The Winning Edge begins with a bunch of high school girls who are also competitive gymnasts taking amphetamines supplied by their coach to enhance their performances and help them cope with the pressure of an upcoming national competition. One of the gymnasts, Sally Peters (Shawn Hoskins), takes more of the drug than usual and ends up dying during practice while the rest of the team and coach play cover up. Quincy (Jack Klugman) conducts the autopsy and determines that Sally died from the drugs causing an aneurysm in her brain to rupture which makes him determined to find out who supplied her.
I found this to be a pretty bad episode for several reasons. First off, the prior Season 5 episode "Unhappy Hour" dealt with a teen death due to alcohol addiction, and here in the very next episode we have another teen dying as a result of drug abuse. Two episodes in a row of this subject matter teaching the same exact lesson was way over the top in my opinion and overkill. The producers really should have switched around the order or something rather than airing such similar stories back to back. Additionally, there is zero mystery in this episode as we see right in the beginning what happened and who was responsible which made it much less interesting.
I also found the build up to be extremely slow as Sally doesn't die until nearly 20 minutes in. Although it was obvious what was going to happen and where the story was going, it just seemed like it took forever for it to get under way and in the meantime we are forced to endure lots of corny dialogue among high school students and some ridiculous sub-plot about Quincy winning a raffle for a tailor made suit which I did not find nearly as funny as Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin). I guess at least they made an attempt at comic relief here as heaven knows this episode needs something!
Overall, a pretty bad Season 5 entry which I would not recommend viewing unless you are a die hard Quincy fan like me.