han looks at Ae-ran with sympathy, and eventually, he agrees to take her case.

Nursing upset stomachs, Sung-han and Hyung-geun go out to eat soup and light up when they see their favorite ramyun shop open again. They enter in high spirits but are met with a new face who laughs at the sight of them. Apologizing for her response, she tells them that she is the owner’s daughter and was informed about the three poor saps who come all the time.

The new owner wonders where the third person is, and on cue, Jung-shik pops up. He demands his friends to reimburse him for last night’s meal since they both left the restaurant without paying, and they tell him to shut his trap lest the new owner gets the wrong impression. However, from the look on the owner’s face, I’d say it is too late for that.

More unexpected guests drop into the office, but the least welcomed one is ATTORNEY PARK YU-SEOK (Jeon Bae-soo), the man who represented Sung-han’s sister during her divorce. He now works for the other side and is here to deliver a message: Sung-han will no longer get monthly visits with his nephew. When Attorney Park says that the mother made the decision, Sung-han corrects him since she is the stepmother, and makes it clear that he finds the other attorney despicable.

The appearance of Attorney Park stirs up old memories, and that night, Sung-han dreams of his sister, Ju-hwa. They laugh together as she plays the piano, but when Sung-han turns his head to look at her, no one is there. In a series of flashbacks, we see Ju-hwa eating alone in a convenience store, a rainy night, and a red umbrella falling on a blood-soaked road. Sung-han wakes up crying, and burying his face in his pillow, he calls out for his sister.

Adding to the number of startling visits, Seo-jin drops by the office to hand in her resume. Sung-han stares at her in disbelief since they never listed an opening, and in fact, he barely has enough work for his two employees. Desperate for a job in order to keep custody of her son, Seo-jin offers to do any grunt work lying around, and to prove her mettle, she grabs random office supplies and fixes his pesky door.

She shows up the next day as well, but this time, she apologizes for springing such an unreasonable request on him and rescinds her application. Sung-han accepts her decision, but as he opens the door to let her leave, he finds a line of people waiting for him. Seo-jin excuses herself since she has a job interview, but Sung-han holds her back — it seems that a new position just opened up.

Abandoning his team to fend for themselves, Sung-han dashes off to meet with Ae-ran. He learns that she was not able to obtain proof that the building is still her husband’s property, so he comes up with a new strategy. Since the mother-in-law is suing Ae-ran for hitting her, Sung-han suggests filing a countersuit for defamation. He tells her to lie about the incident, but Ae-ran seems uneasy about his plan.

Meanwhile, Attorney Park readies his own devious schemes to thwart Sung-han’s goals, and enlists the help of his firm’s top intern, CHOI JUN (Han Eun-sung), to do his dirty work. After sending Jun to Sung-han’s office to figure out his next case, Attorney Park approaches Ae-ran’s husband with an offer for his firm to represent him pro bono. The husband hesitates since he does not want a divorce, but Attorney Park warns him to be more careful.

That night, the husband confronts Ae-ran about the divorce allegations and tells her that she will never win since she hit her mother-in-law. Ae-ran glares back at him and firmly states her plans to countersue. With tensions mounting, their fight continues outside of their home as well, and Sung-han walks into one of their arguments by accident. He asks the husband if he feels like this whole situation is unfair and tells him that Ae-ran felt this way for years.

In the midst of all this chaos, Sung-han spends some time unwinding with his friends on a camping trip. He opens up to them about his recent dream of Ju-hwa, and they instantly grasp the weight of his words. The scene flashes back to her funeral, and we see Sung-han sitting alone as the only family member in attendance. When his ex-brother-in-law came without his nephew, Sung-han yelled at him for separating his sister from her child and kicked him out.

Besides Sung-han, Hyung-geun is also dealing with some personal drama, but he keeps the details secret from his friends. Currently split from his wife, Hyung-geun wishes to reconcile, but his wife has moved on and is in love with another man. She texts him one day that she is pregnant, and Hyung-geun leaves the office in tears.

Worried about their friend, Sung-han and Jung-shik barge into Hyung-geun’s apartment and cause a ruckus. Hyung-geun wordlessly slides his phone over to them, and the others fall silent once they learn the truth. They plant themselves on the couch for a sleepover, but Hyung-geun threatens to leave if they do. Sung-han and Jung-shik agree to give him space but not before collecting all his sharp kitchen utensils.

