Sippeatea

The promotional posters would have you believe The Winning Try is a feel-good rugby sports show. It's kinda not.

Instead, what you get is a massive amount of school drama with some rugby on the side. Rugby is just icing on the cake. The actual screen time of rugby being played is shockingly low.

Rather, what's really here is a bunch of old crusty men scheming episode after episode with annoying little plans to set themselves up for promotions and to get rid of Joo Gam-ram (ML) from his coaching job.

Then there is the entire storyline the female lead goes through as an air pistol coach. Of course there's romance between the ML and her. But you can't forget that each individual player on the rugby and air pistol teams needs development too! Don't forget, the ML has his own problems he has to deal with alongside trying to keep his job every episode. Did I mention the entire air pistol sport takes just as much screen time as the rugby segments?

Simply put, the show is doing too much with so little time.

If you manage to enjoy the different storylines, it is rather enjoyable.

The kids have heart, and the ending is satisfying.

Identical twins switch lives. One twin is unemployed and lives in the countryside with her mother while caring for their grandmother in the hospital. The other twin is facing work-related allegations. They decide to switch lives to relieve each other of their ongoing issues.

This show has virtually no flaws. The writing is clean and well-paced, and the characters are solidly developed. The acting is outstanding from everyone, particularly from the characters you least expect it from (i.e., the mothers). The younger high school versions of the main twins and the male lead did an excellent job of selling me the main romance and how it started. No forced and unnecessary cringy love triangles. While the drama is heavy at times there's always closure. When the credits rolled, I felt completely satisfied.

I just want to say that the ML actor made a complete turnaround from his previous work The Witch. It's remarkable what good writing does because in The Witch he was awful.

Listen to me. Have you seen Lighter and Princess? No? Watch that first. You've seen L&P already? Then be prepared for a downgrade when watching this. These two shows are quite comparable. The setups are the same (a college romance in the beginning) and the basic structures are similar. Both include a breakup at the midpoint with a timeskip (not a spoiler), with a significant business focus sprinkled in between while ML desperately attempts to salvage whatever love they have for each other. It's difficult not to compare them.

The first 14 episodes or so are fairly standard. Nothing to write home about. A college romance. He's a sneaker designer starting his own business, while she's a struggling college student entering the world of business finance to support her mother. Slowly but surely, a romance develops, only for the show to break them up in the latter half of the story. Sound familiar? I told you it's similar to Lighter and Princess. This is where the writing truly begins to test your patience.

I wouldn't call it toxic per se but the "will they, won't they" shtick was really annoying. The pushing each other away in order to protect the other person had my eyes rolling numerous times. ML is particularly guilty of this, and his decisions led to significant consequences.

There is a second couple, but many would find a professor-student relationship pairing weird, but I didn't think much of it. Their storyline was not particularly interesting by the end anyway.

For me the best thing about this show was the opening duet performed by Arthur Chen and Sabrina Zhuang. Really good.