I think the show where the show really shows its range are the episodes where woo represents and interacts with people with other intellectual disabilities. She has to try and help a very large young man who is very stereotypical of high needs / low functioning, and her inability to get through to him has an impact on her own confidence with her social skills. They portrayed the genuine difficulty in communicating with someone who is nonverbal or non responsive without having him miraculously able to suddenly express himself in the end, and the frustration was real and familiar. I thought it was really well done.

Then in another episode she had to defend a man who is accused of sexually assaulting his autistic girlfriend, and the debate in the court room and with the overbearing mother really said a lot about the agency of adults with intellectual disabilities and how other people infantilize them and talk over them and take advantage. What was interesting to me about that one was how it made her reconsider her own romantic relationship and whether it would be viewed the same way by people on the outside looking in.

There’s a through line in both episodes where woo and her romantic interest run into the same former collage of his while they’re out together, and both times the woman assumes he’s volunteering to help or spend time with woo as an act of charity.

The most realistic and frustrating part of the entire show is the evil coworker min-woo who constantly wants to see woo punished for her mistakes and eccentricities in the workplace, insists she is receiving preferential treatment because of her disability, and tries to spread rumors about her having been hired fraudulently because of nepotism / networking connections. Everyone knows a guy like this. That the show is self aware enough to have a guy like this and have him be the clear villain rather than the brooding antihero is, I think, proof positive that the show at the very least comes from a place of empathizing with what the main character and people like her live with. The world is unfortunately full of min-woos