Mental Coach Jegal: Episodes 3-4
by missvictrix
One flying kick is not enough to take down a whole world of corruption, but it’s a start. As our mental coach finally starts to get through to his reluctant pupil, a new hope and a new confidence start to take over.
EPISODES 3-4 WEECAP
Oh, I really am loving this show — happily, it’s keeping all the humor and heart from its premiere week, and adding to that equation with more (wacky) characters, moral dilemmas, and lots of new players.
One criticism, though, is that the asynchronous editing got a bit confusing. I understand dramas get a lot of mileage out of showing us a pivotal scene and then backing their way into it again, but sometimes it overcomplicates something that’s not too complicated at all. After all, the simplicity of this show is its charm.
Anyway, the star of this week’s episodes is definitely the No Medal Club characters — they act as Gil’s team of superhero helpers, each putting their athleticism to use, whether that’s gymnast CHOI SOO-JI (Lee Jini) kicking down CCTV cams, marksman PISTOL PARK (Heo Jung-min) “shooting” with a camera, or my favorite cardigan-wearing Young-to, whom we met last week.
This week, however, we learn that the injury that cost Young-to his leg was actually caused by none other than our most-hated-coach-in-the-world, Coach Oh. Also important (and lovely) to note, is that Gil has helped and coached each of the No Medal gang through their emotional and psychological injuries. The closeness between him and Young-to is especially touching, as is Young-to’s bravery in approaching and facing Coach Oh. The two might not exactly look like past teammates, but I like this plot line — and Kang Young-seok — so much that I’ll let it slide.
Gil and the No Medal Club pull all the stops (and comedy) while they investigate what’s going on with the short track team, and come up with enough evidence to start influencing change. First is a press conference beautifully destroyed by the fact that JO JI-YOUNG (Kim Shi-eun) faked her injury and accepted bribes. Coach Oh is dragged off the stage and it’s damn satisfying.
As his abuse of the team is finally exposed — though only temporarily — he’s pulled from his spot just as Ji-young is from hers. This opens up a spot on the national team for our girl Ga-eul — and with her rests the real heart of the story. She fights her way through the previous race, so desperate to rank that she’s willing to harm her injured leg more. But there’s more at stake than just points, and what gives this whole thing heart is her inner struggle. She’s packed with a lot of emotional conflict, but I think my favorite is the yearning in one of her lines: “Why was I given a desire that’s far greater than what my talents can achieve?”
Thanks to Gil’s rather relentless pursuit of rapport with Ga-eul, his words start to get through to her. The two share so many nice scenes this week, and between all their heart-to-hearts and his secret help with Coach Oh, she starts to trust him more. All while admitting that it’s very hard for her to trust people, but that she wants to be able to.
Gil might be working endlessly to build rapport with her, but it gets easier when they both wind up at the national training center again — Ga-eul as a national athlete, and Gil as the reluctantly-hired new mental coach. For Gil, this means a (willful) return to hell; for Ga-eul it’s the success she’s been craving for four years.
As the national training center becomes our new main setting, Gil gets many more opportunities to butt heads with Dr. Park (who is by far the most unnecessary character in this drama this far; let’s hope they use her more as the story progresses). The training center also means a lot more of Gil and Tae-man interactions — which, not gonna lie, I love the frenemy thing they have going on. Sure enough, we see them conferring and working together over the Coach Oh assault case, but at the same time there’s a thinly-veiled contention between the two at all times (plus, Kwon Yul in glasses!).
And that leads us to probably my favorite motif from this week’s episodes, which is the idea of needing other people — and conflict — to grow. We see it first with Ga-eul, as she admits she needs to train with the team, not on her own, because competing against the clock is nothing like competing with other skaters and feeding off their energy.
Later, Gil confirms the same motif in his interactions with Tae-man — a fascinating dynamic that’s less “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” for him, and a little more akin to “keep your competition close because you need something to strive against in order to persevere and grow.”
You could argue the story has enough to keep itself going with the Gil/Ga-eul coaching angle, and the Gil/Tae-man backstory, but we meet another player who complicated things. He’s the prodigy swimmer LEE MU-GYEOL (rookie Moon Yoo-kang), and he has a seemingly complicated history with Ga-eul. We see her parting from him when they were leaving the national training center four years ago, but by the time we hit Episode 4, he’s also returned.
