“Bad and Crazy” starring Lee Dong-wook: A drama about identity disorder that will remain in our mind
Another great drama came to an end.
tvN’s Friday-Saturday drama “Bad and Crazy” recently ended with the ratings for the last episode being 2.8% (according to Nielson Korea), slightly down from the highest ratings of 4.4% in the first episode. However, “Bad and Crazy” made an impression as a novel crime thriller about the identity disorder which has rarely been seen before.
In the drama, Ryu Soo-yeol (Lee Dong-wook), a materialistic detective dreaming of success, and K (Wi Ha-joon), who suddenly appears and beats villains as if he was a warrior of justice have a confrontational relationship with each other. K suddenly appeared and interfered with Ryu Soo-yeol’s plan to be promoted. However, when it turned out that K was actually another ego of Ryu Soo-yeol, “Bad and Crazy” made us expect that it would be both a crime thriller and a psychological drama.
The relationship between Ryu Soo-yeol and K, who initially confronted and gradually cooperated, showed a process of finding the right way in life.
And as we move on to the second half of the drama, the reason why Ryu Soo-yeol created another personality called K was revealed. Ryu Soo-yeol was obsessed with a sense of guilt that he might have killed his father who was engaged in habitual domestic violence, so he thought K was created because of that. However, a psychiatrist named Shin Joo-hyuk (Jeong Sung-il) was the true reason here. He pretends to consult people in need, but in fact, he creates murder through gaslighting his patients.
Ryu Soo-yeol finds out that the man is Jung Yoon-ho (Jung Yoon-seok), who suffered from family violence in the past and suggested the members kill each other. And the fact that K was not the murderer who killed his father but it was Jung Yoon-ho who killed him. K was a character created by Ryu Soo-yeol during his weak time in extreme situations to protect himself.
In the end, the story drawn by “Bad and Crazy” with a unique character setting of dual personality centered around a character named Ryu Soo-yeol, who had a tremendous trauma after suffering from terrible family violence, finding himself while solving a crime. In the final episode, Ryu Soo-yeol’s appearance when arresting Jung Yoon-ho and visiting K, who is crying while leaving after all the cases were solved, and reaching out his hands for him, shows the process of him overcoming trauma by embracing the characters in their own forms.
The reason why the dual personality setting of “Bad and Crazy” is a novel is that it was drawn as a pleasant and an action-comedy by personifying a story that could have been somewhat complicated and too heavy when entering psychological content. In particular, the comic and exaggerated action hero character K was an important decision that made “Bad and Crazy” an action drama that was not uncomfortable to watch while the story was dealing with brutal crimes.
Above all, Lee Dong-wook and Wi Ha-joon’s performances for crossing the extreme atmosphere of comedy and criminal investigations need to be praised. Lee Dong-wook showed his acting that goes beyond the comical situations he experienced because of trauma wounds with dual personalities. Meanwhile, Wi Ha-joon performed heavy action as well as light and lovely comedy scenes perfectly. It is regrettable that the ratings are somewhat low, but it is obvious that “Bad and Crazy” will be remembered by fans as an action crime-thriller drama with fresh ideas.