Before the first mediation between Ae-ran and her husband, Jun approaches Sung-han outside the courthouse and expresses his admiration for the older attorney. Despite all his praises, Jun still thinks he will win, and Sung-han furrows his brow, unable to get a read on his strange opponent.

Contrary to Jun’s beaming smile, once the mediation starts, he gets down to business, and deftly counters all of Sung-han’s points. As the two attorneys volley back and forth, Ae-ran places a hand on Sung-han’s arm and makes a sudden declaration: she did hit her mother-in-law.

Hearing his wife’s confession, the husband lowers his head, and Sung-han asks him if he remembers his conversation with his wife. Jun advises his client to remain silent, but the husband speaks up and presents proof that the building is still his. Ae-ran sobs as she realizes what this means, and her husband tells her that she worked hard.

Afterwards, Ae-ran walks home with Sung-han and tells him that she did not catch onto his true intentions until now. He says that he heard Schumann’s Romance when he saw the two of them fighting and made a gamble to believe in her husband’s sincerity. Though it paid off, he admits that it was a bad plan, but Ae-ran thanks him for showing her the truth.

At home, the mother-in-law berates the husband for splitting his assets and tells him that he could have married the vice-principal’s daughter if not for Ae-ran. As she continues to disparage Ae-ran, the husband finally stands up for his wife and tells his mother that the vice-principal’s daughter broke off their engagement because she did not want to live with her mother-in-law.

Later that evening, Ae-ran sets dinner for her mother-in-law and gets on her knees to apologize. She tells Ae-ran to get up and thanks her for giving her a warm home to live in for all these years. (Yeah, not buying it.)

Last but not least, the final visitor to Sung-han’s office this week is Jun. After tendering his resignation, he quickly jumps ships, but Sung-han turns him down… multiple times. However, Jun will not take no for an answer and makes a deal with Sung-han: if he is allowed to work here, he will take down the video. Glowing with pride, Jun reveals that he was the uploader, and Sung-han curses him out as he raises his hand to strike the younger attorney.

Lots of things happen this week including new additions to the team, backstory reveals, and a conclusion to a divorce case. While I wasn’t surprised to see Seo-jin join, I was shocked to see Jun changing teams so quickly. I find him a bit disconcerting, and I can’t tell if he is supposed to be comedic or annoying — maybe both? He could bring an interesting dynamic to the team, but I feel like the show is juggling too many characters at once. The edits are a bit awkward right now, and I think some of it is due to the creators trying to show too much too quickly. It feels like they have a checklist of plot points and character introductions they need to hit every episode, and instead of letting these moments arise organically, the show jumps from one scene to the next in quick succession. While it does make the show a breezy watch, I think it would benefit from some breathing room in the long run.

The divorce case this week was okay, mostly because I find Hwang Jung-min to be a compelling actor, but the resolution felt rushed and overly simplistic. The show kept reiterating that the husband was good as long as you ignored his mother, but I think his behavior was indicative of a larger, unaddressed problem in their marriage. The husband showed little to no sign of respect towards Ae-ran and his daughters, and though his passiveness was packaged as misguided filial piety, I saw his negligence as an active choice to allow his family to bear the brunt of the hardships. He says that he wanted to be a dutiful son, but the only thing he “did” for his mom was not talk back to her. Ae-ran literally took care of the family financially and emotionally for years, and I really hated the show for a moment when they made her apologize to her abuser and act like she had no right to divorce her husband. While I think it could be possible for the husband and mother-in-law to change with the right catalyst, these things take time. Unfortunately, the show glossed over all the difficult parts of mending broken relationships in lieu of presenting a “happy” ending. Perhaps this story would have been better if it went with a more open-ended conclusion, but alas, the show took a nosedive at the end and even Hwang Jung-min couldn’t save the scene.

The friendship between the three guys is still the highlight of the show for me, and I’m glad they delved deeper into their relationship beyond the usual jokes and buffoonery. It was especially nice to see Sung-han open up a little with his friends about his current struggle, and it said a lot about their relationship when the others quickly caught on with just a few words. It was also refreshing to see male friends be attentive of each other’s emotional needs and choose to be present in the hard times. Even though both Sung-han and Hyung-geun could be more communicative, the show makes it clear that these three will always be there for each other to provide a safe space free of judgment, whether that means making fools of themselves while belting old tunes or comforting their friend in a funeral parlor as their world crumbles around them.

 
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