A sweet family series that was unexpectedly addictive
I am always browsing for top rated series to watch because I love a really good series. I've also watched so many in my life so I get bored if it is a story I've seen plenty of times before. However, I always gave this one a skip because family drama does not excite me at all. But it was trending on Weibo one day so I decided to see what the fuss was about. I really didn't expect to like it so much, especially since it isn't the typical adventure, mystery, love or comedy genre I enjoy.But Reply 1988 was such a heartwarming, funny series. The premise sounds so boring (I mean, I really didn't want to watch a show about a neighbourhood where nothing really exciting happens) but when you watch two episodes you start getting into it and understanding the allure. It is sweet, heartwarming, funny as hell and gives you some tears.
I loved the main girl. She was just so adorable, pretty and funny. Every other character also had their appeal. I would definitely recommend giving it a try.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
emotional, endearing, one of the only perfect dramas
It's difficult for me to write a review of Reply 1988 because it's so close to my heart and has been for so long that I've lost any objective distance from which to review it. Even if I love a show I can usually see where it had flaws or weaknesses and rate it accordingly, but with this show I just need to give it that perfect 10/10 rating. It would be sacrilege not to.This was the first (and one of the only) truly great dramas I have ever seen. It is also one of the few dramas I have recommended/shown to people in my life who do not watch asian dramas (like my mom). This is such a great showcase for the strength of a typical k-drama format: 20 long episodes, released consecutively, makes the show feel lengthy and significant (because it is, at almost 30 hours? of runtime) while still being self-contained. The themes can also stay very pure, entering around family and growing up in the most emotionally fulfilling possible way.
The cast is very good. Both the kids and the parents are so enjoyable to watch, both on their own and in those large and complicated group dynamics. There are no scenes to skip, no glaringly weak acting that brings down the ensemble. Everyone ranges from solid to excellent and there are more than ten very memorable and well-acted scenes I can think of off the top of my head. This great cast is supported by great writing and directing. There are so many understated, subtle moments that have a huge emotional impact, they don't need to rely on unrealistically high stakes for there to be these incredible dramas in the show. The show doesn't manufacture comas and car accidents and divorces and long-lost twins because they don't need to. They're bringing out the drama and emotion of daily life, and all the trials and joys of regular people and their relationships.
I would say my only quibble is that I'm not very fond of the focus on who Deok-sun ends up marrying. The Reply series always has some variant of this question built in to the fabric of the show, be it Reply 1997, 1994 or 1988, but I think it feels most glaringly out of place here. It seems cheap and unnecessary and if I could edit out the 'future' interview-style scenes I would. The show stands perfectly well without them. That said, they are not terrible or anything, I just think it puts undue focus on a love triangle that would've probably felt more organic otherwise.
Overall, this is the show that I recommend to people who don't watch dramas. Period. Everyone I have shown this to has enjoyed it, and there is a reason that it always ends up on those 'greatest dramas of all time' lists. It may take an episode or two to get used to the pace and the setting and characters, but once you do you'll be a fan for life.
Was this review helpful to you?
The BEST KOREAN DRAMA TO WATCH!
Okay I’m a brown girl obsessed with reply 1988 ever since I completed it. You might wonder if it’s cause of PBG or Hyeri or any other cast but no. This was my first reply series and I believe it would be the last, reason is I’ve completed watching this series 6 days ago and I couldn’t get over it. Nothing about spoilers but if you want to feel the warmth, emotions, love shown in this drama then I highly recommend you to not watch it after searching about it online. Don’t search for the story in detail, who the main lead is, who the female lead will end up with! Do NOT SEARCH ONLINE. FEEL THIS SHOW WITH ALL YOUR HEART. YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH:1. The cast
2. The neighbourhood
3. The relationships
4. The concept
Finally a piece of advice I can give y’all is don’t search for reply 1988 even after you’re done with the drama cause it would break your heart!
Also if you call in love with the leads, watch the following:
1. Hyeri - Entertainer
2. Park bo gum- love in the moon light
3. Ryu Jun yeol- lucky romance (I watched this first and for him I watched reply)
4. Go kyung po- don’t dare to dream, Chicago typewriter, strong delivery man.
Hope you watch it with great attention.
Was this review helpful to you?
Reply 1988 is hilarious, heartfelt, and bittersweet
Five families, parents and kids, go about their dynamic lives within a neighbourhood set in late 80's Seoul. While navigating their lives and youth, a 'mysterious' romance is blooming among our female leads and her childhood friends. Despite not being glamorous or full of suspense, it's a coming-of-age story focusing on family and community with lots of memorable and emotional moments.Well, it’s an amazing drama to experience; from mother's friendship, community power, youths finding identities, parents coping with their children leaving home, first love, unrequited love to all the trials and tribulations that we've all gone through. Each episode has a life lesson for everyone.
