Extraordinary. Extraordinarily Artificial. Extraordinarily Delayed.

Having hit something of a hiatus on films we've been backlogged on and series we've been following, we've been rooting around ::WATCH THE LAST OF US!:: for new things ::WATCH THE LAST OF US!:: to, you know, watch

::THE LAST OF US, DAMMIT!::

(Hmmm, did someone say something?)

We've dabbled, but elsewhere. Mythic Quest was pitched as a cross between D&D and The Office; we began with a standalone second-series episode of it called "Backstory" that tells just that- about how one of the series characters came to be. (Beyond saying that, spoilers, so, no.) We tried a Julie Delpy series called On The Verge (has potential), bailed pretty quickly on Neil Patrick Harris's Uncoupled (too tropy and real-estatey), and even checked a Japanese series called Gudetama about a talking egg (might be too expensive to continue, apparently).

Yet there's been one always promoted on Netflix whenever we go on there, even though we never watched it or anything of its national origin or genre. We finally relented and watched the pilot the other night:



Origin: South Korea, home of such unlikely Nethits as Squid Game. Genre: a nation-specific format known as "K-drama." Probably closest to soaps in their storytelling and addictive storylines, they've expanded well beyond the 38th parallel as streaming services have brought them to the world in the past decade or so. Woo is merely the latest, and for now greatest, of these. The titlular Woo is a brilliant young woman on the spectrum, definitely atypical among the Aypitcal for her abilities to memorize and repeat massive amounts of reading material. It got her top grades in a Korean law school but didn't help her get through a revolving door on her first day of work. 

I've generally stayed away from anything directly displaying my current or once future day job. Paper Chase with grumpy John Houseman as even grumpier law Professor Kingsfield, was on from my undergrad days all through law school. Watched a little before I was a law student; rarely if ever watched during or after.  L.A. Law then came on around the time I came out of UB, even taking the time slot of my always-watched Hill Street Blues on NBC. Never watched that, either. The CSI and JAG and other LAW acronym shows, likewise, never appealed. Judge shows make my skin crawl; White Judy or Black Joe, panels like Hot Bench? Only knew they existed from seeing and cringing to them on gym overheads or in waiting rooms.

But this one? Just for the crossover into a different legal system with a likable character, we're in for some more.  It's not something I could binge, but an episode here and there should be bearable.

Or, I suppose for Woo, whaleable.

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After hearing her somewhat awkward phrasing in some conference and courtroom scenes, I found this meme sounded a little familiar:



Even more than it reminded me of the fictional Woo, it brought back one of the earliest experiences I had with tacky lawyer advertising back in the 80s.  The practice finally became legal after a 1977 Supreme Court case narrowly overturned traditional Bar rules against lawyers desecrating the profession by advertising beyond a shingle or a business card, but it took a good decade for the media and the lawyers to catch up to what this promised.  Cellino & Barnes were mere pups without even a single billboard when a guy upstairs from my Rochester office started a glaring, blaring, obnoxious beyond thinking series of ads. First they were by a slack-jawed spokesman who just rattled off the phone number and the promises of MONEYMONEYMONEY. In time, though, "Jim The Hammer" himself became the face of the franchise. This is one of the milder ones:
 

Watch on YouTube

I can tell you one thing, though: tacky though they were, they worked. Monday mornings, the elevator banks would have them chockablock full of crutches and cervical collars, heading up for the Hammer Handshake to get them their CASH!

Until he was suspended, that is. Among that decision's findings: the Hammer "has never tried a case to its conclusion and has conducted approximately 10 depositions." Shit, I had that beat before I'd even heard of the guy.

He moved to Florida, where all of the misbegottens from New York (and apparently Brazil) eventually wind up. But others have picked up that Hammer and run with it right up to, if not beyond, the bounds of good taste he blazed through all those years ago.

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"All those years ago." For me, that would be 2022, back when I used to get mail.

Okay, we had a blizzard. I get that. But we're over half a month into 2023 and it's still taking ridiculous amounts of time for ordinary mailpieces to make it to me from within this county or as few as two over.  A county sheriff advises that payment was sent on January 5 from downtown Buffalo. Still not here.  A Rochester client mailed one at least a week ago. Likewise.  It's bad enough that we lost as much productive time at the end of last year between the blizzard and the usual holiday downtime, but having it hang over this long is making things, well, extraordinarily difficult.

Maybe I can hire Woo to figure it out.