"Answer Me 1988" Episode 10 recap

Similar to last episode, there's not so much plot here, especially in the first portion as "Answer Me 1988" sticks to situation comedy. After strong episodes, or more specifically strong scenes of strong episodes, it's easy to get a little annoyed at low-stakes action like but I just have to remind myself that adolescence is a slow-burn and it's not really reasonable to expect that every big storyline event is going to receive a proper build-up. Getting hit with revelations out of nowhere is a big part of the fun. I certainly wasn't expecting a loveline to form after the appearance of the Bubble Bobble Mafia.
Speaking of romance, by the end of the episode we maybe have finally possibly narrowed Deok-seon's husband candidates to one of two guys. Maybe. It could be Taek, because present-day Deok-seon treats her husband the same way as past-day Deok-seon treats Taek. It could be Jeong-hwan, because he treats Deok-seon in the past-day the same way the husband treats Deok-seon in the present-day. It could be Seon-woo because maybe the whole Bo-ra thing is just misdirection. It could be Dong-ryong as the dark horse.
Dong-ryong is another character I didn't really get at first who I've come to like, because he's the only one whose parents we don't see that much of. As it turns out, there's good reason for that, and I couldn't help but find it rather sweet and sad for there to be a family that doesn't really seem like that much of a family in this neighborhood. That makes for a good sense of comparison.
Consider, for example, how the notion of Bo-ra being nice seems so inexplicable, and yet there she is taking her pseudo younger siblings out for a day at the beach. Even when there's no family, Bo-ra still steps in as an older sister, and this is a reputation she protects jealously. Note that while Bo-ra is perfectly willing to be directly rude, the concert issue rather paradoxically ends up being resolved because she realizes she was accidentally rude.
Rudeness too, you know, can be a sign of love. Take the whole storyline in Seong-gyoon's household. Mi-ran seems to be acting the part of crazy destructive wife only because we now live in an age where we're expecting to digitize every possible memory, but it's not until the end that she even remembers why Seong-gyoon holds on to this stuff. Really, even Seong-gyoon hadn't realized that much until, well, until he gets there. Don't we all.
Review by William Schwartz
"Answer Me 1988" is directed by Sin Won-ho, written by Lee Woo-jeong-I and features Seong Dong-il, Lee Il-hwa, Ra Mi-ran, Kim Seong-gyoon, Ryoo Hye-yeong, Hyeri, Ko Kyeong-pyo and Ryu Jun-yeol.

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