SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Start-Up
(스타트-업 / Seutateu-Eop)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hi everyone! I posted my previous review on the 1st of August, and I’m glad I was able to finish this new one within the same month, and that I was still able to give it enough time and attention without rushing through it. As one of the most hyped dramas from last year, I was eager to ‘have watched’ it, but still I took my time to soak it in in order to write a proper review about it! It’s been difficult getting into long and tedious dramas with a lot of intense emotional depth in my current life schedule, so I am presently in the mood for some lighter and shorter content. This is also one of the reasons why I did enjoy this drama, because it wasn’t too heavy or emotional, and it was mainly informative and interesting, it teaches something, and that can also be nice for a change!
Some of my friends told me that they weren’t planning on watching this because it didn’t seem very interesting to them, a bit boring even. And I do have to say, although I thought it was a good drama, it probably isn’t that much fun if you’re not even the least bit interested in the process of start-up businesses. Because apart from the ‘drama’ between the characters, the real focus here is definitely on ‘building a business’ and that’s a whole different theme on its own.

The reason why this drama was on my list was, as far as I remember, because of the main lead actors. I’m not a major Suzy fan, but the theme of the series seemed pretty legit and interesting to me, so I guess I was also curious as to how she would portray a business woman, or at least, a woman trying to make her way into the world of company start-ups. Besides that I really love Nam Joo Hyuk and I felt like I had to catch up on a lot he’s done lately. He’s been so active in dramas the last couple of years and I’m really curious to his performances as well.

Start-Up is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama, the episodes are about 1 hour and 25 minutes each. The first episode is one big flashback, with the purpose of putting all the characters in place of where they currently are; we meet them in the present time, and then we get to see how they all ended up there, starting from childhood.
Let’s start with our main character Seo Dal Mi. As a kid (played by Heo Jung Eun), Dal Mi grew up with her parents, older sister In Jae (played by Lee Re) and grandmother from father’s side. Her father (played by Kim Joo Heon) was always thinking of new business ideas, and his family always supported him in that, especially Dal Mi, but at a certain point he kept failing and it made mother (played by Song Sun Mi) very anxious – to the point where she decided to leave him. The two close sisters are confronted with the worst situation: choosing between mom and dad. As it happens, In Jae chooses to go with her mother and Dal Mi decides to stay with her father. After their mother decides to marry again, In Jae and Dal Mi grow farther apart since their lifestyles change too much. In Jae’s step-father is a very wealthy and influential man and she and her mother rise remarkably in social status because of his business. Dal Mi stays with her father and grandmother and watches her father work so hard over and over again, until it finally, quite literally, kills him. He gets hit by a car on his way to a new investor, stands up and goes on despite continuous nosebleeds and battered face, finishes the interview, obtains the investment, and then ends up passing away quietly from his internal injuries on the bus on the way home to celebrate his success with Dal Mi. After what happened to him, Dal Mi is even more determined to follow in his footsteps and don’t give up on what he believed in.

Dal Mi’s grandmother Choi Won Deok (played by the amazing Kim Hae Sook), has her own story going on at the same time. She meets a teenage orphan boy named Han Ji Pyung (played by Nam Da Reum) and decides to let him stay with her, even though he is not keen on trusting others after being abandoned at the orphanage. However, they build a very special bond. When her granddaughters start growing apart, Won Deuk comes up with the idea to create a friend for Dal Mi through letters. She manages to persuade Ji Pyung to write these letters with her, pretending to be a boy of Dal Mi’s age and hoping that these letters will bring Dal Mi some comfort and make her feel less lonely. As it happens, that spring births the beginning of another very special relationship: that of Dal Mi and her penpal. Ji Pyung comes up with the name ‘Nam Do San’ for the imaginary friend, as that is the name of a kid math genius he’s seen on TV and in the newspaper. So, Dal Mi and ‘Do San’ start exchanging letters without ever meeting. As Grandma hoped, the letters became an immense comfort to Dal Mi, although her belief in Do San’s existence extended to him turning into her first love and the reason she rejected basically every guy who made advances on her in real life.

