Crime Scene is one of my favorite Korean variety shows of all time. Because of this show, I was introduced to shows like The Genius, The Great Escape, Society Game, The Bloody Game, Busted, Time Hotel, Girls High School Mystery Class, The Devil's Plan, The Zone, and Village Survival.
I am a huge Hong Jin Ho fan and I remember there was this person called Bumdidlyumptious who would ENGSUB his shows.
Anyway, after almost seven years, Crime Scene will return for its fourth season. Park Ji Yoon, Jang Jin, and Jang Dong Min are back alongside former Season 1 guest Key of SHINEE, Earth Arcade's An Yu Jin (also of IVE,) and Extraordinary Attorney Woo's Joo Hyun Young. It's a shame that Hong Jin Ho is not part of the cast. With that said, he has appeared in a couple of survival shows like The Bloody Game and Time Hotel, and while he managed to make the top three, Jin Ho made a lot of clutch mistakes.
To celebrate the fourth season, I am going to list down my Top Ten.
HONORABLE MENTION: LIM BANG GEUL
CASES: 3
RECORD: 2 WINS | 1 LOSS - 1 WIN AS THE CRIMINAL
I get why she resigned in the middle of the first season. Aside from beating the cast members, her integrity as a lawyer is also on the line. With that said, she is hailed as the first challenge winner of Season 1. She also accomplished the feat as a criminal, which is harder.
10 | JUN HYUN MOO
CASES: 8
RECORD: 3 WINS | 5 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 1
He is seen as the Deduction Idiot of Season 1 because most of his assumptions are based on gut feelings. Hyun Moo also has a punchable face. It's not like he is aesthetically impaired, but he just did things wrong. He is quick to accuse without basis, he does "Hail Mary" moves to get evidence (mostly ransacking the locations to luck out on clues), and he needs the other members to take the target from him because he doesn't have a poker face. With that said the same attributes I enumerated are the same reasons why he scored an epic win during The Football Murder. Because he messed up the locations, made bad assumptions, and looked like a bad civilian, he was able to hide in plain sight en route to a prize haul that almost made him win the first season.
9 | NS YOON G
CASES: 9
RECORD: 4 WINS | 5 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 1
There is nothing worse than a girl crying because she got frustrated in a game. NS Yoon G used the damsel in distress formula to mask her criminal role, and she almost got away. However, she can only use the move once, and to her credit, in her three seasons (one as a main cast member and two as a guest,) Yoon G tried her best to win the cases. While she missed out on a win in the Team Leader's Murder, she did score a win as a criminal in The Police Academy Case. She had "Park Ji Yoon" vibes in Seasons 2 and 3, but this is only because she's not just a K-Pop girl group plant. I thought she did better as the older, tough singer who needs to be taken seriously than in the first season where she was miscast as the cutesy youngest.
8 | JUNG EUN JI - APINK
CASES: 11
RECORD: 6 WINS | 5 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 0 WINS | 1 LOSS
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 0
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 0
In some ways, I thought Eun Ji had it easy. She got a nice record despite losing as a criminal in consecutive challenges (The Musical Actor and Sook Cafe Murders) and missing out on a win as a detective. With that said, you can't deny her impressive win-loss record. As one of the civilians, she was also able to search for the hidden clues that helped the team solve a case. Whether it's the hidden classroom camera or the mole in the Swindler's Murder case, Eun Ji was able to track down the necessary information. It just feels like she's more of a beautiful version of Kim Jong Min in The Great Escape (the guy who gets the clues but it's the others who solve the puzzle.)
7 | JANG DONG MIN
CASES: 15
RECORD: 6 WINS | 9 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 1 WIN | 2 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 1
While Hong Jin Ho is The Genius' first winner, I think Jang Dong Min is the show's best player. Not only was he a boss in terms of strategy as well as in communication, but he knows how to read the room. With that said, The Genius and The Society Game for that matter have a more serious concept than Crime Scene. Yes, there is a deduction involved but there is also a team dynamic in place. Being a comedian, Dong Min has to tip-toe between acting like a genius detective and playing a bumbling cup, and in some ways causes him to become a top suspect or just ruins his criminal cover. And like in his other reality shows, Dong Min listens to his teammates and I guess this is why he has a bad 6-9 win-loss record. Hopefully, the fourth season is going to be better for him. To break the Top 5, he needs to win a few more games both as a detective and as a criminal to improve his surprisingly weak record.
6 | KIM JI HOON
CASES: 13
RECORD: 6 WINS | 7 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 1 WIN | 0 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 1
Actor Kim Ji Hoon played two games as a guest in the second season and came with a win as a criminal in the Chicken Restaurant Murder. As a regular in Season 3, Ji Hoon did fairly well. I know he shines more as a character because of the zaniness of his roles, but in the game, he is also a good puzzle solver. Ji Hoon can communicate well with others but in the end, he goes with his gut. In Season 3, he had a success rate of 56 percent as a civilian. In some ways, being the "sperm king," the guy with a "pillow" girlfriend, or the eccentric dude with a stuffed toy flamingo perched on his shoulder, made the episodes funny but it also made him a wacko. Like Hani, Ji Hoon has yet to lose a game as a detective. Hopefully, he can guest in the fourth season where he can debut another strange character that would mess up the entire investigation.
