When you name a show The Accident, you pretty much have a good idea that there will be a tragic accident in the first episode. That we can deal with, but when exactly what that accident will be is projected in the first scenes of that episode, well, that’s a bad sign for the rest of the series.
Opening Shot: Wind blows outside, and it’s obvious that it’s disrupting a party. But we then see horrified adults running towards something because of the wind.
The Gist: Emiliano (Sebastián Martínez) and Daniela (Claudia Talancón) are throwing a birthday party for their son Rodrigo (Yago Andreu Sandoval), but something else is on Emiliano’s mind: A deal for his company to build a theme park in a hilly area nearby. He take Rodrigo out there and shows him where the roller coasters, water slides and other items will be.
Also attending is one of Emiliano’s business partners, Javier (Rubén Zamora); the son of his wife Brenda (Valentina Acosta) is friends with Rodrigo; her son’s father, Mauricio (Giuseppe Gamba), is Daniela’s therapist. Brenda’s ex. Charro (Alberto Guerra) is also attending, over the objection of his wife Lupita (Eréndira Ibarra), because he feels that he needs to make an effort to get to know the high rollers in Santa Cruz.
As people arrive at the party, Emiliano sips from a flask in order to calm himself down; the phone call from the “gringos” that are making the deal with him is due to come during the party. When Daniela tells him that someone needs to get more ice, he goes to the family’s handyman, Moncho (Silverio Palacios), to get it. But Moncho has been busy tying down the bouncy house that the kids will play in — he’s also been nipping from his own flask.
As Emiliano, Javier and their third partner, David (Erik Hayser), take the call about the business deal, a gust of wind blows through, and suddenly the bouncy house that the kids are playing in takes flight.
It’s a tragedy of unimaginable proportions, but things get even more intense when Carro goes to the police to demand an investigation. The detectives in charge of the case claim it’s simply a tragic accident, but Charro is looking for someone’s head on a platter. Others, like Daniela, may not be as bold about it, but they’re thinking the same thing. But the person who initially gets the blame for not properly anchoring the bouncy house may not be the one who is actually responsible.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Accident is a thriller along the lines of fellow Mexican series The Surrogacy.
Our Take: Almost everything about the first episode of The Accident is predictable; we managed to guess what the accident in the title was, who might be affected by it, and who might be accused of negligence, even if the accusation is unfounded. The show is so melodramatic that it’s less of a thriller and more of a telenovela, with people acting in extreme ways just to generate any kind of reaction from the audience.
There’s a bit of unsubtle class drama in the series, as Moncho immediately falls under suspicion because he’s the handyman, despite his assurances that he did nothing wrong. His wife Yola (Shaní Lozano) seems to be especially cynical about what people with money can get away with, and what happens top them by the end of the episode must be reinforcing that, despite Emiliano and Daniela’s platitudes about considering Moncho and his family as a part of theirs.
Charro is also not like Emiliano and the rest of the tightly-intermeshed group; he and Lupita are involved in some sort of business, but there are questions about whether that business is legit. Also, his actions after he finds out that the bouncy house had a loose tie-down speak to the fact that he’s generally a man who deals with issues by using violence, not reason.
But we were introduced to so many people in the first episode, almost all of whom are either someone’s sister or therapist or business partner — sometimes more than one of those things — that it’s hard to gauge which story is going to come to the fore. After the accident, there are three dead kids and one that is missing, and it seems like there is no clear-cut plan as to where the story is actually going.
Killing off multiple children is certainly a dark way to kick off a thriller, and we’re pretty sure that the grimness of the situation will continue throughout the season. After all, these parents are mourning the deaths of their kids; there promises to be nothing but anger, vengeance and recrimination. That kind of grimness, though, is going to be hard to take after a couple of episodes.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Emiliano admits something about the accident to David, something that he doesn’t want anyone else knowing about.
Sleeper Star: No one particularly stood out among the cast. In fact, we were having a hard time keeping track of who was who for most of the episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: You show wind a party, then have someone tell a handyman to make sure they get the bouncy house up, and the show is called The Accident, well, you pretty much know exactly what’s about to happen.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The Accident takes too many big swings in the first episode without taking any time to let us live with its characters. It’s also very eye-rollingly melodramatic through most of the first episode.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.