Flashforward to about 10 or more years in the future. Dal Mi (now played by Bae Suzy), still lives with her grandmother, but they’ve moved to Seoul. Her grandmother has a corndog food cart and Dal Mi is desperately trying to prove to her sister that she didn’t make the wrong choice in the past by staying with their dad. Her sister, now ‘Won’ In Jae (played by Kang Han Na) keeps showing up whenever Dal Mi is trying to make another step towards a new goal, and keeps reminding her that she always makes the wrong choices.
Their paths eventually cross for real at Sand Box, a organization that provides opportunities for a few selected start-up initiatives and gives them an office, platform and tools to attempt making their ambitions a reality. For In Jae, it shouldn’t be so hard to get in, since she already has the experience of running a company – she is kicked out by her stepfather to make way for his own son – but for Dal Mi, this is completely new territory. How will she start her own business without even a business partner or a team or anything? And then she thinks of her friend Do San, the math genius. And she wants to meet him in real life.

In the meantime, Han Ji Pyung (now played by Kim Sun Ho) has become very wealthy as well, being a manager of a major investment company as well as one of the assistant directors (I believe?) and mentors at Sand Box. After seeing Dal Mi at one of the talks held at Sand Box, he realizes her grandmother must be here as well and he meets with her again after a long time. Then, Grandma tells him that Dal Mi is trying to find the real Nam Do San and Ji Pyung tries to get to him before she does, but coincidentally, Dal Mi is able to locate Nam Do San easily because he posts something he wants to sell online.

Nam Do San (played by Nam Joo Hyuk) is a young man with a great talent for IT, but unfortunately he has always lacked the ambition to push further. After he won that math award as a kid, he gave it to an older participant who got scolded by his mom for losing to a child. When he went to college, still as a child, he dumbed himself down to save his fellow classmates some face. His parents have been very patient with him, but his continuous lack of ambition have made them a bit desperate as well.
When we first meet Do San, he is working from a tiny rented space with his two friends Lee Chul San and Kim Yong San (played by Yoo Soo Bin and Kim Do Wan), who are software engineers. The three of them have been trying to get investments for their company SamSan Tech (SamSan = “three Sans”: they all have ‘San’ in their name + “three mountains”: their company logo shows three RGB mountains in a row), but they have kept failing so far since they still haven’t thought about their concrete business plan and their technology is still not developed or original enough to make them stand out amongst others. They are working on an AI system based on facial recognition, but it keeps making mistakes. After being severely scolded by his father again, Do San decides to sell some stuff online, starting with a signed ball a famous baseball player gave to him as a child while encouraging him to follow his dream (the ball also says ‘Follow your dream’). Dal Mi sees this as soon as she googles Do San’s name and responds immediately that she’s interested in the ball, asking for a face-to-face meeting. Just as Do San is heading toward her to give her the ball, he is intercepted by Ji Pyung, who lets him in on the whole story. He tells him that Seo Dal Mi, the girl he is about to meet up with, thinks that he is her long-standing penpal and he even gives Do San the letters she wrote him so he can see for himself. Do San, completely flabbergasted by the situation, is at this point more interested in Ji Pyung himself since he recognizes him from a magazine, and he asks Ji Pyung to invest in SamSan Tech, but he is cruelly rejected. So cruelly in fact, that he and his team become genuinely discouraged for their company to ever succeed.
However, when Dal Mi contacts him again to meet her at a networking event, Do San does go to meet her. Despite the fact that he has to lie about who he really is, Do San is immediately taken with Dal Mi’s charming personality and falls for her quite fast. He is nothing like the Do San that she imagines him to be, and this is hard for him. When he asks her why she likes him, she keeps going back to the letters, and the only thing she mentions that really concerns him is that he has nice, big hands.
However, the secrets become harder to hide once both SamSan Tech and Dal Mi participate in the new recruitment process for obtaining a space at Sand Box. In Jae is also participating, with the initiative of her own company, in an attempt to separate herself from the influence of her stepfather. SamSan Tech is in search of a CEO and Dal Mi of a team, so they decide to team up. Adding former lawyer/former designer Jung Sa Ha (played by Stephanie Lee) to their team, the new SamSan Tech actually manages to win a place at Sand Box, despite a confrontational presentation in which their system lost to In Jae’s team’s. They get their own office and from there on, their start-up adventure starts for real. As the relationship between Do San and Dal Mi deepens, it becomes increasingly hard for Do San to keep from her the fact that he actually is not the person she’s been exchanging letters with. Especially when Ji Pyung also starts having more romantic feelings for Dal Mi.