I really like the addition of this character for several reasons. First, his presence practically guarantees that there’s no love line in the works for Gil and Ga-eul. Second, he seems to hate Coach Oh as much as everyone else, and when Coach Oh returns to taunt Ga-eul yet again, it’s not Gil but Mu-gyeol that punches his lights out. Third, Mu-gyeol has a bit of an interesting story himself.
When we meet him he’s just returned to Korea after training abroad, but there’s something bigger at stake, because during their investigations the No Medal club seems him in an illicit exchange with a delinquent from the past they all know quite well.
But probably the best part of Mu-gyeol’s appearance on the scene is that he’s forced to accept a mental coach – and that mental coach is none other than Gil. In order to be taken seriously, Gil scares Mu-gyeol with the inside knowledge he has on his doping, and it comes off a bit threatening, but really, we all know that Gil will be the best thing that ever happened to this swimmer boy.
The lessons that Gil works so hard to instill in Ga-eul are surely coming for swimmer boy next — and beyond mere plot points, the depth also permeates the drama’s many uplifting and encouraging messages, like “Finish strong,” or “Face your fears head on. Don’t ignore them but expose them for what they are.”
Our crew will need these mantras and more as they re-enter the fight. And with a whole lot of corruption and bureaucracy threatening to bury the truth — again — there are many more battles in store before true athleticism is restored for our short track team.
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Tags: Jung Woo, Kwon Yul, Lee Yumi, Mental Coach Jegal, Moon Yoo-kang, Park Se-young
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1 Reply1988 -❣️Mother Bean❣️
September 21, 2022 at 6:21 PM
@missvictrix thank you for the weecap. I wonder if Seungha personifies the ‘unwanted but we have to be seen to offer’ tokenistic nature of the psychological support which contrasts with the sanctioned dominance of the emotionally abusive coaching approach.
I am really looking forward to seeing the story unfold between the golden boy swimmer and the determined underdog skater. The unexpected punch for the worst coach ever was another joyful moment. What I am not looking forward to is the Why her vibe of the repeated random body drop with no explanation.
I loved the found family undercover ops. Not sure how or why they have access to an outside broadcast truck though. I am currently watching Healer and it reminded me of the Ajumma behind the scenes input.
Loved the backstory to Gil’s reputation in the Athlete’s village amongst the many support staff that enable the smooth running of the village. The best bit was the the bribing of the vegetarian monk caught making chicken soup!
We are being shown the many faces of corruption and behind the scenes power games and I really hope that there will be some opportunities to show long term changes as the futility of the protest and the smug return of the coach whilst expected was hard to watch.
The OST for the series is really mixed, with hard rock for the action scenes and lyrically relevant softer tones for the quiet reflective moments.
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pickleddragon
September 21, 2022 at 10:44 PM
I thought the body drop was a manifestation of his trauma? Was it real? Did I miss something? 😐
The undercover ops were hilarious - they had everything in place, it seems, and were prepared for all eventualities. Hyper-prepared. That montage of Gil as a student athlete was so OTT - Jung Woo is too old to be taken seriously in young adult garb, so most of the time I was trying to suspend disbelief. And that hole in the ground is the oldest trick in the house 😂 but it did make me giggle a bit.
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2 pickleddragon
September 21, 2022 at 10:41 PM
Thank you for the weecap!
This drama is quite ridiculous but it's got an old school charm that's endearing and keeping me hooked. I did not expect the No Medal Club to become a private detection + vigilante justice club, but I'll take whatever show dishes out right now.
TBH, I'm uncomfortable with the frenemy line between Jung Woo and Kwon Yul. For all the awful things Tae-man did to Gil when they were competing, should we be celebrating a friendship between them? Surely Tae-man should get some kind of due for his behaviour.
Agree on Dr Park completely - the only thing I can see for her is that she and her boss are the professionals here, and therefore, monitoring Jegal Gil's coaching. But that is a totally unnecessary role, and just a place filler, IMO.
