‘Reply 1988’ is the Best Childhood Friendship K-Drama

Reading Time: 5 minutes

PART II – Nostalgic childhood friendships

This is a much-awaited (by myself and a couple other people) successor to my “Reply 1988” blog post. I promise to keep it much shorter than my previous 7-minute-long blog, well mainly because I got so bored reading my own blog. Imagine the horror! I also admit I lost my own writing personality in the quest to use some SEO techniques to boost my blog. It is an ironic that the writing techniques used to grab attention make it boring and similar to so many other posts. That is a discussion for another time.

At the heart of ‘Reply 1988’: Childhood friendships

Life is all about the friendships that we create over our lifetime. I am genuinely lucky, as I have a beautiful set of friends from different parts of my life. I guess that is why I got so deeply lured into “Reply 1988“. My childhood gang has had a major impact on my life from kindergarten until now, strikingly similar to the series. We are all so different, just like Deok-sun ( L ee Hye-ri) and her gang, that we sometimes discuss whether we would have been friends if we had met later in life. Probably not. We are friends because we lived close to each other, adapted to each other’s idiosyncrasies, and fell in love with one another. That is the beauty in it, we didn’t have to be similar to be friends.

‘Reply 1988′ might not fascinate everyone

I believe that we relate to books and TV shows due to our own life experiences and the mindset we are in at that point in time, and not everyone reacts in the same way. I know quite a few people who aren’t fans of this series (yes, seriously!). The reason I love this series is due to its focus on a normal life and its everyday mundaneness. There are no glam dresses or over-the-top luxury goods sold to aspiring and drooling viewers. True luxury for me now, is to make our daily ordinary life very special.

‘Reply 1988’: Beautiful narration and direction

I often wonder if the writer Lee Woo-jung and the director Shin Won-ho have beautiful relationships; otherwise, how can they capture the ups and downs of navigating through friendships and our need to be loved by people around us so poignantly? I was left reflecting on my own relationships so many times. Deok-sun’s comically sad confusion about her love-life arises from a need we all have – to have that special someone in our life. Anyone who gives us (or we give them) even a tiny bit of attention in those teenage years is a culprit (or a victim) for us to fall in love with them ;). Now who hasn’t gone through that?

Nostalgia and more in ‘Reply 1988’: My childhood story unravelled

My childhood friends—a gang of 9 girls at the start, which became 8 after 6th grade—and I were lucky (or unlucky) in a way during our school days. We had each other through thick and thin and didn’t feel the need to have that ‘special’ person. Honestly, we didn’t have the time due to our endless imaginative games! We are smugly arrogant about that, even today. We never cared about our looks or clothes. They got dirty every single day after rolling in the mud, grass, or whatever we got our hands (and entire bodies) into. My ever-so-nicely dressed mother used to be horrified at my clothes. But kudos to the clothes manufacturers from those days for making ‘long-lasting’ clothes (fast-fashion wasn’t a term then) and to our moms for endlessly cleaning them (I am reminded of the advertisement “Daag ache hote hain“, roughly translated to stains are good..).

We obviously did have those girls and boys in our grades who had those ‘more-than-a-friend’ relationships, and we were intrigued and awed by their maturity and by our lack of it.

To be fair to us, we had those unlimited crushes (we spoke so loudly about them that everyone within a vicinity of 1 kilometre knew about them!) that stood the test of time like the lifespan of a butterfly. As Jung-hwan (Ryu Jun-Yeol) and Taek (Park Bo-gum) go through it, it was an unspoken rule to never like the same person as our friend. It truly tests your friendship like nothing else does. Even at that age, you realise how much you value your friendship, more than anything else.

In friendships, it is all about being there for each other

The unrelenting and sometimes unasked-for support that Deok-sun and her friends have for each other is defining in friendships. Friends pick up on the minutest change in behavior and ask blunt questions that have to be answered. You can’t escape those questions. They will pry it out of you whether you like it or not, so you better give in early. I still remember those hot sunny summer vacation days when you couldn’t play outside, but you met to talk, and then magically, all secrets came out, even the deepest ones. I miss those days of uninhibited talks; it’s not something we can have with anyone and everyone.

There is that thing called ‘Growing up’ in ‘Reply 1988’ and in our life

And then comes the big change—once you get out of school and into a new environment of college and university, things change. You have to adapt to new people and make new friends and have less time for the old ones. Meetings become brief, though we try to meet and talk whenever we can. You can sense the same when Deok-sun and her gang finish high school. Things are not the same but the same, and we refer to that as ‘life happens.’ The series breezes through their adult life, but we don’t breeze through it, do we?

I have met some amazing people after high school who are still my friends, and then there are those who were ‘more-than-a-friend.’ One such person is one of my best friends now. The relationship didn’t work out, but the friendship stands true. Some friendships from the later years have lasted, and others have fallen through the maze of time, distance, and ambitions. By this time, the childhood gang had become 7.

We moved to different cities and countries and focused on our higher education and careers. Talks have become less and less frequent. You meet friends fleetingly. The scenes of missing each other, when Deok-sun and her friends come to meet their families, are so reminiscent of my reality.

Friendship bonds stand the test of time in ‘Reply 1988’ and in mine

Our different life experiences bring about a different view of the world and of the people around us. The topics we prefer talking about evolve. Sometimes, our discussions seem awkward and forced. You are puzzled and sometimes distraught as to why many of your friends’ thoughts are so different from yours. You talk about something as simple as books and realise you like different ones. Cultural differences also play a role. Imagine talking to a friend about moral values amongst the rich people (a highly debatable topic) and getting surprised at their view of Indians versus Americans. You can’t possibly have a discussion beyond a certain point but could probably guide them to Arundhati Roy’s book An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.

This new reality brings a sense of loneliness and awareness. The people you can now talk to about your thoughts are different and become a new set of friends. As my wise friend says—life evolves, and so do friendships. Holding on tightly to past versions of ourselves might not be the answer. All we can do is be there for each other.

But you also know that your childhood friends know you the best. They have seen all aspects of your personality, uninhibited. And nothing beats loneliness better than meeting your childhood friends over a cup of chai or coffee (even if its over a video call) and mindless talks…

LURED INTO K-DRAMAS