We continue with custody cases this week, now focusing on relationships between parents and children. There’s anxiety to go around for our ace attorney and her family as they begin navigating what their new family life could look like. Both parents try not to put extra pressure on their daughter, but all three know their future will be decided by her testimony. As if adolescence isn’t stressful enough.
EPISODES 8-9
The custody battle is in full swing with both Eun-kyung and Ji-sang growing more anxious and desperate as the investigator’s interview with Jae-hee looms. The parental interview leaves Ji-sang in the stronger position – his (true) stories of being the one to buy Jae-hee her first period products and watching her cry nightly over her mom’s absence don’t paint Eun-kyung in a good light. And Eun-kyung is too honest to try to deny it.
The bias toward giving custody to mothers gives Eun-kyung more of a chance, especially since there’s a belief that a same-sex parent is better for a child in adolescence. But society also judges mothers more harshly than fathers, so while an absent father who financially supports his family might be given a pass, a mother who does the same is seen as neglectful (though I’d argue it’s neglectful in both cases).
In these more contentious cases, it’s often down to the child’s testimony to decide custody. As Ji-sang and Eun-kyung wait on pins and needles for Jae-hee’s decision, we get another case of parents fighting for custody of a teenage boy. His statement that he wants to live with his dad about seals the deal, but then the mom throws a grenade: a DNA test showing her husband is not the kid’s biological father.
The father is devastated, but his love for his son remains unchanged. Unfortunately for him, there’s a strong emphasis on biological parenthood, so there’s no way he’ll get custody now. Still, he refuses to file a suit that would require him to relinquish parental status and begs the mother to let him continue to be a father to their son.
Witnessing how frequently birth parents abandon their children, Woo-jin and Eun-ho are both crying by the end of the arbitration. For Woo-jin in particular, seeing the loving relationship between the father and son is bittersweet. He’s got some major daddy issues, given that his supposed uncle – the law firm’s CEO – is actually his birth father, so… that’s messed up.
You know what else is messed up? Sara. As if she hasn’t done enough damage, she takes matters into her own hands after finding out she’s pregnant. Ji-sang makes it clear that Jae-hee still matters more to him than Sara and their future baby, so she decides to hide a photo of her sonogram for Jae-hee to find. Then, she meets with the child and has the gall to ask her to be a good big sister.
She has this delusional idea that if she can ensure Jae-hee goes to her mom, she’ll be able to convince Ji-sang to live with her – a happy little family. When her subterfuge comes out in Jae-hee’s custody interview, both Ji-sang and Eun-kyung are livid. Ji-sang yells at Sara to get lost and never contact him again, his selfishness once again on display like he shares no responsibility here. (The baby didn’t make itself.) Eun-kyung assaults Sara in full mom rage mode; she’ll be lucky if Sara doesn’t press charges, and this time she’d have a legitimate reason.
Not only did the secret baby come up in the interview, but it turns out Jae-hee has long known about the affair. She witnessed it with her own eyes because Ji-sang and Sara had no problem being all over each other while she was sleeping in the other room. Jae-hee’s trust in her dad has been slowly eroding the longer he continues to lie to her to protect himself. Although Eun-kyung has been lying too, Jae-hee knows her mom’s lies were to protect her. That’s why she wants to protect her mom too and asks the investigator not to tell her mom about the baby.
For a kid of Jae-hee’s age, trust in a parent is vital. And it looks like Eun-kyung has indeed earned her daughter’s trust with her actions of late. Ji-sang may be better (and have more practice) at the day-to-day parenting stuff, but Eun-kyung’s integrity seems to have won Jae-hee over.
All of this has Eun-kyung so out of sorts it’s affecting her work, especially when they get a client who plays the victim after having an affair with a married, soon-to-be father (who is also playing victim). The case helps Eun-kyung break down her walls and honestly assess what she needs: a sincere apology.
Yuri is desperate to do her best for Eun-kyung and has finally learned to put her client’s needs above her own. But she’s still new and worries that she’s not qualified enough and will fail Eun-kyung. She proves more capable than she thinks, though, because she does the seemingly impossible. Sara shows up at Eun-kyung’s office and sincerely apologizes on her knees. Maybe motherhood is giving her some sense of shame at last.
With all the secrets out, Jae-hee is much lighter. Even so, she does feel guilty toward her mom and apologizes. Jae-hee’s feelings of guilt versus Sara and Ji-sang’s (along with other cheating couples’) justifications for their wrongdoings is used to highlight the insight we get at the end of the episode: kids blame themselves for others’ mistakes while adults blame others for their own mistakes.
I appreciate the empathy of this drama, digging below the surface to examine the pain behind people’s questionable actions. That said, it doesn’t try to excuse or redeem everyone and acknowledges that some people are just selfish. We started out with Sara being the primary villain in the relationship, but Ji-sang’s true colors have slowly been revealed. With every episode, he becomes less sympathetic. It mirrors the way the other woman typically bears the brunt of the ire for cheating and becomes a public target, while the man slips under the radar. Still, he can only hide behind the longsuffering, good-guy mask for so long.
Often, legal dramas can feel so over the top or glamorized that it’s hard to take them seriously, so I appreciate how grounded Good Partner has been. Not to say that there’s no added flair for dramatic purposes, but just that the situations and general procedures feel more realistic than usual. I imagine that’s in large part due to the writer, Choi Yuna, being a divorce lawyer.