The production is top-notch! The camera is incredibly playful and shows lots of unique angle. The show is teaching me patience to get into the story. The quiet moments are actually storytelling at its’ finest; They're showing what I need to know and not telling, building up a strong foundation towards a climax. So when it reaches the climax, I really got sink in that emotional arc. The choice of retro OSTs were wisely done. I didn't understand the lyrics but they give me all the nostalgia.
That said, the show can also feel so long, some people might not finish because of the lengthy episodes. But if you get invested with the quirky & real characters, you're going to love this drama. It’s beautifully acted with gentle humour and a coming-of-age story with a big focus on family.
PS: If you’re watching this, avoid googling to avoid spoilers!^^
===== SPOILERY PART=====
Of all the characters, my favourite character was Bora. Some of her moments with her father, especially the ones in the final episodes were so damn relatable to me. I cried so much and cried again upon my rewatches of their heart-warming, at the same time heart-breaking scenes. Also, I like Deok Sun's character, she is incredibly happy and I want to have a friend like her. Now talking about the love triangle between her and Jung Hwan and Taek, I thought they were both really compelling in separate ways like they both are amazing and neither one is better than the other. That's how I appreciate this love triangle. Of course, as the viewer I try to figure out who she will end up marrying and I think it was quite predictable once we reach the obvious foreshadowing scene midway. I was just a bit conflicted because the character of her future husband is nothing like his character in his youth. I read that this choice was deliberate as the writer changed the stories while it was airing, but still, I wasn't completely satisfied because I feel they kind of wrecked his adult character.
My complaints were mostly in the late part of the series, the time jump when the group of friends grew up and were busy with their day-to-day job feels too mundane. The parents are really pushed to the wayside and their conversations are not that interesting to me, but the vast majority of the screen time is devoted to them. I got bored and had the urge to skip ahead a few times on this part. I also am kind of disappointed as the families left their neighborhood just like that. There is no urgency that forces them to leave and had moved out from that street and we didn't need to see the neighborhood gets abandoned.
Finally, the final scene didn't have an uplifting feeling. The final voiceover gave the impression to me that it was really idolizing youth and this makes me feel sad growing up, like oh, I'm old now. While I know that's not true as life goes on and I can experience wonderful moments as an adult, that feeling of never being able to experience youth again felt bitter. I don't like it when it's put on the finale, I prefer that they cut the show without showing all of these.
Was this review helpful to you?
reply 1988 is beautiful woven, nostalgic, heartwarming, friendship, slice of life family drama. this is the best installment of reply series as of now. writers have given equal importance to each and every character. now after marathoning whole drama, i cant chose my personal favourite character. because i love all characters. this was made possible because of 1 and half hour length in time. ofcourse they could have edited a bit. may be made it little fast paced rather than being very mundane. nevertheless, i am fine with pace. it did not bore me but i felt repetitive a bit.
i really want to list my favourite scenes of drama, but i do NOT want to spoil it even a bit
ACTING was good, when it comes to youngsters and it was brilliant, when it comes to elders. i honestly was not into shipping DS with anyone. i was only rooting for bear falling in love and sun yeong, sung bo ra and sung sun woo. the heartwarming relationship between parents and their children is wonderful. friendship between taek and jung hwan is exceptional. why do one need to care about a particular romance like who ends with who. i mean you can see love everywhere in the whole drama. why does one need to care about DS. She is not the only one lead character, as i feel almost every character as lead character here.
now MUSIC .my bad. i pretty much did not notice OST here. but it was not unpleasant anywhere. it has more and more of 80s music which sounded ok for me. reply 1994 ost is my favourite.
i just love the ending of this, it was super nostalgic, made me cry literally, and also made me want to talk to my parents. itS definetly a must watch if you love your family and friends.
i will definetly re watch and recommend to everyone. just bear with lengthy time slot of drama, you will just like it, if may not love it like I DO. honestly, this is one of the best dramas of 2015
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
one-of-its-kind
well i must start by thanking the MDL community for ranking this drama so highly. this is the kind of drama that would've easily slip off my radar had it not been for the high rating. even then i really had a trouble deciding to start watching this because of the massive running time for each episodes!!! though i noticed some problems that make me unable to score it a perfect 10, it was definitely an enjoyable ride and i left the drama feeling hugely dissatisfied because i wanted to stay with them for a bit more!now, before i explain the things that marked down the score of this drama for me, i will begin by saying the positives.
