[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Reply 1994" Episode 9

I guess it's too late for Yoon-jin to be the main character. That's a little disappointing- I love it every time she shows up onscreen simply because Yoon-jin is such a catalyst for action. She doesn't just sit around and wait for stuff to happen- she forcefully takes the steps necessary to insure that things go her way. Or maybe that's just my own preference for slapstick- given that we already know who her husband is going to be, it's not like there's much more she can do in the actual plot.

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On that front, our main characters spend the better part of this episode preoccupied with one of those magic image books. I never could figure out how those were supposed to work. And the drama certainly gets that part of the frustration down well- not being able to make out the images even when everyone else obviously can. The obsession that comes with just staring at the book hour after hour is well-displayed here.

It was, after all, a different time. Back before we could distract ourselves with frivolous Internet stuff, people had to make do with obsessing over small things like books. That's the downside of student summers- having so much free time that eventually you'll waste your time doing just about anything, waiting for some interesting event to happen. In this case baseball.

Well, really, the baseball game is more sort of a weak climax for the episode than an actual story hook. For the most part this episode is just about brotherly love- there's relatively little horseplay and meanness this time around as instead the men of the boarding house try looking out for each other. From the very beginning, with Yoon-jin's latest outrage, there's this sense of their being more like a true family now than what we saw in the earlier episodes. Bit by bit they're all getting closer and more friendly-like.

Now, again, this might just be my own personal preference, but it's just difficult to find anything all that terribly exciting in this kind of lazy storyline. Outside of a few plot twists the last three episodes have for the most part all been exactly the same in terms of general tone and clear forward progress isn't being made. I know that some of this is deliberate- the events this drama depicts happen over an extended period of time, so sharp events aren't really appropriate. But I still need something clear to hook into at some point. Here's to hoping that the next episode comes up with more compelling interpersonal drama.

Review by William Schwartz

"Reply 1994" is directed by Sin Won-ho and written by Lee Woo-jeong-I and features Go Ara, Sung Dong-il, Lee Il-hwa and Jung Woo.