The title of the show itself seemed so powerful and Seo Hyun Jin as the central character, were the reasons I was excited for the drama. But to their sheer incompetence and my utter disappointment, the show failed to offer anything that would be worth holding onto or keep it in memory, at all. I will be precise, I promise.

Created by ‘Studio S’ & ‘Viu’ and produced by ‘VO Media’, “WHY HER ()” is a Legal-Mystery thriller with romance and comedy. Written by Kim Ji Eun and directed by Park Soo Jin, the show was broadcasted on SBS TV.

Set in multiple uncertain premises, the story keeps at the centre, Oh Soo Jae (Seo Hyun Jin), a successful lawyer at Korea’s biggest law firm, who has worked it on from the scratch all by her own. She is only a step close to adding another history in her name when one of her cases takes unexpected turn and she is made to accept the offer to become a professor at a law school. There, she meets Gong Chan (Hwang In Youp), a student with a dark past and possible ties with Soo Jae. As Soo Jae attempts to gain her position back, she seeks help from Chan and the team of other students formed as a legal clinic. And during that, they discover and decipher truths and mysterious facts related to their lives. Will she get what se wants? Well, you’ll know that if you watch, but I don’t really suggest you do.

As expected, Heo Joon Ho, who plays Choi Tae Guk (TK Law Firm’s owner), is the antagonist but accompany him, other two amazing actors Lee Kyung Young & Jo Young Jin,as two supporting antagonists in the show with moderate screen-times. I don’t think there were any other notable characters in the drama so will save my time even though the drama is filled with many familiar faces. I feel bad particularly for Bae In Hyuk who didn’t have anything significant. Cha Chung Hwa’s limited appearance was joyful for me though.

Plot development is super lousy and (you may not believe) I understood it as soon as I finished the ep 3. Admittedly, the pilot episode was good and indicated a possible decent legal thriller out of the script. But the next episode somehow wasn’t up to the mark and started feeling unesay and by the midway of the ep4, it had started crumbling bad. What happened at the end of that episode did irk me to great deals. I still thought it should be given a chance given the amount of buzz it has and for I did expect from it. However, even after the ep6, I found myself struggling more. The way circumstances were setup felt very lame and the sequence of events somehow were irrelevant.
The happenings in the revelations in the 14th episode weren’t surprising but the happenings were surely unnecessary; the writer became very cruel atp. The finale week was rushed to give the story a closure and honestly “catch-the-thief-at-the-end” doesn’t work any longer ffs. I would say the ending sequence was rather funny, I’d say totally a disaster. All the villains going down at a go isn't what I signed for when I had started this. Forget about consistency, the pacing was too fast throughout the show in terms of screenplay that it felt like they had a lot to show, when irl all those plentitude of elements were lame and futile.

Seo Hyun Jin had to be the person of the show so she rightfully deserved all the screen-share and in fact the most complex arcs to the character Oh Soo Jae. Without a say, she did do her best as a crazy female lead who is always put at the centre and the writer did a good job in presenting A-Z about her story, from her dark past to her current evilness and even her weakest sides. However, in that process, the writer went bit too much over the top, as in making her do stuffs which were not necessary at all. It was a downer to me.

Hwang In Youp need better script to be able to show his skills, ngl. He has been shining for last 2 years and to accelerate his career he must be wise at choosing. Not only the character was shoddy he himself performed below average. The mystery to him made me empathize a little but the underlying suspense did come out in an illogical manner which is another downvote for the show.
Heo Joon Ho is used to acing antagonist roles and his tone of delivery is a favourite. I felt he had sufficient exposure as well as complexions to him as the man behind the tragedy and his performance was way above the par For Bae In Hyuk, I didn’t think the character was necessary or even his presence as an actor was required for the show. Yeah, it’s sad though that his hands are a lot empty but still…

The makers have done a bad job at utilizing the side characters. With so many of them appearing at the same time, not a single one got a fair screentime or even distribution of dialogues, forget about impressive introductions and flashbacks to their stories. The concept of law school and legal clinic plus mentioning them as the possible main premise was a stupid idea to begin with, for the school didn’t even feel like one, the pupils worked like some FBI agents instead of studying or even talking about law and stuffs and the premise always went past somewhere else. It never felt like Lawyer Oh was actually demoted there, lmao.

The public broadcast of disciplinary hearing of Oh Soo Jae who was an attorney at a law firm?? How stupid one could be lmao? And everything getting revealed in that process? How lousy!

Coming to the stupidest inclusion of the drama, it makes me so angry that it was a part of it. Again, I don’t usually complain about the existence and amount of romance in any drama but I can sense when it is forced and when it goes overboard. Given the thriller genre, we did not need a couple out of this but I wouldn’t have complained if it had made any sense. The romance is not just stupidly brewed but also rushed from the beginning to end, basing upon lame grounds. It felt so forced that I was getting mad with each episode, please.

There are 4 OSTs and can be passed as decent Kdrama tracks individually but I don’t understand most of their essences in this drama.
# “Vincent” by Sohyang
# “Beautiful” by Doko
# “What about us” by Hajin
# “I will love you” by K. Will

Final Remarks… The title “WHY HER” is a befitting one given all the misery Oh Soo Jae had to experience throughout as if the writer had some kind of bad blood with the character’s name. And it was the female-centric theme plus Seo Hyun Jin plus, lastly, all the buzz around it during the initial episodes that had me excited but finding out how awful of a script this is, did make me hate it. Neither the story nor the direction, or even Seo Hyun Jin’s screen presence could save the drama. Not recommended at all.