Filthy Casual for Life

Episode 4 Recap: Yuri struggles to find the right music for his free skate. He had a conservatory student write him a piece in the past, but in the end, he didn’t use it. Realizing it was missing something, he reached back out and had her rewrite it. Meanwhile, Yurio is working hard after realizing he has much to learn. Victor and Yuri struggle to find common ground and a definition to their relationship.

Episode 5 – Face Beet-Red!! It’s the First Competition!

It’s the first competition of the season. Because Yuri bombed his previous year, he has to skate at a regional event.

During warmups, Yuri decides that none of the other skaters matter. He has to focus. Meanwhile, Victor disappears to put on a suit leaving Yuri alone. When he arrives, Victor is the main focus because of his good looks.

It’s competition time, but Yuri is visibly nervous. When the pre-skate warmup finishes, Victor tells Yuri to turn around. Yuri, unsure of what Victor is thinking, turns around. Victor embraces Yuri and tells him:

Yuri skates his program, but it had a few errors. He over rotates a jump and downgrades a jump. When he was finished, he is left wondering what Victor thought. His reception wasn’t exactly stellar.

Yuri ends up scoring his personal best, but he was still scolded by Victor. Victor decides to tell Yuri to downgrade all of his quads in his free skate. Yuri is not enthused, but Victor brings up good points about it being normal to reach your peak at the Grand Prix.

Meanwhile, his competitor, Minami, fan-boys over Yuri’s performance. After Minami’s performance, he heads backstage where Yuri is being interviewed. His program was modeled after one of Yuri’s earlier programs. However, Yuri states the costume is from his dark past which upsets Minami.

Before the free skate, Minami tries to encourage Yuri, however, Yuri ignores it and walks off leaving a young Minami sad. Victor doesn’t like what he sees. He tells Yuri how can he motivate himself if he can’t motivate others. Then Victor crushes his confidence by telling him he’s disappointed in him. Realizing Victor is right, he cheers on Minami from the sidelines. Yuri goes to stretch outside to focus. Upon his return, he slaps Minami on the back as a gesture of congratulations on a personal best. He takes off his jacket to reveal a beautiful costume. Victor notices Yuri’s lips are chapped and applies lip balm making Minami blush.

It’s the first time Yuri has performed his free skate. The program focuses on his career as a skater. Victor is realizing that Yuri is changing his jumps back to having three quads in the performance.

Yuri ends up winning the competition despite his unclean performance. Meanwhile, Yurio sees a picture of them together and he gets upset.

At a press conference, the skaters are revealing the theme of their programs. Yuri introduces his theme as “love” explaining he never thought about love until Victor showed up.

THOUGHTS

Yuri finally debuts his free skate, and it is a beautiful program. I love his costume. The music is also very beautiful.

I thought they did a good job of showing the progression of Yuri’s relationship with Victor. In the lip balm scene, it proves that Yuri is becoming more comfortable with Victor being in his personal space even hugging him back.

I also like how Yuri’s confidence is building. Victor is definitely changing him for the better.

It was cute seeing Minami fanboy over Yuri. I think Yuri needed to see that others look up to him like he looked up to Victor. He’s never thought of that in the past. In the end, it ended up being the most fun he has had skating which shows that he’s opening up his closed-off feelings for people and the sport.