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May. 27th, 2025 07:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI've had great luck in the past with the sort of kdrama in which an angry immortal supernatural woman has to hang out in contemporary Seoul with a nice mortal boy. We were hoping The Judge From Hell would be that sort of kdrama, and, technically, it is; I think in its heart it would love to be Hotel del Luna. Unfortunately, it has also decided that what it wants to be is a violent revenge fantasy with incoherent and punitive ethics. Interspersed with wacky shenanigans! and a healthy dose of Catholicism?
Okay, so the premise: our heroine is Justitia, the DEMON JUDGE of the UNDERWORLD, THIRD IN LINE to the THRONE OF HELL, whose job is to sentence unrepentant murderers to unending torments. However, when a nice young judge gets murdered and accidentally ends up in her domain instead of the lesser hell where she belongs, Justitia refuses to listen to her pleas of innocence, gets ready to sentence her anyway, and promptly gets her wrist slapped by her superiors: she's gotten complacent! Time to go to Earth, wearing the body of the dead judge, and learn! about JUSTICE!!!
Given that Justitia's initial mistake involved accidentally sentencing an innocent person, you might be forgiven for thinking that Justitia's job on Earth might involve perhaps getting justice for the wrongly accused, or learning to temper justice with mercy and a little bit of nuance, or even uncovering faults and corruption within the justice system as it exists. haha! no. Justitia's job is to hit a quota of Unrepentent, Unforgiven Murderers On Earth and sentence them to unending torment, just like in her day job. She does this by chasing them around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimic the things they have done to their victims and beating them up, then stamping them on the forehead with a little stamp that says GEHENNA while then the doors of hell open and an ominous voice roars GEHENNA!!!! and they get sucked into hell. We did not enjoy the excruciating sequences of murderers being chased around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimicked the things they had done to their victims, which the show obviously wants us to find cathartic and satisfying. We did enjoy the ominous voice that roared GEHENNA!!!! It made us laugh every time.
As a further complication, for some reason it only counts for her Justice Quota if the Unrepentant, Unforgiven Murderers are not in prison but wandering the streets ... so Justitia decides that the only solution is to hear criminal cases, as a real judge, then give them absurdly light sentences so they don't actually go to prison and are free to go harass their victims some more, then hunt them down, beat them up, GEHENNA!!!!!, etc.
Hilariously, this means that the premise of the show appears to be: the justice system is absolutely fine and working exactly as it should, except for our heroine, who is single-handedly fucking up the course of Justice, in the name of Justice.
As is obligatory in this sort of show, Justitia does in fact meet a sweet mortal boy. He is a righteous cop, because of course, and also the only survivor of the mass serial killing of his whole family, because of course. On their first sort-of-date he tells her about the fact that he blames himself for the death of his family in a way that makes it sound like he murdered his family and she's like "amazing! one for the quota!" and immediately stabs him and tries to drag him to hell. This was extremely funny and singlehandedly caused us to keep watching the show after we were like 'should we quit? It feels like maybe we should quit?' "Maybe she is going to learn something about nuance," we said encouragingly to each other. "Maybe the show will complicate its own premise! Also, that was hilarious."
Anyway, despite the fact that she stabbed him and dragged him to Hell and then her demon boss appeared and was like "JUSTITIA! come ON! this guy is not a real murderer EITHER!" the cop boyfriend spends the next four or five episodes going "man, I wonder who is the serial killer who is murdering all these obviously guilty people that this demon judge who stabbed me keeps letting off the hook? who could it be ...."
Eventually, by falling in love with this Nice Young Man, Justitia comes to learn the important lesson that the friends and family of murder victims find it more satisfying when murderers are Sentenced Properly in Court than when a mysterious serial killer drops their be-GEHENNA!!!!'d body in the street the day after. (Friend T: I don't know, I think I would find these things equally satisfying.) In the triumphant finale, she catches the other serial killer -- the backstory one who murdered the love interest's whole family -- and presides over a trial where instead of interpreting the law to its most lenient possible degree, she interprets it to its harshest possible degree and sentences him to death. Everyone cheers. The entire population of Korea is like "judges should learn from this!" The Archangel Gabriel -- who's been hanging around Justitia disguised as a cranky little old lady -- appears expressly to explain to Justitia's boss that God knows that Justitia is Good and should be Allowed to Stay on Earth and Date Nice Young Cops, because she gave that serial killer the death penalty properly in court, instead of chasing him down and murdering him extrajudicially. WHAT is the meaning of justice? Maximally punitive sentencing! Huzzah!!!
