From The Straits Times    |

Leading the cast of Reply 1997 are Seo In Guk (third from left) and Jeong Eun Ji (fourth from left), a member of girl group A Pink. — PHOTO: CHANNEL M

No two people, perhaps, remember the same 1990s.

For some, it was the age of grunge rockers and slackers. For others, it was the era when the Heavenly Kings ruled Chinese pop and Stephen Chow reigned supreme at the box office.

For yet others, it was the dawn of K-pop and crazy fan culture.

South Korean cable channel tvN’s teenage show, Reply 1997, opens with a high school reunion for a group of 33-year- olds in Busan, and revisits the year of the title. In 1997, they are just 18, the Internet is in its infancy, and girls such as Shi Won (A Pink singer Jeong Eun Ji) chat to strangers online in their bedrooms but still watch television in the living room with their parents. (She doesn’t have a choice, really. Online TV isn’t an option yet.)

K-pop is just beginning with boybands such as H.O.T. (former member Tony An appears as himself). Girls are sneaking out of school to catch concerts. Guys such as Shi Won’s childhood buddy, Yoon Jae (singer Seo In Guk), show their loyalty by helping to tape K-pop programmes and keeping their opinions on H.O.T. to themselves.

The drama is specific to a time and place, yet is so personal as to be timeless and universal.

It speaks to anybody who has been young and ardent, or been through times when idol worship, unrequited romance and undying passion have to be their own rewards.

You don’t need to like H.O.T. to know why Shi Won would feel betrayed when she finds posters of other pretty boys in her best friend’s bedroom.

Nor do you have to love K-pop to understand why Shi Won would reserve a copy of the latest H.O.T. record, but still queue up at a shop at the crack of dawn to pick up the cassette.

But for Yoon Jae, who doesn’t get why she just can’t sleep late and go later in the day, she has a retort that should resonate: “It’s feeling, not logic, feeling! This is something that cannot be explained with logic.”

Unknown to her, he is also concerned about having to compete with H.O.T. for her time and attention.

But as silly as the teenagers may be, the show is wise.

They might confuse idol worship with romantic love, but it doesn’t. Instead, it sees them through their obsessions and infatuations and shifts to the present, where compromise and adult life await.


Kym Ng and Yao Wenlong play a hawker couple in It Takes 2. — PHOTO: MEDIACORP

The emotional temperature dips from feverish to temperate when you cross over to Channel 8’s neighbourhood show, It Takes 2. It is quite an apt representation of Singapore, our air-conditioned and not quite emotional nation.

Abandoning the hallmark shouting matches of previous coffee shop dramas, the show finds a mild, humorous tone as it follows the so-so lives of fish ball noodle hawkers (Yao Wenlong and Kym Ng), loan sharks (Zheng Geping and Ann Kok) and the like.

Often, their lives are too narrow for them to be happy, and yet there isn’t much to be deeply unhappy about.

The most resentful of them is the dissatisfied wife (Ng) of the underachieving hawker (Yao), but when she whines about how she hasn’t had a facial in years – two years, how awful – her anger looks like low-level knee-jerk annoyance and her rant sounds like comic bluster.

Accordingly, your responses to the show may include light amusement and mild interest.

Certainly, it is more engaging than you would expect.

This story was first published in The Straits Times newspaper on December 13, 2012. Read similar stories online in The Straits Times Life! section.