I realize that I’m already spending a lot of time trying to describe the events that happen throughout the series and I’m becoming aware that there was actually a LOT going on. So I’ll stop with summarizing now, when you’ve watched the series you’re not waiting for a tedious recap. Let me just make a summary of all the storylines that were created in this drama and which ones I found more relevant than others.
So first we have the whole feud between Dal Mi and In Jae. It’s kind of funny after finishing the series to think back on how this whole thing started with their rivalry and desire to prove to one another that they each made the right choice to go with one or the other parent when they separated. After SamSan Tech (the original three) get the chance to work in Silicon Valley as they get recognized for their AI system by a team in San Francisco and Do San and Dal Mi break up, Dal Mi boldly applies to join her sister’s company as part of the Strategic Planning Team. It turns out they work quite well together and their relationship slowly improves again. In the last couple of episodes it’s pretty funny to think back on how their relationship was in the beginning of the series.
I personally think In Jae never really hated or disliked her younger sister. I think she was mainly hard on her because she wanted her to become more independent and making mistakes is a big part of that. She never stepped in when she knew Dal Mi was in danger of something, and I still believe that that wasn’t purely out of spite, but also out of a legit ‘she has to figure it out by herself’ mentality. I liked that at the end, after initially discouraging Dal Mi to make a bid on a certain investment, she ended up telling her to do it anyway and that really sounded like an important ‘don’t let anyone tell you what to do’ kind of message.
I think an important message for them, and also for the whole series, was to understand that it really doesn’t matter where you come from. Sure, you may have some connections that can help you get further more smoothly, but with the right mindset and talent and ambition, even coming from a poor background really doesn’t make any difference; as long as you learn from your mistakes, you can still succeed in building a business. And that is exactly what Dal Mi and Do San ultimately manage to accomplish.
I also liked the story about the girl on the swing. The girl on the swing is the logo image for Sand Box, and it was actually inspired by the girls’ father. He pitched his idea to Yoon Sun Hak (played by Seo Yi Sook), the director of Ji Pyung’s investment company, and told her a story about how he used to create a sand mound under the swing so his daughter wouldn’t hurt herself when she fell down. This story resonated so much with Director Yoon that she created Sand Box as a place to give people a place that would help them take off, but that would also soften their landing if they fell. When Director Yoon hears that the actual inspiration for the girl on the swing is applying for a place in Sand Box, she is very interested to see who it is. In Jae happens to overhear her talking to someone about it and uses it to her advantage: she mentions in her motivation letter that she was that girl on the swing, even though this story was actually about Dal Mi.
Anyways, so the whole ‘who is actually the girl on the swing’ thing only adds to the rivalry between the girls, even though Dal Mi doesn’t really seem to care much about it, and also doesn’t use it to impress the Director. But I liked that at the end, when the sisters start working together, they just kind of made jokes about it. That scene that they’re looking at the image and go like ‘So that’s you’, ‘Nah, it looks more like you’, ‘No way, my head is much smaller than that, your head has always been bigger’ was so funny. I liked that it ended as that the girl on the swing actually represented the both of them, it really wasn’t just about the girl their father mentioned, since ultimately they both ended up landing safely in the sand box.

Another thing I found interesting was that in this drama, the guy who ends up as the ‘second male lead’ is introduced before the guy who becomes the ‘first male lead’.
We first get to know Ji Pyung and I personally sympathized with him a lot, even though he may have been a little selfish and stubborn in the beginning. His character had a lot of emotional development and I was really happy to see all kinds of different sides of him, because it made me empathize with him better. When we see his backstory with Grandma, we know he has a good heart, but he has also been distrusting and cold-hearted before. I really loved his scenes with Grandma Won Deuk because she was the only person that he dared to show his soft side to. The only scenes where he allowed himself to cry where scenes with her, and they were always very real and heart-wrenching. That scene where he wanted her to stop calling him ‘Good Boy’ because he just really didn’t think of himself as a good person… heartstrings were pulled.
But the point I wanted to make about the second male lead being introduced before the guy who gets the girl, is that I think it might have been another way to show what I mentioned before, about how it doesn’t matter where you come from. Looking at credentials and education and experience, Do San had nothing, also because he gave up on his own potential as a genius to make way for others so they wouldn’t feel bad about a kid being smarter than them. He had nothing and still he worked his way to the top. Ji Pyung seemed to already have everything, and it may have seemed that, as soon as Dal Mi found out he was actually the one she’d been writing to, she would automatically choose him. But he took that for granted. And so Do San caught up with him, even surpassed him in that way. Just as Dal Mi did with her sister. So I guess what I mean to say is that past experience or status really don’t matter, it’s really about people, and that’s also what I thought while watching this drama; the whole story of building a business was just an underlying theme, and maybe it helped that that business-storyline wasn’t so eventful in itself, because in exchange it gave way for more focus on the characters’ relationships and backgrounds.