5 | HANI - EXID
CASES: 14
RECORD: 7 WINS | 7 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 2 WINS | 0 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 0
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 1
Yes, Hani is seen in the show as the ditzy K-Pop girl member who never gets the chance to shine when she gets the role of a criminal. With that said, she also exceeds expectations as a detective. She is the only Crime Scene member to win multiple detective tries that has yet to experience defeat. She also tied Hong Jin Ho for the best deduction in Crime Scene's Season 3 prelude.
4 | YANG SE HYUNG
CASES: 10
RECORD: 7 WINS | 3 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 1 WIN | 2 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 0
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 0
Yang Se Hyung only participated in Season 3 and has appeared in ten of its 12 episodes. If you take out his bad detective win-loss record of one win over two defeats, he has a surprising stat line that in some ways Park Ji Yoon and Hong Jin Ho should be wary of. Apart from the one-time guests, Yang is the only member with a 70 percent win-loss record. He also won as a criminal in the Swindler's Murder case and unlike most players, he has never been arrested as a criminal (though he has a small sample size of one,) and he hasn't been wrongfully convicted as a criminal. I guess the only problem with Yang is that he struggled to mesh with the team early. And this is not just about understanding the game but inserting the right comedy in a game that revolves around a murder investigation.
Also, as I was rewatching the Swindler's Murder episode there was a tell in the victim that no one really saw. The victim had mucus drooping in his nose similar to the painting Yang's character stole.
Anyway...
3 | JANG JIN
CASES: 25
RECORD: 13 WINS | 12 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 0 WINS | 5 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 1
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 1
I guess the reason why Crime Scene decided to rule out casting lawyers and only cast real-life detectives during their one-off episodes is because of Jang Jin. Aside from their inability to be funny, lawyers like Lim Bang Geul and Kang Yong Suk, as well as detectives like Pyo Chang Won and Lim Moon Gyu would have their reputations compromised in every defeat they get. This is why they needed Jang Jin.
The award-winning director came to Season 2 with so much hype. He introduced a different way of deducing as if he's trying to write a story. He ranks second in terms of total cases with a pretty decent win-loss record. However, it feels as if he is more of a Deduction Idiot than Jun Hyun Woo. Jang Jin is tied for first with Park Ji Yoon in terms of total cases being the detective but in five tries, he has yet to win a case as a detective. Furthermore, in three tries, he failed twice as a criminal (he failed to win as a criminal in the final episode of Season 3) and was unable to stop the votes during The Swindler's Murder Case. It also didn't help that the show has debunked his triangle theory a multitude of times and he keeps getting cast as the youngest character in the story. With that said, he was able to score a win against the combined chaos of Pyo Chang Won, Park Ji Yoon, Hong Jin Ho, and Kloy as Yakuza Jang.
2 | HONG JIN HO
CASES: 24
RECORD: 11 WINS | 13 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 3 WINS | 1 LOSS
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 2
The former Starcraft player gained acclaim for winning the first season of The Genius. Throughout his run in the program, Jin Ho was seen as a threat. Whether as a helpful innocent civilian or a criminal hiding in plain sight, he tried his best to win. Jin Ho is 3 and 1 as a detective and won two cases as a criminal (Season 1's Classroom Murder and Season 3's Unit Murder). With that said, this is why his reputation got the better of him. As in almost every episode, they saw Jin Ho as the threat to steal the pot. While Season 1's Doctor's Wife case caught him red-handed, there were times when blaming him was just the norm. He was arrested two consecutive times in Season 1 and most of his losses were because he was too intelligent to the point that others suspected him. While I was bummed that he is not part of the Season 4 cast, I'm just happy if he becomes a guest because, at this point, Jin Ho has to take time off from these shows. I don't know how to heal his boss-brain reputation but people are just blindly targeting him at this point.
1 | PARK JI YOON
CASES: 32
RECORD: 16 WINS | 16 LOSSES
DETECTIVE WIN/LOSS RECORD: 3 WINS | 2 LOSSES
WINS AS A CRIMINAL: 2
ARRESTED AS A CRIMINAL: 3
ARRESTED BUT WRONGFULLY ACCUSED: 3
Park Ji Yoon is the Queen of Deduction. In Season 1, she took a backseat to Jun Hyun Moo as head MC, but in the following season, there is no denying that she is the face of the program. At first, it's almost like she played the same game as NS Yoon G in the sense that she uses her girl boss to accentuate her points, but for the remaining seasons, she opts to unleash her comedic side to either reinforce her deductions or shield her identity. Also, being a
Her win-loss record is far from perfect and with 32 cases, she has been often targeted as a criminal. She is 2-3 as a criminal, 3-2 as a detective, and was wrongfully accused as a criminal thrice. With that said, Beauty Park, Jazz Park, and Investigator Park are up there in terms of Best Crime Scene characters.
I am hyped for the upcoming fourth season. I hope all the things that I love are there like Park Ji Yoon's insane characters, Jang Dong Min's delivery, Jang Jin's miscasts, and the possible return of Hong Jin Ho and the other past players.