Then of course he escapes from jail and she gets to chase him down and murder him extrajudicially anyway because justice I guess is also about having your cake and eating it too?
I don't wish to imply that our experience of watching this show was all suffering and no rewards. There were fun elements! I will enumerate them below:
- Justitia/Judge Kang Bit-Na is played by Park Shin-hye, whom I know best for playing incredibly ditzy teen heroines such as the confused nun in You're Beautiful, and she is so clearly having a wonderful time playing against type as she stalks confidently around being rude and murdering people
- Justitia has two demon minions hanging out on Earth with her and they're both very funny. One of them is Justitia's number one fangirl who has a whole arc about being torn between her Mission as a Demon and her Love for her Cool Mean Boss in which we were genuinely invested, because the actress is great and also it's extremely gay. The other one is attempting to convert to Christianity but is unfortunately allergic, due to being a demon. It's a good joke! It lands!
- Archangel Gabriel is also doing a fantastic job as a passive-aggressive old lady, which is very funny, and then every so often it shows us what Archangel Gabriel really looks like, which is a confused kpop star with a terrible blonde bowl cut, and that also is very funny
- there's a whole plot arc about SATAN being on the LOOSE and we had a good time in the middle guessing all the people that it would be fun to have turn out to be SURPRISE SATAN before it inevitably ended up being the most boring person possible. But we enjoyed ourselves for a while there!
- again, it was so great when Justitia stabbed her boyfriend
And, you know what, I'll give the show this for its ethics: I can agree that in considering the question of 'what is justice' it is important to center the emotional well-being of the victims and their friends and family. I do not think the show and I agree on literally anything else. But I'll give it that.
Okay, so the premise: our heroine is Justitia, the DEMON JUDGE of the UNDERWORLD, THIRD IN LINE to the THRONE OF HELL, whose job is to sentence unrepentant murderers to unending torments. However, when a nice young judge gets murdered and accidentally ends up in her domain instead of the lesser hell where she belongs, Justitia refuses to listen to her pleas of innocence, gets ready to sentence her anyway, and promptly gets her wrist slapped by her superiors: she's gotten complacent! Time to go to Earth, wearing the body of the dead judge, and learn! about JUSTICE!!!
Given that Justitia's initial mistake involved accidentally sentencing an innocent person, you might be forgiven for thinking that Justitia's job on Earth might involve perhaps getting justice for the wrongly accused, or learning to temper justice with mercy and a little bit of nuance, or even uncovering faults and corruption within the justice system as it exists. haha! no. Justitia's job is to hit a quota of Unrepentent, Unforgiven Murderers On Earth and sentence them to unending torment, just like in her day job. She does this by chasing them around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimic the things they have done to their victims and beating them up, then stamping them on the forehead with a little stamp that says GEHENNA while then the doors of hell open and an ominous voice roars GEHENNA!!!! and they get sucked into hell. We did not enjoy the excruciating sequences of murderers being chased around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimicked the things they had done to their victims, which the show obviously wants us to find cathartic and satisfying. We did enjoy the ominous voice that roared GEHENNA!!!! It made us laugh every time.
As a further complication, for some reason it only counts for her Justice Quota if the Unrepentant, Unforgiven Murderers are not in prison but wandering the streets ... so Justitia decides that the only solution is to hear criminal cases, as a real judge, then give them absurdly light sentences so they don't actually go to prison and are free to go harass their victims some more, then hunt them down, beat them up, GEHENNA!!!!!, etc.
Hilariously, this means that the premise of the show appears to be: the justice system is absolutely fine and working exactly as it should, except for our heroine, who is single-handedly fucking up the course of Justice, in the name of Justice.
As is obligatory in this sort of show, Justitia does in fact meet a sweet mortal boy. He is a righteous cop, because of course, and also the only survivor of the mass serial killing of his whole family, because of course. On their first sort-of-date he tells her about the fact that he blames himself for the death of his family in a way that makes it sound like he murdered his family and she's like "amazing! one for the quota!" and immediately stabs him and tries to drag him to hell. This was extremely funny and singlehandedly caused us to keep watching the show after we were like 'should we quit? It feels like maybe we should quit?' "Maybe she is going to learn something about nuance," we said encouragingly to each other. "Maybe the show will complicate its own premise! Also, that was hilarious."