Even Chul San and Yong San, who first seemed to be there mostly for comic relief or just as Do San’s casual support system, got their own proper development and story.
I have to admit that I found the whole sudden revenge plot they gave to Yong San’s character a bit exaggerated, the whole blaming Ji Pyung for his brother’s suicide. Not only did he semi-assault Ji Pyung in an elevator, he also had a part to play in the team falling apart because he insisted on not trusting Ji Pyung’s advice. I mean, what they showed from the flashback was just that Ji Pyung gave his brother some constructive (and maybe a bit harsh, yes) criticism, but it was in no way intended as a personal insult. It’s just what he needed to hear, as Dal Mi also tells him later (‘I was never insulted by what you told me, it wasn’t always nice but it was what I needed to hear’). The suicide was all on his brother and I found it quite unfair of Yong San to blindly blame that on Ji Pyung. And then when they came back from San Francisco, and they met again, he was just like ‘Oh yeah, by the way, back then I guess I just needed someone to blame, nothing personal’, making the whole invented revenge plot suddenly completely irrelevant. It felt like they just wanted to give Yong San some emotional baggage, but it wasn’t really necessary in my opinion, especially if they were going to just debunk it like that in the end.
For Chul San too, the only extra added storyline he had was about his budding romance with Sa Ha. He didn’t need any extra background or family drama, they just gave him a simple love story and a vlog and that was it and still he was one of my favorite characters.
I would’ve liked Sa Ha to have a little more story, though. She kind of came out of nowhere and besides the fact that I liked her character, I did wonder what her character really contributed to the story and the team. The main part of the work that we see is being done by the IT boys, but I would’ve liked seeing a little more of her personal contribution to the team, besides being the initially snobby sassy lady. I did think her and Chul San were very cute together.

I found the whole storyline around Grandma Won Deuk very beautiful. She is, after all, the glue that held everyone together and also brought them back together again at the end. Not just her son’s family. Without her, Ji Pyung wouldn’t have started writing those letters using Do San’s name, and Dal Mi would’ve never met either Do San or Ji Pyung. Even though Ji Pyung knew who Dal Mi was when they were little because he’d spotted her a few times, they never actually met face-to-face or even talked to each other. So if you look at it like that, Grandma Won Deuk may be one of the most important characters in the show, if not the most important one.
It was very touching that Do San – after JUST meeting her, fully aware that she was part of the plan to make him Dal Mi’s imaginary friend – noticed right away that her eyesight was bad and immediately came up with the idea to create an app combining SamSan Tech’s facial recognition technology with the Yeong Shil voice AI that Ji Pyung used (kind of like Siri, just a male voice version) to create an app for assisting people with eyesight problems. Both this app, NoonGil, and their later project, Tarzan the self-driving car, were inspired by the idea of assisting people who suffered from disabilities like this, so that they could still go on their way safely with a proper support system.
And then in the final episode, when In Jae finally comes back after changing her last name back to ‘Seo’ and the sisters and their mother are back together again, the only real vision Grandma has is one of her son and his family, the way they used to be when they were all together before they separated… And that just showed that what she had been truly waiting for all this time was just for her family to get back together. That was a really beautiful moment.
Also, I am just SO happy that Grandma Won Deuk didn’t pass away or anything at the end because that would’ve broken me completely.

