Two New Cases
Hyena returns this week with another decent slice of law drama, one that sees both Hee-Jae and Geum-Ja given individual cases across the episode while mingling in the office to keep things consistent. While the cases themselves aren’t awfully complicated, with Hee-Jae’s by far the least interesting, there’s enough here to make for a decent episode nonetheless. In a coffee shop, a distracted Geum-Ja spills coffee over a man behind her and apologises, giving him his card and rushing out in a hurry. As she quizzes Ji-Eun over how much a dress shirt is back at the office, Hee-Jae takes her aside and assumes they’re back together by this development. While Geum-Ja and Hee-Jae discuss the transgressions from the previous night, Ms Kim calls them into her office and gives them a new case to work on, involving a company called AP EON. Their client happens to be a man named Kevin – the same Kevin that Geum-Ja spilt coffee on at the start of the episode. Things get a little awkward with Hee-Jae but soon they gather the team and discuss the case. Kevin wants the duo to carry out an M&A, as a way of making sure they don’t get their hands dirty and allow Song&Kim to do this instead. Geum-Ja tells the group they need to stay quiet and keep this confidential. She then goes on to mention her secret investigator but much to Hee-Jae’s annoyance, she refuses to disclose who that is. In the aftermath of this, Gi-Hyeok spills more details about Kevin to Hee-Jae as they discuss the implications of Geum-Ja working with him. Hee-Jae takes offence to this of course and berates his assistant before heading in and speaking to Song about how he feels working with Geum-Ja. The conversation then turns to the firm and Park starts doubting himself, especially with Kim back on the scene now. That evening, Congressman Lee meets with Hee-Jae and Song, with the latter introducing Hee-Jae as the man who’s going to take over from him eventually. At the same time, Min-Joo Kim visits Min-Jeong in hospital. The next day Geum-Ja heads off to visit Kevin where he introduces her to his boy, Philip. While she’s out, Hee-Jae takes Yi-Joon with him in a bid to try and find Geum-Ja. They head to the elementary school together and as they reach the front gates, they run into Geum-Ja who’s in the middle of speaking to Philip. He butts in rudely though and hands over a file containing information about the company. On his way out, he runs into Lee Woo-Jin, the son of Eun-Chang who happens to be in charge of Woojin Apparel. After beating down a kid on the ground, Woo-Jin tells the teacher that Hee-Jae is his lawyer. After Woo-Jin continues to berate Hee-Jae, calling him a “fogey”, our lawyer decides to ignore the Team H meeting and instead follow this kid, riding with him in the car and finding out just what happened during the fight. Woo-Jin tells Hee-Jae he hit him because he was annoyed, and drops him off at the side of the road. Eun-Chang then rings Hee-Jae and tells him he doesn’t want to lose. Hee-Jae meets with the lawyers surrounding the fight and tells them they shouldn’t blow things out of proportion. As he sits across the table to Mr Na, who happens to be representing the prosecutor, he refuses to back down as things turn ugly between the two, threatening to go to Supreme Court. With both sides refusing to back down, and threats of going to the press hanging over them, the meeting ends in a stalemate. Geum-Ja heads to the meeting at Gnosis and although it’s a fruitless meeting they do learn about Octoperson and decide to investigate the CFO who’s in his 20’s which is suspicious in itself. Hee-Jae investigates his case further and learns that Woo-Jin was bullied early in the year, suspiciously around the time the teacher was fired. This explains why he lashed out originally. Given that asking for help could be perceived as being weak, this explains why Woo-Jin was so dismissive of this case. Hee-Jae presents this to Mr Na and the others, subsequently winning the case. In the aftermath of this, Hee-Jae presents a recording of Woo-Jin to his father and implores him to get control of his son as he could end up being a liability. At the same time, Geum-Ja continues to look into the Gnopsis case, sitting down to eat with Kevin until Hee-Jae shows up and sits with her while they eat food. As they look at each other, the episode ends. With unfinished business between Geum-Ja and Hee-Jae it seems obvious now that both of them are hiding their true feelings. This flirtatious dance that they’re both taking part in is ultimately the glue that holds everything together given the actual cases themselves are pretty formulaic and don’t do a lot to progress the narrative forward. In terms of characters and acting though, Hyena does a wonderful job with this and both actors portray their lead roles to perfection. With Geum-Ja’s case still unresolved, there’s plenty left to chew through in the next episode but quite what will happen next, remains to be seen.