first, my most favourite characters are actually all the mothers. i believe that Mi Ran, Il Hwa and Sun Young are all perfectly cast for their respective roles. in fact i think they are perhaps the real backbone to the story, i connected with all of the mother characters before i even find myself gravitating towards their teenage children. call me an outlier but my most favourite friendship of the drama was actually not the 5 gang, but the mothers LOL. they really carried the drama for me, alongside their husbands. i truly appreciate a father's special episode, and especially how Dong Il's relationship development with his daughters totally broke me in so many different ways.
which brings me to the gang of 5. i began the drama thinking ahh, this drama is so tacky and the characters are brash which reminds me as to why i don't usually like to watch high school or youth stories ever. and i had the thought of what if the drama began as them at the point of attending colleges but then i understood why they went against the idea is because the boys have started living away from their parents. so yes, as someone who began rather unimpressed with this feeling of having 'generation gap', in the duration of 20 episodes they have succeeded in making me a convert and grow immense affinity for them all.
as with the love triangle between Duk Seon, Jung Hwan and Choi Taek, i find that this part was one of the most well-done parts of the show. i thought the slow build up of their relationships was brilliant, the way she actually liked Sun Woo first, and then upon finding out that he actually liked Bora, hated it so much but was able to let go of her feelings when Jung Hwan started showing interest towards her more than as a friend. the confusion of Duk Seon, the hesitance of Jung Hwan, the honesty of Choi Taek and how both of the boys never confessed their feelings to her for 6 years because they didn't want to ruin their friendship, i loved it all. i am also more on #teamTaek because i loved he has never hesitated to confess among his group of friends about his real feelings towards Duk Seon. i did feel utterly heartbroken for Jung Hwan obviously, but in any realistic situation she can only end up with one of them so.....
also, my secret weapon for the drama, Sun Woo and his cute little sister Jin Joo! i loved when he always finds himself kissing her on the cheek and how she's always unbothered by it lmao. i love how smart he is, and how he is an all around Mr. Nice Guy. what i still don't understand even after completing the drama is that how did he end up liking Bora in the first place. i hated that the director even cut him short when he was trying to explain the reasons he liked Bora when he was trying to win over her. if only i could see Bora from his eyes, i definitely would have been more accepting of their relationship, LOL~
now, moving on to the weaker parts of the drama. i do think that the middle parts of the drama have started to fizzle down a bit. i can give several examples to explain this. first, out of the three siblings of the gang of 5, i do think that Jung Bong has had the most individual screen time of them. and i believe this was a bit misplaced. i don't mind his relationship with Duk Seon's friend Man Ok and also the scenes when almost the entirety of the episode was centered around him (the congenital heart surgery). i meant the scenes where he was going to the temple without a proper context and many extended scenes of him literally doing some unexplained stuffs in his room BUT studying. i find those scenes frustrating and should have been given to Bora instead. other than No Eul, i believe Bora was the second most under-utilized character in the whole drama, and it was a pity that the writer didn't give her a clear trajectory for character growth (refer to the spoilerful thoughts on the finale below)*.
No Eul was another important support character which i think they greatly mishandled. first of all, i really wanted to know why do they decide on casting someone who visibly looks older than Duk Seon to be her younger brother? because i didn't find that they tried to make that part funny without it being disrespectful. and secondly, when they showed how he has such a beautiful voice in ep. 16 and was later on pursuing musical gig, there was no further exploration on that except some minor conversations between him and his father about him travelling around to perform.
the more noticeable weaker parts of the drama was this: that the passing of time in the drama were filled more with rather mundane day-to-day life things, made 'worse' by an era characterized by simplicity. what i mean was that, there were nothing too dramatic that would have added more spice/flavour to the drama. and i don't mean to want very typical dramatization commonly found in k-dramas like the amnesia trope LMAO, but a more toned down dramatization of sorts to spice things up a little bit. everyone in the neighbourhood grew up well and healthy so it was kind of, boring? i don't know, LOL. i wished the writer had some sort of bigger misfortune happening than the protest arrest to Bora, that would have made her much more humble and reliant on her parents' love, support and protection.
**SPOILERFUL THOUGHTS ON THE FINALE
1. i cried really hard in this episode, but it definitely didn't feel like the most perfect ending. i have to say that i was disappointed that they make Bora gift her father a shoe bigger than his actual size to wear on his wedding. i think the writer had to go down this route because they haven't given Bora a proper character development during the running of the show to begin with!!! i kinda had the inkling that the writer wanted to imply that the reason Bora was so nasty during her college years was because of her immaturity, but i think not. i see that more of a combination of immaturity and plain rudeness. my hypothesis is that, if only they have given her a proper character development, the tears she shed when bowing to her parents at her wedding wouldn't be so full of regrets, rather sadness that now she's leaving her parents' home forever.