What I really appreciated about this drama was that it dealt with the complications and misunderstandigs pretty swiftly. It doesn’t take long for Do San to become determined to tell Dal Mi the truth about the letters, and even though that gets out the wrong way, he does reveal some other things first. It was like he was going to reveal things one-by-one to her and it felt better with each thing that got moved out of the way. Even when Dal Mi found out about the letters, she didn’t even stay mad for that long. Her bond with Do San at that point was already too good, and they were business partners, so they had to work together anyway. But really, Dal Mi and Do San kiss for the first time in episode 6 and the main misunderstanding between them got solved already halfway through the series. After that the only storyline remaining was just SamSan Tech building their business and facing some obstacles such as the misleading offer from 2STO.
In the beginning of the series, SamSan Tech is selected by this company in Silicon Valley as the winner of an AI system development contest (or something?) and a representative named Alex (played by Jasper Cho) comes to Seoul to get into business with them. In the end, Dal Mi and Do San fall for his trap since it isn’t an offer for the entire team, and the company is basically just out for their engineers, so Dal Mi breaks up with Do San to basically force him to go to Silicon Valley with Chul San and Yong San. Then there’s a 3-year time jump, SamSan Tech has now build a lot more experience and status and they return to Seoul, just when Dal Mi is facing a ransomware attack. Under In Jae’s company, she has been appointed as CEO of her own sub-company called Cheong Myeong (named after her Grandma’s corndog place + her father’s name). With SamSan’s unexpected but very welcome help, they are able to find the key to undo it, but it’s definitely scary and it could put their company’s reputation in jeopardy because if something like that were to happen again it would be very dangerous for their business (since it’s about self-driving cars and if something happens while someone is driving that thing…yikes). In the end, it turns out that two engineers who used to work for In Jae but now went over to In Jae’s stepbrother’s company were after the attack. These two, the twins, Shin Jung and Shin Hyeon (Joo Bo Young and Kang Yoo Suk) are probably the most sneaky characters in the story because they are literally loyal to no one. I did facepalm a little because when they discovered that their username was an anagram from Apollon Artemis, literally the first thing I thought was ‘the twins’. I mean, come on, brother and sister? But it took them so long to figure it out xD and they only discovered it when they found that Apollon and Artemis were their usernames on somewhere. Oh well, haha.

All in all, I liked this series. It wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever watched, but it was definitely good. It was educative, informative and interesting. The acting was good, the shots looked good. I loved the places they filmed at! The place from the flashback where Grandma used to have her corndog shop, with the little birdhouse on the tree, Dal Mi’s room with all the study books organized so neatly and her desk by the window, and especially the design for the Sand Box building and its interior. I mean, WOW, I’d want to work there myself! I liked the room they had where people had posted their ambitions on the circular paper notes and attached them to the rack. It just looked like the most inspiring place to work at. What I’m trying to say is that the series just LOOKED good, the way it was filmed, the cinematography, the opening sequence too, if you follow the imaging you can really see a lot of symbols and references to the themes in the drama, even though there’s no people appearing in it.
Even though at some point I thought they were putting in a lot of storylines, all of them got wrapped up one by one to make room for the ultimate ending and the last episode was really wholesome to watch, everything just fell into place.
The relationships between the characters were one of the highlights for me, for one I really loved SamSan’s friendship. That scene in the final episode when they went to visit their old tiny studio which had now found three other occupants who reminded them of themselves when they started out, so full of excitement and hope, and they got all emotional standing in their old office and they all cried together, that was so great. I have probably mentioned this before but I always really appreciate crying men in dramas, haha.
Anyways, it really taught me a lot. Although I don’t remember ALL the terms that were used, but just the fact alone that every episode title was a business term that was explained in that specific episode was so informative and cool. And it really made the journey from A to Z, starting with title ‘Start-up’ (starting a business) and ending with title ‘Scale-up’ (expanding a business). When you look at it like that, even the episode titles reflect the step-by-step journey that SamSan Tech > Cheong Myeong has to cover before they reach their goals. I liked that build-up a lot.
I also liked the soundtrack, it had some nice idol songs in it such as Red Velvet, BOL4 and one song by a couple of members from Oh My Girl. It was really nice to listen to the OST.

I will go on to the cast comments now!
First of all, I really liked Suzy in this drama. Her acting has gotten so much better and her expressions were so good as well. She managed to portray a very sympathetic female lead. We see her struggle, get excited, anxious, worried, emotional… and it was never too much or too dramatic. On the other hand she was really down-to-earth and I liked how straightforward she was with her feelings. Her kissing scenes with Nam Joo Hyuk were really good, she really just went for it, haha! I’m glad to see her improve so much with every drama she does, it actually makes me want to see more of her! I’m proud of how far she’s come, you go Suzy!

