Park Shin-hye is The Judge from Hell, and she is having way too much fun in this role. Her performance is the highlight of our premiere week — which, if you can deal with the upside-down and backwards theology and treat this like a quirky fantasy — is quite watchable.
EPISODES 1-2
We start off our drama with some epic cameos… and some painful CGI and theological setups. I’ll preface this by saying that I have a pretty low tolerance for the gimmicky way K-dramas like to deal spiritual/religious themes, but them’s the breaks. So, we start off with our mousy judge KANG BIT-NA (Park Shin-hye) stabbed and left for dead. (Talk about an intro!) And dead she is. When she wakes up she’s in a level of hell expressly for murderers and JUSTITIA (cameo by Oh Nara) — aka our Lady Demon Justice is ready to brand her and send Bit-na to her eternal torment.
But there’s been a mixup up (because plot), and Bit-na is an innocent victim who’s about to get sentenced to a level of hell she doesn’t deserve. Luckily (?) BAEL (cameo by Shin Sung-rok) the ruler (?) of the underworld (?) doesn’t like this. I guess he thinks hell should be just. So he curses Justitia to take the body of Bit-na as punishment. She has to live on earth and has one year to kill ten unrepentant murderers, brand them, and send them to the proper level of hell. This entire sequence is kinda painful, but Shin Sung-rok and Oh Nara are absolutely stunning here (always giving 10/10, both), so I’m okay with it.
When we catch up with Justitia-as-Bit-na again, she’s completely not the judge anyone knew before. Through the course of the episodes we see everyone around her commenting that she has changed so much since “the accident.” She now wears bright flashy tweed suits with dyed hair and heavy makeup. Oh, and she’s also irreverent, snarky, and has a penchant for drinking soda (loudly and continually) out of a can while taking her judge duties far too lightly.
Her (as in Justitia’s) first case is that of DETECTIVE HAN DO-AN (Kim Jae-young and those gorgeous eyes of his), who’s refused an attorney because he says doesn’t need one. He explains his situation and the bogus law suit that a criminal is bringing against him for “hurting his hand” while Do-an was trying to disarm said criminal of his knife. Bit-na is electric in this scene, slurping soda, making a load of sarcastic comments, poking a hole in the entire case by showing the corruption that was at play behind the scenes, and then dismissing the whole case. There’s no way you can’t love her after this scene!
Our principled and heroic hero is also a bit starry-eyed over this courtroom moment, but when he next meets Bit-na she’s a) coaching kids visiting the courthouse to chant “Justice is dead!” and b) driving off in her red convertible and leaving him and his gratefulness in the dust.
But, these two are destined to meet again, and they wind up connected over another case. We enter this one in media res: a young woman who has been brutally beaten and threatened by her boyfriend has submitted a letter to the court that will let him off more leniently than he should. Bit-na cruises into the Catholic church where the young woman is praying — but first, sunglasses. Because crosses and any iconography related to Jesus Christ is too much for her to look at. (No comment.)
Bit-na can tell after talking to the young woman that she’s terrified for her life and safety, and Bit-na’s apparent sympathy for the woman’s side has Do-an all kinds of excited. He’s the detective on the case, and he’s got a passion to see Bad Boyfriend behind bars for a very long time (where he clearly belongs — the drama doesn’t hide the fact he’s vile, malicious, and incredibly twisted).
But Do-an (and the girl’s parents) are shocked on sentencing day. After seemingly being ready to deliver a harsh sentence to Bad Boyfriend, our Bit-na — with her attitude and flair — lets him off with a fine. It’s such a clear miss, and everyone knows it. What the heck, Bit-na?
Well, Bit-na is on earth to punish murderers — not abusers — so she hatches a self-serving plan. She’s convinced of Bad Boyfriend’s depravity and lets him off so he can wreak havoc and kill his girlfriend now that he’s free. (Yes, you read that correctly — and this is exactly what Do-an spends all his time trying to prevent.) Then, once he’s a murderer, Bit-na will murder him with her fancy supernatural dagger, brand him, send him to hell, and be 1 out of 10 with her mission.
And that’s basically how it goes down — except the drama plays with the “what is Bit-na doing” for a bit. We also get to see Do-an’s righteous indignation, and the girl get beaten and try to hang herself as the collateral damage to this. The girl survives, thank goodness, but now that she is metaphorically dead, Bit-na goes in for the kill. She steps around all the red tape of her human role, and one night delivers justice to Bad Boyfriend by way of some psychological torture, a beating more brutal than the ones he delivered, and then a stabbing and branding to send him on his way. I mean, the guy was awful, but there’s a little too much aplomb here for me to enjoy it. Either way, that’s one bad guy down.
Bit-na is giddy after her win, and her plan of action is to bat eyelashes at Do-an and get the inside edge on her next evildoer — thanks to him being a violent crimes detective and all. You see, the reason she’s having such a hard time finding bad people to kill is that they must also be unrepentant of their crime, and under punished. So, she turns up in front of Do-an one night and they have a late night BBQ with copious amounts of soju.
Bit-na pries him for information as he drinks, asking if there are a lot of unrepentant murderers on the loose. He says yes… but that the worst one is him. He admits to Bit-na that when he was young he stabbed three people. The smell of their blood still hasn’t left his mind. But is he sorry about it, Bit-na asks? Do-an says something to the effect of “why be sorry, it wouldn’t change anything” and Bit-na gets a flash of giddiness again.
Sure enough, the next misty morning Do-an wakes up and goes outside only to see Bit-na greeting him. She asks if he meant what he said last night and then pulls him close… for a stabbing, not a kiss. (*Disappointed*) Do-an drops to the ground and bleeds excessively while Bit-na rejoices over a three-for-one killing.
Talk about a cliffhanger: hero brutally stabbed and left to bleed out during premiere week. Way to leave an impression, Show. It was clear Do-an was nursing some deep wounds, but I didn’t expect them to come out so quickly. But with our stab-happy heroine on the loose, it makes sense. Since I’m sure Do-an is going to pull through, I can only expect that there’s some secret repentance in there… or some other loophole we’ll soon discover.
So, for a premiere week with a lot of world-building to accomplish, it was pretty fast-moving and ready to cover a lot with its 14 episodes. Like I said above, Park Shin-hye is the spark here — I’m not used to seeing her play character like this, and it’s bringing to mind Lee Sung-kyung in her Cheese in the Trap days in the best way possible.
Outside of her kill spree, Bit-na has some complications headed her way, though. Not only are her colleagues highly suspicious of her new demeanor and behavior, but in a preamble sequence, she was evaluated for a mental disorder due to the fact that she goes rolling through life laughing and telling people she’s a demon. (LOL) We also learn the real Bit-na has an ex-fiancé (Lee Kyu-han, interesting choice) — so there’s some drama being cooked up there as well (is that you, Love Triangle?).
Will we get more background and plot complications around Bit-na as she was versus who she is now? Or will we just get a new case each week with a whipping and branding from Bit-na? Orrr, will Do-an get into the supernatural mix more — because who wants to bet he has some buried history with Bit-na? Either way they decide to go, I might not care as long as I get to spend more time staring into Kim Jae-young’s eyes.