Reply 1994

first of all, can this title and series be any more confusing? i watched and loved Answer Me 1997 -- which i am told is sometimes referred to as Reply 1997. then came along a "sequel-prequel of sorts" called Reply 1994 which may be also known as Answer Me 1994….to top it off, it featured the same parents as the first drama with the same jokes (the mother makes an outrageous amount of food each time she cooks).

you're probably already bored and that's ok, because i'll just win you over much like how Reply 1994 won the skeptical me over…with this pretty plastic face:

meet chil bong. i was really uninterested in the series until his perfectly made up face pranced onto the screen. my plastic radar wailed with excitement at his well-crafted mug. 

when he laughs, i can see all his fillers start to migrate to the center of his face and my pants come off. 

the series recently ended and the story line was rather entertaining until the last 3 episodes or so. its storyline is identical to its predecessor, Answer Me 1997 (or whatever the fuck you wanna call it), involving close friends (described in the show as almost siblings) who share a one-sided love that blossoms (of fucking course) into two-sided love and then legitimate marriage (though Answer Me 1997 was refreshing because it had a baby out of wedlock. premarital sex is scandalous and sexy.).

i hated the ending of Reply 1994 because obviously chil bong should have ended up with na jeong. the guy that she ends up with makes for a strange and creepy pairing because they were so sibling-like (incest is not sexy). and the last episode was incredibly boring -- like the writers called it a night before actually coming up with any ideas other than "the end."

what the drama did do well was the friendships between all the boarders. that development was downright cute and i wanted to be friends and go to noribong with all of them. except maybe Samcheonpo (played by Kim Sung Gyun), he was odd and it was not cute.

but mostly because chil bong liked to take his shirt off often and for really weird nonmoving facial expressions during moments like this:

amazing.

plus, i'd like to lick all that caked-on foundation off of chil bong's plastic, beautiful face. 

and, they ate a lot of ramen and that shit looked good. 

now that i've finished Reply 1994…or is it 1997…what should i watch next? i'm debating between Big (because Gong Yoo's pretty plastic face gets my britches in a bundle) and Heirs (because i don't speak korean and without subtitles never know what Lee Min Ho is saying, but he can say it all over my face).

hana, dul, set! press play.