The Best of Reply 1988

3 min readMar 1, 2021

Once in a while, you come across a drama and it leaves you with all kinds of emotions. And that’s what Reply 1988 did to me. I am extremely happy that I watched it, but I am sad, now that I have finished watching the final episode. Those who have watched this K drama, I’m pretty sure they can back me up on this.

As the title suggests, the drama is set in 1988 and it revolves around the lives of 5 families living in the same neighborhood in Seoul. This slice of life drama is divided into 20 episodes and talks about family, love, friendship, dreams (of both parents and children), youth, retirement, menopause, humor, pop culture, and music. The list is long and maybe that’s why it’s too realistic.

I have said this in one of my previous posts as well that there is a perfect time for a movie/drama. You can’t just switch on the TV and start watching anything. You really have to be in the mood to watch it unless you won’t be able to connect with the writer and the actors. Before watching Reply 1988, I binged on popular shows which had zombie attacks, kingdom takeovers, terrible tragedies, basically, shows with a motive to take us to another universe, far from reality. However, the reality we are living in right now doesn’t seem different from these TV shows. And hence while watching Reply 1988, it felt like the tables have turned or I would say the camera has turned. We are surrounded by the four walls trying to survive in a pandemic era and with Reply 1988 on-screen, those simpler days are were on the screen. I wanted to break the screen in between but again, I didn’t want the characters to suffer (lol).

Have a look at some of my favorite lines from the drama in the images here.