[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Crash" Episode 1

When I first heard about "Crash" I was a little puzzled about the weirdly specific nature of the premise. The drama's about a hybrid police unit, Traffic Crime Investigation, that deals with vehicular crimes. The English name for this is a bit of a misnomer- "traffic" in English generally refers only to the act of driving. But in the cold open, So-hee (played by Kwak Sun-young) and Hyeon-kyeong (played by Choi Moonhee) crack open a case involving illegal car sales.

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From there, the drama only gets more and more specific, as we're introduced to Yeon-ho (played by Lee Min-ki), who works at a car insurance company as an investigator. As it happens, Yeon-ho is investigating this guy who keeps getting into traffic accidents involving old ragpickers whose families don't attempt to negotiate settlements. The police do not appear to be interested in investigating these crimes although So-hee and her team end up being an exception.

"Crash" begs a lot more questions than answers, less about anything actually in the show so much as about South Korean car insurance practices. It's a bit incredible to me that car insurance contracts in South Korea can be drawn up in such a way that a person who is at fault in an accident can actually earn money off of that accident. In this case anyway, the payout seems to presume that he is the main person responsible for negotiating with other injured parties.

It's just a really niche topic is all, to the point I have no idea how much of this is plausible or true and I have equally little idea who I could ask to confirm it. Yet "Crash" itself discusses vehicular crime in the most serious possible terms. So-hee quite literally gives a public service announcement to the camera at the end of this episode discussing road rage. Who funded this show? The police? Car insurance companies?

Whoever is responsible for "Crash" though, there's no question that this intense specificity is a fairly strong draw. Ratings jumped from 2.232% to 3.039% in the second episode, and I can't deny that I'm curious how exactly the TCI is supposed to solve this crime of vehicular serial murder when all the explanations we've received so far seem to suggest that this is a perfect crime. But I'm frankly speaking more curious how screenwriter Oh Soo-jin-I is going to come up with five more high stakes crimes after this one that all involve car insurance fraud.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Crash" is directed by Park Joon-woo, written by Oh Soo-jin-I, and features Lee Min-ki, Kwak Sun-young, Heo Sung-tae, Lee Ho-chul, Choi Moonhee, Bek Hyunjin. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2024/05/13~Now airing, Mon, Tue 22:00 on Disney Plus, ENA, Genie TV.