Reply 1994

Overall Rating: A
Subtitles: Not a big fan of the subtitles on this one. Like most Netflix subs they were fluent enough English to follow easily, but I disagreed with a lot of the translations based on my own knowledge of Korean. There were also some major faux-pas–for example a huge thing in this show is that the boys go by nicknames, not their real names, so as not to reveal who the husband is. The Korean stuck to the nick-names and on occasion a very shortened version of the actual name, but the subs translated it as the whole name which gave a lot away too early on. Like all Netflix subs this also reversed the name order in Romanization so that they read given name then last name, which is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Brief Synopsis: A group of friends who lived together at a boarding house in Seoul during college hang together twenty years later and reminisce about the past. Watch it on Netflix here.

Ending Type: Narratively this has a happy ending– your main couple is happily married with kids, everyone else is doing well, all that jazz. If, however, you are like me and you did not exactly ship the main couple it doesn’t feel wholly satisfying. The very end, though, that reflected on the boarding house was absolute perfection.
Characters:
Sung Na Jung (Go Ara)
Trash (Jung Woo)
Chilbong (Yoo Yeon Seok)
Samchunpo (Kim Sung Kyun)
Haetae (Sun Ho Jun)
Binggeure (Baro)
Jo Yoon Jin (Min Do Hee)
Sung Dong Il (Sung Dong Il)
Lee Il Hwa (Lee Il Hwa)
Full review:
I am a huge fan of these writers. In my review for Reply 1997 I mentioned that I was watching this series because of how much I loved Hospital Playlist. I won’t spoil Reply 1997 here but I will say, if you haven’t read, that I absolutely loved it. I’d never felt more invested in a couple teenage relationships in my life.
When I first started this one I was annoyed because it seemed like basically the same story: a bunch of friends (in this case college kids living in a boarding house together vs. a high school friend group) are super close, experience life together, and a brother/sister pair who aren’t actually brother and sister navigate potential romantic feelings for each other. The main female character was a huge fangirl of some random celebrity. I was especially annoyed to discover the central love story was that same brother/sister shebang. I loved it so much in Reply 1997 but I was hoping for something different in this one. I did get something different, but I have very mixed feelings on that.
What I will say is, other than some gripes I have with the main love triangle, I felt this was overall a stronger show than Reply 1997 which is saying a lot because that was one of my favorites that I’ve watched this year. In many ways it was like Reply 1997 had grown up a little. I think having the characters be in college helped– they got somewhat more mature storylines and were generally more capable humans. This was a longer show than the classic 16 episodes, which allowed us to spend time with each member of the group and learn their stories and just discover them as people.
The strength of these shows is really in the characters and the group relationships. This show nailed those aspects completely perfectly. Each character was wonderfully real, even if dramatized hilarity ensued on more than one occasion. They each had fears and dreams and strengths and weaknesses. They were likable but also not likable, entirely themselves. So comfortable with each other that they came off as truly genuine in their care for each other because you saw them fight, and be ugly with one another, and say the wrong things, and fail, and then forgive and grow and move on. Really the power of that cannot be over-stated.
This one was set in a boarding house which was brilliant– being able to see all the characters gathered together for meals or in the living room watching TV or upstairs together playing drinking games created that sense of community and comradeship and highlighted how much of their lives were shared. I loved it so much– it was such a natural environment for their stories to converge and diverge and come back together again.
As usual our parents were the backbone of the story, setting the tone for the relationships that built throughout the show. Gosh what a great couple– I definitely cried when the mom thought she was going through menopause and they finally had a heart-to-heart about it. I just…. adored everything about them.
The side love stories were a blessing, from Haetae reuniting with his first love after a series of hilarious failed relationships to Binggeure meeting his total opposite an falling instantly in love with her. Yoon-Jin and Samchunpo were perfect from beginning to end, with their bitter rivalry turning quickly to caring love as soon as they showed the softer sides of themselves. Watching them dating and then navigating the heaviness of the prospect of marriage so shortly after the country’s financial collapse was an endless joy.
I adored this show for its humor and wit, its wonderful, lovable characters, the incredible relationship of the whole group, and the fun look back at the 90s in Korea. I actually learned a lot about some pieces of history I was unfamiliar with.
My big gripe is the main love triangle. In Reply 1997 I was bothered by the triangle because it felt forced and unnecessary and like the second love interest introduced was there specifically to keep the main couple apart until the conclusion. This one was completely the opposite in terms of why I didn’t like it.
I’ll be honest: Not nuts about Trash as the main love interest. I liked Trash well enough as a character–he was a wonderful mentor and friend to everyone in the group, truly a good guy at heart who seemed to truly understand the world and how it worked. But there was nothing about him that made me want Na-Jung to end up with him. He was often a mess of a person that she needed to take care of for basic things (y’all I am triggered by the concept of a woman going to clean her boyfriend’s trash heap of an apartment for several hours when they try to meet up) and I guess I never felt like the narrative did much to make me feel compelled by his love for her. Like she confesses to him several times and he doesn’t respond, and while there are hints that maybe he feels more than brotherly love towards her, that doesn’t come out until he’s drinking with another character and they push him on it repeatedly. I wasn’t into that. I also didn’t get why he was so against the concept of them dating, or thought it would be such a problem. Her Dad was weird about their relationship, sure, but everyone else was perfectly fine with it so it didn’t make sense why he’d put her though that agony for so long.
Na-Jung herself was a great female lead. At first I thought this would be a repeat of Reply 1997 and she’d be nothing more than her bad temper and obsessive fangirling, but after the first two episodes her fangirl nature pretty much never came up. Additionally she was smart and composed when she needed to be, fun and sweet all the time, and a wonderfully terrible drinker. She was entirely charming and wonderful, and her care for her friends and family was moving. I just don’t get the attachment to Trash over Chilbong. And at the end of the day it’s fine, that’s the story. These writers love it when sibling relationships turn romantic and I get that– the comfort, the shared memories, all that good stuff.
The problem was that could have worked with Chilbong in this too. Because he lived in the house, because he was part of that community, there was potential there for a very similar narrative. And the bigger problem was Chilbong is the one who had multiple episodes with his narration about being in love with her and how important that was to him, and his life, and his character. It was his driving force, and he was so sweet about it too. A genuinely good guy who went out of his way to be able to just be around her, and spend time with her, but never in a way that he pushed her for things she wasn’t comfortable with or willing to engage in. It was the setup for beautiful romance, but then it didn’t happen. And I knew, from the get-go, that it wouldn’t, but I was kind of offended by how much better that story would have been than the romance we did get.
I will say I liked that the resolution of Chilbong’s story was that his deep loneliness wasn’t fixed by a romance but instead by the whole boarding house family continuing to love him and care for him and be the family he needed. I did think that was a beautiful arc, even if I was tempted to just stop watching the show towards the end when Na-Jung and Trash were broken up and it seemed like Chilbong and Na-Jung were basically together.
Like I very much wanted to just shut it off and write my own ending.
Overall though, this was a phenomenal story and a great show and I loved it a whole lot. I’m excited for Reply 1988 next.
High Points: As always the characters and relationships. The nostalgia. The general warmth of it all.
Low Points: The timeline inconsistencies. There were several scenes (including some pretty critical ones) that seemed to be thrown in out of order, and then we’d jump back or ahead in time in the story and it was hard to figure out if that scene was supposed to have happened already or not. That was confusing and jarring.