My favorite role of Nam Joo Hyuk is still his role in Weightlifting Fairy, but I did like him in this drama. He is able to play that awkward geekiness so well! And the way he subtly changed after going to San Francisco, you saw he was still the same guy but he really pulled that extra obtained bit of confidence really well. He showed a lot of different expressions, from giddy to beyond himself with excitement to desperate, anxious and even emotionally touched to tears. I think this may be one of the most mature roles I’ve seen him play so far!

I realized only afterwards that I knew Kim Sun Ho from 100 Day Husband, where he played the second male lead too. He certainly made a bigger impression on me in Start-Up! As I mentioned before, I really liked his acting, his character went through some serious development and I enjoyed seeing him express so many different sides and emotions. As I have also mentioned before (I’m repeating myself a lot here), I loved his scenes with Kim Hae Sook probably the most. Those scenes were just so real and emotional, they actually felt like they were really close, like a real grandma and grandson. I’m curious to see more of him, I kind of like this actor now xD

I’ve seen Kang Han Na in several dramas before, like Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo, Just Between Lovers and Wife I Know/Familiar Wife, and I always feel like she’s given the same kind of role, like the pretty and confident but occasionally kind of bitchy second female lead. I liked that they gave her character more depth in this drama, that she started out as the evil sister but she ended up on friendly terms with everyone. I would like to see more variety to her acting, but I suppose that is completely up to casting directors who will give her a chance to act as a different kind of character. She still performed well in this drama though, and I think the part I liked the most was when she helped Grandma, who by then could barely see anything anymore, to sit down on a bench somewhere without telling her who she was even though she herself was clearly shaken up by how her Grandma was doing. And then the part at the end, when she finally made her presence known to Grandma and they had that heartfelt reunion hug.

I also want to compliment all the child/teenager actors who portrayed the young versions of the main leads because they were so good!! I was so happy to see Hong Jung Eun again, she’s grown so much!! The last I saw of her was also 100 Day Husband where she played the female lead’s youngest version, but it feels like I haven’t seen her ever since she was as small as she was in Oh My Eun Bi! She’s suddenly a teenager! xD Nam Da Reum is also always a pleasure to watch, he really is going to be his own male lead one day. I also remember Lee Re from somewhere even though I can’t remember from what. Anyways, well done everyone!

Kim Hae Sook. How I love this woman to bits. She was the perfect casting choice for this role, even though she’s only still 65 years old, she could have passed for at least 70, she was able to act much older for this perfect grandma. Heck, I want her as my grandma T^T There’s another of her dramas on my list in the near future, so I’m definitely looking forward to that. She was my absolute favorite character in this series, her acting was so natural and touching. The last episode was a tearfest for me, all because of her. So much respect for this woman.

I knew Yoo Soo Bin from Crash Landing on You, where he played one of the North Korean soldiers and I have to say, I love him. He just makes me smile, haha. I really like that, despite his initial geeky character, he actually becomes this cool confident guy and how he actually gets a girl! It was really fun to see him act out those awkward romantic scenes with Stephanie Lee. And besides that he also showed some really seriously good acting in general. I think he’s becoming one of my new favorite side character actors – we can only wish for him to get his own main role one day!

After looking him up on DramaWiki I saw that Kim Do Wan was in The Great Seducer, but I don’t actually remember him from there… He did look a little familiar, though. Anyways, despite the thing I mentioned about his storyline with the brother who committed suicide, I thought he was a pretty solid character. I like that he and Chul San were really written as two separate characters, not just as a unit of two. He really was his own person with his own opinions, and that was very realistic as some dramas can get a little sloppy on that, like, they create a team member and then don’t give him anything to do or just make him agree with everything that’s being said (nope, I’m still not over Tony xD). Anyhow, he performed well enough, I didn’t know him from anything else (that I remembered) so I don’t have any reference about his acting skills, but he was definitely not bad!