Anyway, despite the fact that she stabbed him and dragged him to Hell and then her demon boss appeared and was like "JUSTITIA! come ON! this guy is not a real murderer EITHER!" the cop boyfriend spends the next four or five episodes going "man, I wonder who is the serial killer who is murdering all these obviously guilty people that this demon judge who stabbed me keeps letting off the hook? who could it be ...."
Eventually, by falling in love with this Nice Young Man, Justitia comes to learn the important lesson that the friends and family of murder victims find it more satisfying when murderers are Sentenced Properly in Court than when a mysterious serial killer drops their be-GEHENNA!!!!'d body in the street the day after. (Friend T: I don't know, I think I would find these things equally satisfying.) In the triumphant finale, she catches the other serial killer -- the backstory one who murdered the love interest's whole family -- and presides over a trial where instead of interpreting the law to its most lenient possible degree, she interprets it to its harshest possible degree and sentences him to death. Everyone cheers. The entire population of Korea is like "judges should learn from this!" The Archangel Gabriel -- who's been hanging around Justitia disguised as a cranky little old lady -- appears expressly to explain to Justitia's boss that God knows that Justitia is Good and should be Allowed to Stay on Earth and Date Nice Young Cops, because she gave that serial killer the death penalty properly in court, instead of chasing him down and murdering him extrajudicially. WHAT is the meaning of justice? Maximally punitive sentencing! Huzzah!!!
Then of course he escapes from jail and she gets to chase him down and murder him extrajudicially anyway because justice I guess is also about having your cake and eating it too?
I don't wish to imply that our experience of watching this show was all suffering and no rewards. There were fun elements! I will enumerate them below:
- Justitia/Judge Kang Bit-Na is played by Park Shin-hye, whom I know best for playing incredibly ditzy teen heroines such as the confused nun in You're Beautiful, and she is so clearly having a wonderful time playing against type as she stalks confidently around being rude and murdering people
- Justitia has two demon minions hanging out on Earth with her and they're both very funny. One of them is Justitia's number one fangirl who has a whole arc about being torn between her Mission as a Demon and her Love for her Cool Mean Boss in which we were genuinely invested, because the actress is great and also it's extremely gay. The other one is attempting to convert to Christianity but is unfortunately allergic, due to being a demon. It's a good joke! It lands!
- Archangel Gabriel is also doing a fantastic job as a passive-aggressive old lady, which is very funny, and then every so often it shows us what Archangel Gabriel really looks like, which is a confused kpop star with a terrible blonde bowl cut, and that also is very funny
- there's a whole plot arc about SATAN being on the LOOSE and we had a good time in the middle guessing all the people that it would be fun to have turn out to be SURPRISE SATAN before it inevitably ended up being the most boring person possible. But we enjoyed ourselves for a while there!
- again, it was so great when Justitia stabbed her boyfriend
And, you know what, I'll give the show this for its ethics: I can agree that in considering the question of 'what is justice' it is important to center the emotional well-being of the victims and their friends and family. I do not think the show and I agree on literally anything else. But I'll give it that.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-27 03:50 pm (UTC)Does the cop boyfriend get sent back to earth alive post-stabbing? Do he and Justitia keep seeing each other despite, you know, the stabbing?
Also love the demon "who is attempting to convert to Christianity but is unfortunately allergic, due to being a demon." That sounds great! Perhaps could be reused in another all-around better show.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-27 04:12 pm (UTC)You have to consider that the show means it, because, boy, it triples down on it!
no subject
Date: 2025-05-27 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-27 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-28 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-27 08:44 pm (UTC)That's brilliant and I am sorry the show does not lean more into it!
The other one is attempting to convert to Christianity but is unfortunately allergic, due to being a demon. It's a good joke! It lands!
Despite being allergic to Christianity myself, I would also watch that plot.
I feel we should see more cranky little old lady archangels. That is an underserved niche.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-28 05:09 am (UTC)It was fascinating! It was very weird, because it was treated as more than a joke but also... kind of just a running joke? but also kind of serious with some hints at pathos? I was very invested in this demon minion, to be honest.
I feel we should see more cranky little old lady archangels. That is an underserved niche.
The cranky little old lady archangel was GREAT. The kpop actor to be honest was not very good, but the little old lady actress was VERY good and managed to channel "confused kpop lad" body language into "serenely above it all inhuman archangel" while wearing an unflattering hat and sitting in a fast food restaurant being judgy at a demmon.
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Date: 2025-05-27 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-28 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-29 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-29 02:52 am (UTC)Otherwise ... I don't think even the boyfriend stabbing could have kept me watching....
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Date: 2025-05-29 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-31 07:26 am (UTC)