On a tangential note, I find there is an uncanny resemblance between Lee You Mi (the FL) and Chun Woo Hee (who played Im Jin Joo in Be Melodramatic). Am I seeing too much, or do others agree?
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knewbie
September 22, 2022 at 12:46 AM
I don't think there's a frenemy line between Gil and Tae-man. Gil only gave him the video of Moo-gyeol and the drug dealer to stop him from revealing the second informant's identity to the committee, and I think deep down Tae-man is a bit intimidated by, and even envious of, Gil's independent spirit.
That said, I think Tae-man is quite a complex character. He's too lazy to do his job properly and to fully understand what he has done to Gil and Moo-tae, but we get occasional glimpses of something deeper, like his appreciation of Ga-eul's resilience and his resentment at being called a "dense athlete". (Though the latter made me laugh, cos I have met some "dense athletes" in administrative positions and they really can be pretty dense.)
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3 knewbie
September 22, 2022 at 12:24 AM
IMO Dr Park serves a very clear purpose. When it comes to mental health, I think it’s extremely important to balance unorthodox methods with established principles. In the writer’s previous show Special Labour Inspector Jo, the vigilante team could go all out to expose workplace abuses and ensure that the victims were suitably recompensed. But Jegal Gil not only has to root out corruption, he also has to take care of the victims’ mental well-being. What’s more, a healthy mental state for these victims isn’t exactly the same as that for most people - it has to be able to withstand high-stress competition and performing before the entire nation/world.
Dr Park has already made one important and obvious point: as the counsellor/therapist/ etc, they can’t actively intervene in the athletes’ lives. Of course Dr Park and Gil can attack Coach Oh if they actually witness him abusing someone (like Dr Park yelling at him at the rink), or report his abuses if they have proof. But anything more than that would compromise the athlete’s agency and independence. The ideal situation should be something like Ga-eul following Gil’s advice and standing up to Coach Oh when they met in the corridor. (Which indicates that she didn’t actually need Moo-gyeol to fight her battles for her.)
Even Gil seems to agree on this point. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have lied to Ga-eul about the No Medal Club’s earlier escapade. Also, all the stuff they did after Gil started working at the training centre wasn’t so much to help Ga-eul but to right institutional wrongs, like making sure Tae-man didn’t reveal the second informant’s name.
I never for a moment expected a romance between Gil and Ga-eul (which would have been downright unethical), and I have a feeling that Moo-gyeol isn’t supposed to be Ga-eul’s love interest either. I think Moo-gyeol and Ga-eul tried but failed to report something terrible that Coach Oh did, probably involving the super-sunbae speed skater Han Yeo-woon, and both left the training centre as a result. Perhaps the grim, icy Yeo-woon is based on Shim Suk-hee...
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knewbie
September 22, 2022 at 1:57 AM
I was rambling on and on and forgot to mention Dr P's other possible purpose: it has been portrayed comically so far, but she met Gil at the darkest moment in his life, and hence might understand his issues better than anyone else.
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4 Kurama
September 22, 2022 at 11:06 AM
I really liked those episodes. The dynamic is more clear with Jegal being a mental coach for the athletes and his team helping with the politics and corruption. Dr Park shouldn't have talked about his past as a psychiatric patient. It wasn't professional. First, it was in the past and he changed since and it looked more like her frustration with him than his capacity to do his job. But their future interactions will be fun.
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5 Toodlepip
September 23, 2022 at 6:14 AM
This drama is keeping me coming back for more. I do like how the No Medals Club form a great backroom team and support the Jegal, and how the FL forges ahead and develops week on week as a character. The swimmer has got me interested, as the pressure to dope and the advantages to turning a blind eye to it is prevalent on a global level.
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6 tiredys
September 23, 2022 at 2:52 PM
Jegal said something about 3 months - I wonder if he's setting out on engaging with a larger plan related to getting information about his former consultee's situation. It would be nice to see she and her family get some justice.
Been enjoying the show as it isn't so ridiculous it takes one out of the story. Don't want to be getting too many expectations though as every kdrama I've seen associated with mental health has treated it abysmally in some way or another.
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