2. i also think that the final scene when all the families finally moved out of the neighbourhood to retire someplace else, they should have extended that a little bit towards another episode. in fact i think the wedding of Bora-Sun Woo should not have been the drama's ending. i had a bitter taste in my mouth when they didn't show how Duk Seon and Taek will finally confess to their parents about them dating. even if they had to fast forward to 6 years into the future, i think extending this to another 2-3 episodes would have sufficed it. then we could have also seen the early stages of Bora-Sun Woo's married life, and if they were to already have a baby.
3. the snippets into the year 2015 felt nothing but a huge misfortune. first, i believe they should have just cast Hyeri and Hye Young to play their 40 y/o version selves and leave Duk Seon's husband out completely. the way Taek behaved in his mannerisms in 2015 felt more like Jung Hwan to me (or many of us), that it's hard to believe anything but that such a huge misstep was a joke. and only when Taek was revealed to be her husband, they should have had a scene of the gang of 5 reuniting with special makeup effects showing that they are now in their 40s. i was just mad that we didn't get to see this part.
finally, i can see why this drama can be very charming to some people and end up being one of their ultimate favourites. as for me, i do think if i am a native Korean watching this weekly during its airing time (so that i wouldn't be so affected by the exhaustion of bingewatching), i might have scored this a perfect 10. this was a really great drama and i really haven't seen anything quite like it anywhere else :)
p/s Bogum stop attacking me with your utterly gorgeous Colgate smile pleaseeeeeee. i'm dying over here, I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF SEEING HIS BEAUTIFUL SMILE. i might watch Encounter for him LOL. okay bye, done rant.
Was this review helpful to you?
There WAS another debate over who the husband was (and I will only say that I was not on the winning side of this one) but both male leads were equally charming. Even though the main romance centered around Duk Sun, her sister Bo Ra also gets a very sweet romance of her own. I loved each of the main group and the parents the secondary characters were all well used.
Although it may take me awhile to get back around to it due to length, I would love to watch this again. I also loved the music in this. There is one song that is really lovely - Don't Worry Dear is the English title.
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
This show is the third in the Reply series. It seems to be the popular consensus that 1994 was the worst one. I personally enjoyed it a lot, especially the husband hunt. This show has its own charm. There’s a lot more focus on the families as a whole, as opposed to the children finding family in each other. There were so many moving and heartwarming moments that had nothing to do with romantic love, but familial love, friendship, aging, loneliness, and growing up. Although it’s right to say that romance isn’t the main focus of the show in this instalment, the husband hunt continues in this show. I hesitate to say that it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the show, because I would otherwise have overwhelmingly positive comments to give, if not for what I felt was a botched conclusion to the husband hunt. It wasn’t about who the husband was, but the way the story was . To avoid spoilers, I can’t elaborate further.
I avoided writing this review in the heat of the moment right after finishing the show. In hindsight, the husband hunt fades into the background of the show and the families come to the forefront. Even then, I find that some of my unhappiness and not-so-positive opinions remain.
What’s really great about this series is how the producers always aim to cast unknown actors and make them stars. I have only watched Park Bo-gum and Go Kyung Pyo before, and haven’t watched the rest. I loved Ryu Joon Yeol, Ryu Hye Young and Ahn Jae Hong. I don’t know what it is about Hyeri that I didn’t 100% love, but she definitely did a more than decent job.
One particular standout performance I must highlight isn’t from one of the young leads, but from veteran Ra Mi-ran. She takes on the emotions of her character and makes them her own compelling emotions, and pulls the willing audience along with her on her journey.
The episodes can get slightly draggy, many of them almost stretching to 2 hours (ohmygah). I still highly recommend watching this.
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
This drama is definitely in my top ten favorite dramas and every actor in it is one that I would definitely want to see again. As a family drama it is really cute and deals with all sorts of issues. Some of my favorites were: sibling rivalry and relationships, married life with kids, living on a low income, menopause, single parents and many more. Some of the episodes ran a bit long, but each scene was an essential and awesome part of the story. All in all, my grade is B+ or 88/100 or 4 stars.
If you have lots of time on your hands and are looking for a cute family drama then this is definitely one to watch. If you want to know reasons why you might want to prepare for it on a spoiler level, please read my next post.
If you want a complete breakdown of what I loved about this drama, check out my Drama Scale of Awesomeness at wordpress:
https://shadowoftheoperaghost.wordpress.com/2017/03/11/drama-scale-of-awesomeness/?frame-nonce=85da4d3f09
Was this review helpful to you?
