Reply 1988 is the best Korean drama I’ve seen yet, and one of the best shows I’ve ever seen full-stop. This was truly an all-around excellent show. I had my gripes, certainly (and I'll go into them later), but they didn't detract enough from the excellent writing, the excellent staging, and the excellent performances. This show is just as a good as Luther or Stranger Things (while being nothing like them at all), and I would recommend it to everybody who likes just really good television.
1. The five kids were clearly the main focus of the show (with one kid in particular being the actual focus; we'll get to her), but the parents' stories were often more gripping than the kids'. Some of their stories were entirely because they were parents, but many of them had nothing to do with the kids at all. Ra Mi-ran's bout with menopause, Sun Woo's mom's money issues, the Sung's marital problems, and of course the romance between Taeki's dad and Sun Woo's mom. These were all great stories that fleshed out the parents as real, well-rounded characters. The relationship between Bo Ra and her father, however, was great, and culminated in a tear-jerking pair of letters that were so amazingly full of love, I just could not.
2. So, was Choi Taek supposed to be autistic? Park Bo-gum seems to play him that way in 1988-1989 and 1994, but the older actor does not. Felicia and I had a discussion about this, about how maybe the writers originally intended Duk Seon's older husband to be Jung Hwan. So the husband was a bit jerky like the young Jung Hwan, but then the writers changed their minds halfway through, and then the husband became a bit more timid and less jerky once that decision was made. However, Felicia also points out that the husband smoked from the beginning, and young Taeki smoked from a very early episode as well, so who knows?
3. Speaking of Jung Hwan, he was clearly the correct guy to end up with. He was dreamy, and protective, and dreamy, and rich, and dreamy. He was also a super good friend, the best of the four, really. Taeki was busy with his baduk, Sun Woo was busy with Bo Ra, and Dong-ryong was busy being the wise idiot. Jung Hwan was the only one who was really there for Deok Sun, and tried to help her with her issues. But Bo-gum got famous or something, so whatever. Boo. JUNG HWAN 4 LIFE!
4. Jin Joo was adorable! Not so much 1994 Jin Joo, but 1988-1989 Jin Joo was super cute, especially how she's eating in almost every scene :D
5. I've mentioned this a few times, but Reply 1998 actually mostly takes place in 1989. It starts out in November 1988, then progresses through the end of the year into and through 1989. Then there's a time-jump to 1994. This actually annoyed me because there was an implicit promise in the title of the show that this would be set in 1988. But at the very end of the last episode, Deok Sun has a line that explains the title: everything changed for Deok Sun and her friends in 1988. That was the point of no return for all of them, and now I'm way more annoyed at myself for needing it to be spelled out so obviously in order to get it.
6. From the beginning of the first episode, this series dripped with 80s babies nostalgia. Besides the immense surprise and pleasure at the mention of la Maestra Jimena from the ridiculously popular 80s Mexican drama Carusel, there were also Reeboks and Walkmans and A Better Tomorrow and Stevie Wonder. There were so many times in the show when I turned towards Felicia and went, "Hey, I did/watched/played/wore that too!" This nostalgia kick continued into 1994 of course, and I loved every second of it.
7. Dong-ryong was the least of the five friends. We spent the least amount of time with him, and his family (his parents, his mother especially, are only in a handful of episodes, as opposed to the rest, who are in nearly every episode), but when we do spend time with him, it is time very well spent. As I said before, he is the wise idiot of the group: he's always sleeping when he should be studying, trying to watch X-rated films, goofing off in school, etc., but he's also the one who understands human nature the best, and explains feelings and emotions to the rest of them. Honestly, if not for Dong-ryong, the others wouldn't haven known anything about anything.
8. Did Duk Seon actually make any of her own decisions, or did she only reciprocate feelings that she perceived others to have? She had romantic feelings for all her friends (except for the wise idiot Dong-ryong), but only when she thought they had feelings for her. First the Sun Woo fake-out, then the will they/won't they of Jung Hwan, and finally the rather forward action of Taeki. In fact, Duk Seon seems to have things happen to her instead of do things of her own volition in almost every aspect of her life. The one decision she does make for herself, to study harder and get better at school, she fails at. Because of this, her story is rather boring, even if it is hilarious.
9. Even Man Ok and Jung Bong's love story was more interesting than Duk Seon's, mostly because of how dang cute they both were.
10. I learned some Korean cultural stuff that I hadn't known before. Sun Woo and Bo Ra's relationship was kept secret through most of the show, and at first I had assumed it was because Bo Ra was older. But no, it turned out that having the same surname as your partner in 1994 meant you couldn't get married (except for Kim), and both Bo Ra and Sun Woo had the much less common surname of Sung. Also, having in-laws from the same family (Bo Ra marries Sun Woo, and Duk Seon, her sister, marries Taeki, Sun Woo's stepbrother) is also frowned upon. At least it was in 1994; by 2016, when the future parts of the show take place, it seems to be okay. Nothing much to say about this, just thought it was interesting.
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