‘The Winning Try’ Episode 6 Recap – Now Things Are Getting Serious

It wouldn’t be fair to claim that The Winning Try has been unserious to this point, because it had me pretty much sobbing already, but it definitely hasn’t been as serious as it is in Episode 6. And this is a good thing! We’re at the midway point now, and the way to keep things fresh is to make them more dramatic. I could probably watch Ga-ram solve some kind of ridiculous problem every week and be totally happy with that, but it isn’t how dramas work, and there are serious stakes to consider here, including, you know, the short and long-term futures of pretty much every character.

In this hour, I really felt that, probably because so many of those characters, but particularly Ga-ram and I-ji, are staring ruin in the face for completely different reasons. Following on very nicely from the previous episode, which saw Ga-ram’s Myasthenia Gravis significantly worsen and I-ji throw — deliberately or not, even she can’t quite say — a shooting qualifier for the sake of Seol-hyeon, this outing lends particular focus to these two subplots and their repercussions. But there’s also another roadblock or two for the rugby team to overcome, just for good measure.

Let’s start with Ga-ram. His condition is of paramount importance for a couple of reasons. One is that Heung-nam followed him and Seok-bong to the hospital, and doesn’t believe Ga-ram’s excuse that Seok-bong has a bad back, so he immediately reports this to Seong, who tells him to keep looking into it. Since the faculty is already looking for any excuse to fire Ga-ram, an undisclosed medical issue will give them all the ammo they need. And then there’s the related matter that if Ga-ram doesn’t calm down a bit, the condition might even kill him.

But Ga-ram can’t rest. The latest problem he has to overcome is convincing a professional scout to attend the upcoming match in the President’s Cup — once again against Daesang, who beat Hanyang easily in the practice match — and take a genuine interest in his players, which is easier said than done since he has been shunned within the rugby community on account of the doping scandal. This is a good excuse for yet another dynamite Ga-ram speech, convincing his old coach to give his players a fair opportunity. A brief flashback also shows that Ga-ram chose Hanyang; he wasn’t looking for a coaching job.

Now he’s there, though, he truly believes in his players. And, crucially, the players are beginning to believe in themselves, especially in the potential of Ung, who is already a star athlete and has the potential to improve exponentially given his unfamiliarity with the sport. The team trains him up outside of sessions, and he works on tackling privately, but seems to have a bit of a psychological issue with it. In a brief conversation with Ga-ram, the assumption is that he’s worried about getting hurt, but they’re interrupted before he can clarify. Something to keep an eye on.

This brings us on to I-ji. After what happened in the shooting qualifier, Hanyang is flooded with rumours that she deliberately rigged the match so that Seol-hyeon could qualify, which leads to a very legitimate scandal with the Shooting Association getting involved. If the association deems I-ji to have deliberately thrown the qualifier for Seol-hyeon’s benefit, they’ll both be suspended, so Seol-hyeon’s wealthy father is naturally furious about the whole thing. The Winning Try Episode 6 gives I-ji more focus than any episode prior, I think, and it benefits from her perspective, especially in how the existential crisis she’s feeling relates to Ga-ram’s own worries when he first received his diagnosis.

Of course, Nak-gyun wants I-ji to lie to cover his own indiscretion, pushing her to claim she had “the yips”, which I had to Google. It means a “sudden and unexplained loss of ability to execute certain skills” — which is very similar to how Ga-ram’s disease affects him, for what it’s worth — but she refuses to do that and claims instead that she simply got in her own head when she started to drop points. The decision will be up to the association.

In their respective doldrums, I-ji and Ga-ram do manage to find one another once again. There’s still a lot of bitterness and uncertainty there, a lot of lingering unanswered questions, but in little flashes of generosity and empathy — like the fact that the ear defenders Kang gave to I-ji in the previous episode came from Ga-ram, who bought a bunch when she was still playing, since he thought she’d need them — I-ji is beginning to see that Ga-ram didn’t just abandon her and their relationship for no reason. In some ways, it’s a good thing that a serious Myasthenia Gravis flare-up causes him to collapse in front of her, since when he wakes up in the hospital on a ventilator, she knows not only his diagnosis, but why he took performance-enhancing drugs, and why he disappeared for three years. And sometimes the truth changes everything.

RELATED:

• The Winning Try Episode 7 Recap