Crash – K-Drama Episode 4 Recap & Review

Yeon-ho Gets A Mysterious Letter

Crash Episode 4 begins with Yeon-ho finding a news clip in his mailbox. The article talks about a driver who ran over a married couple late at night. He opens up a box in his room, which has the exact same news report.

We then see a flashback to October 2014. We see Yeon-ho saying goodbye to his parents and going out somewhere. He gets into a car and drives off. While reaching for a CD that fell down on the floor, he takes his eyes off the road. Suddenly, he’s forced to swerve and ends up hitting a married couple crossing the road, killing the girl (Lee Hyun-soo). He gets injured himself as well.

His parents go to Hyun-soo’s funeral and the girl’s parents tell them to leave. Yeon-ho is standing by the side as well. Later, Yeon-ho sees Hyun-soo’s father staring at the spot where she died. Turns out, the detective in charge of the case was none other than Chae-man. Apparently, three high school boys were witnesses for the case.

We then see a man and a woman in a car driving down a road. Suddenly, the woman falls out of the car and onto the street. Meanwhile, Yeon-ho comes to work on his bicycle and comes across Chief Gu, who has gone back to treating him badly.  

Elsewhere, So-hee gets papers related to a new case. The team watches a video of the woman who jumped out of the moving car — Kim Min-ju. The man who was driving is Yang Jae-young and Min-ju worked as a secretary for his father. He reported that he was dropping her home when she suddenly felt tightness in her chest and jumped out.

They go to the hospital where Min-ju is now admitted and learn that she’s in a coma. Her mother says she never had chest problems before. They learn that Jae-young was known for hitting on female employees, despite being married.

Dong-gi and Hyun-kyung question Jae-young but he claims she’s just an employee to him and he never made a move on her. He even gives them his car’s dashcam footage. As he’s leaving, So-hee and Yeon-ho arrive at the police station. Yeon-ho recognises Jae-young as one of the witnesses from his own case but doesn’t tell the others. Jae-young’s dashcam footage is of no use as well since there’s no audio.

At a martial arts club, Jae-young tells his friend Jung-wook that he recognised Yeon-ho from the case in 2014. Turns out, both of them also received news clippings of the car accident but they don’t know who sent it. They wonder if their other friend, Kyung-soo, could have sent it.

The TCI team learns that Min-ju has woken up. So-hee and Yeon-ho visit her. She says she jumped out to avoid sexual harassment. But when they speak to Jae-young, he obviously denies all the accusations.

Elsewhere, Jung-wook has dinner with his father, Myung-hak, and Jae-young’s father, Chairman Yang. Both are fairly important people. When Yang is in the bathroom, Jung-wook tells Myung-hak about Yeon-ho having become a police officer.

Yeon-ho and So-hee go to the hospital to visit Min-ju again but Jae-young and his lawyer have already spoken to her. She doesn’t want to press charges anymore because of how much trouble Jae-young could cause. After they leave, Min-ju’s mother finds that Min-ju recorded her conversation with Jae-young on her phone. The recording shows Jae-young threatening to fire Min-ju and make sure she doesn’t find another job. As the breadwinner of her family, she has no choice.

But the case isn’t over yet. Jae-young comes home to find policemen seizing Chairman Yang’s cars. They are company cars and Jae-young wasn’t supposed to be driving them in the first place, allowing the tax department to take action. Later, Jae-young and Jung-wook meet for a drink and Jae-young rants against Yeon-ho, who made the report to the tax department. Jung-wook tells him not to make a fuss.

Yeon-ho meets with Hyun-soo’s father again. He reveals that someone has also sent him the news clipping of his daughter’s death as well. The next day, So-hee is on her way to work when she sees a man on an electric scooter knock a child over and then run away. So-hee sees Yeon-ho, grabs his cycle and chases the man down.

Since the man knocked Yeon-ho down so easily, So-hee gives Yeon-ho a lesson in fighting and martial arts. This is mostly her flipping Yeon-ho over multiple times. Dong-gi and Hyun-kyung watch from the sidelines. Back at the police station, So-hee sees another officer entering the building. She seems to know him and isn’t too happy about it.

So-hee and her team are then called for the case of a man who died on the street. Apparently, he was a drunkard and it looks like he might have been hit by a car. Yeon-ho and So-hee begin investigating the area and nearby cars. A woman tells them that she saw the man arguing with another man in a black hat.

Meanwhile, Dong-gi and Hyun-kyung get the forensic results that reveal not one, but two cars ran over the man. Using the data of the specific wheels, the team narrow down their suspects.

Back at Namgang Police Station, Myung-hak arrives and is welcomed by officers. He greets So-hee warmly, although Yeon-ho remembers him from the 2014 car accident. A flashback shows Myung-hak convincing Yeon-ho to admit he took his eyes off the road. At present, Myung-hak stretches a hand out towards Yeon-ho who doesn’t shake it. Chae-man watches from afar.

The Episode Review

Crash Episode 4 is a bit haphazardly structured compared to the previous episodes. Instead of focusing on one solid case, we get about two and a half other cases. Each one is different, with Crash fulfilling its promise to offer a variety of stories. However, the wider focus does make the episode a little less engaging than the ones before.

The sexual harassment case was intriguing but doesn’t seem complete yet. Jae-young’s entanglement with the 2014 case indicates that he’s going to be a long-term player in the series. I wonder if they’ve introduced him too early? But with the mysterious letters arriving, it seems like Yeon-ho’s past is going to move from the background to the foreground.

We know about Yeon-ho’s car accident but there is definitely more to it than meets the eye. It seems a bit obvious that he wasn’t the person entirely at fault but maybe there are more interesting details to come. I hope it doesn’t come at the cost of more engaging episodic cases.