Medalist Season 2

Episode 8

Weĺl, it seems as though I made a mistake when checking the episode count for this season, as we still have one more to go after this before it's over. It's a good thing too, because for all intents and purposes, this was probably the one of the weakest episodes of the season so far. I already wasn't all that sold on the circumstances that led to Inori and Tsukasa going on their road trip last week, so seeing it culminate into a melodramatic training episode wasn't exactly the most exciting follow-up we could have gotten. While most of it is more frustrating than bad, when it's all said and done I'm still not sure if this detour was worth it.

Considering that this scenario felt a little forced to begin with, I'm glad that the amount of time it takes for Inori to regain her previous jumping skills is fairly minimal. Once the jumping coach sees how she's started to loosen her body in mid-air, all it takes is a few pointers for her to start landing most of the jumps she's already mastered. The coach even points out that Tsukasa actually made a good call in getting a harness for training, and pushes him to have another go of using it with Inori, as there's always a risk of injury when using one, and it's important that they get past that fear. It's another bit of realism that's refreshing to see out of a sports show, but it only makes all the drama surrounding this feel even more unnecessary. That feeling is only further enhanced when we see that Inori is still having trouble regaining the timing she needs to land triples, and it's there where the rest of the episode transitions purely into training as she continues adjusting her form. Under different circumstances, I'd be perfectly okay with the show slowing down for Inori to focus on practicing but since this practice is only being done to fix a problem Inori didn't have before the last episode, it comes off as even more tedious than a regular training episode would have been and it was hard to get all that invested in her re-learning how to jump.

If Inori gains anything from this ordeal, it's towards the end where the coach notices that Inori has the potential to land a quadruple jump, and with only an hour left to train, she has to decide between learning how to do one or remastering how to do triples. With how important this decision could be towards her next competition, it's great to see Inori insist on making it herself rather than just deferring to Tsukasa, and while her choice to go for the quadruple was a fairly obvious one, it's still a strong showing of her development to see the adults around her treating her like an athlete rather than a child. Actually pulling off a quadruple jump proves to be easier said than done though, as the timing needed to land it ends triggers Inori's memories of how both her sister and Tsukasa ended up injuring themselves, which gets her a little too desperate to not to fail. It's a feeling that Tsukasa is all too familiar with, so when sees that she's running the risk of hitting the same kinds of walls he did, he takes the time to advise her to focus on the feeling of the jump than overthinking how to land it, which ends up being just what she needed in order to get out of her own head so she could nail it. Much like last week's big scene during the end of their road road trip, it's a moment that I like in isolation when it comes how reinforcing how Tsukasa and Inori learn from each other, but is also one that doesn't seem like it was worth all the hoops it took to get to it, as we could have just as easily gotten it in a more straightforward training arc about Inori learning quadruple jumps. At any rate it does seem as though the show is done with Inori's training for the time being, and while I don't know what it'll do to fill out the time for the season's final episode, I'm hoping that whatever we get will at least be a leg up from this one.

Rating:

Medalist Season 2 is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.