It took me a while to realize that I recognized Sa Ha from Busted, where she actually played a role under her own name Stephanie Lee. It’s the first time I’ve seen her in a drama, though! In her case, I did feel like they could have done more with her role. As I mentioned above this, to me she was kind of the team member who didn’t really do anything but just made some in-between comments to show she was participating in the discussion. The only thing she got was that she’d tried law and design to find a ‘better man than herself’, whatever that means, but in the end I didn’t feel like they let her do anything major with that prior law/design knowledge. This had nothing to do with her acting though, her acting was perfectly fine, I just didn’t really see how her character actually fitted in with the rest of the team in terms of skill contribution. I mean, I take it that she wasn’t only there to design their webpage. Anyways, I really liked her chemistry with Yoo Soo Bin, they were the most unexpected couple but I liked how she teased him because she knew he had a weak spot for her. I’d like to see more of her acting! I see on DramaWiki that she appears in at least one drama that’s on my to-watch list, so I’ll be looking forward to that one!

By the way, though I was excited to see Yeo Jin Goo’s cameo in the last episode, I didn’t even get the joke Ji Pyung made when he said ‘I just like the sound of your voice’. It wasn’t until after that I saw in the credits that Yeo Jin Goo was actually the voice of AI Yeong Shil!! I hadn’t even recognized it and now I feel bad. xD I was pretty much expecting a cameo since nearly all Netflix K-Dramas I’ve seen so far had a famous actor cameo in the last episode, and I was even thinking, as he introduced himself as Hong Ji Seok, ‘is this a reference to another role he’s played??’ but yeah, no, it was the voice. He had a voice cameo in the whole series and I didn’t notice xD. I’ll put myself in the corner now.

I realize now that I haven’t said anything about In Jae’s stepfather (played by Uhm Hyo Seop), but he was a really mean guy so I don’t really want to say anything about him, haha. He was just the kind of guy who wanted to control his wife and stepdaughter but never intended to let In Jae take over his company. I did appreciate that, while Dal Mi and In Jae were still debating about ‘who made the right choice’, their mother was already regretting her choice to leave their father since being with Mr. Won had ultimately made her even unhappier. It was good that she moved away from him and went back to fending for herself, finding a job and ultimately ending up at her mother-in-law’s place. Though it takes a while for Dal Mi to fully accept her back into her life again, but I’m glad at least her mother was able to see how she made the wrong choice and how she cared more for the wellbeing of both her daughters than whether she married into a rich family or not. And, admittedly, anywhere was better than by Mr. Won’s side. And his son, In Jae’s stepbrother (played by Moon Dong Hyuk) was as bad as his father, although probably not as smart, so I definitely understood In Jae’s frustration when she was kicked out of that position to be replaced by him.

I think this drama series teaches a lot about friendship and loyalty as well as business-building. It all depends on the people you’re with, the team you’re building around you, the people who will be there when you face obstacles, both in your personal as in your professional life. Despite her initial misplaced feelings for Do San, Dal Mi grows to love him for who he really is through their partnership. I like that no one kept on clinging to the past and that Dal Mi didn’t cling onto her past feelings either. I believe that Do San asks her what she likes about him maybe 3 times or so, and at the end, her answer changes to ‘I don’t need a reason, I just like you because you’re you’ and that’s when you know everything will turn out right, haha. Everyone matures, everyone apologizes for their mistakes and ends up stronger and more confident, most of all those who used to be the least confident. One of my favorite quotes is ‘It’s not about where you come from, it’s about where you go from here’, and I think that is really fitting for this drama. Another thing that really reminds me of this quote was that, when thinking about it, at the end of the drama I really didn’t find it relevant anymore how Dal Mi and Do San ended up meeting. The whole drama story from the beginning about the letters, the imaginary friend, that whole misunderstanding, once it was solved and forgiven, it also lost its significance. I just realized this after thinking about it for some more, but it really didn’t have anything to do with anything anymore. It was just the story of how they met, but once that was established, it really didn’t matter anymore how they’d met, just that they’d met. I hope I’m making sense, haha. It’s just like in Jugglers, when this guy’s trauma of fire was such a big part of his character in the beginning, and then after he started dating the whole thing was never mentioned again, to the point of me actually forgetting about it until it was casually mentioned one time at the end and I was like ‘oh right, he had that trauma, what happened to that?’ xD It’s just, once the truth was revealed, it became a part of the past that they didn’t feel like dwelling on, they still liked each other, and that’s what I mean with how that reminded me of that quote. It didn’t matter anymore how they’d met, what was important was how they would get along from that point onwards. And I think it was also illustrated beautifully by the paper notes that people wrote their dreams on at Sand Box. At the moment they write those, they write about where they want to go from there on, not where they came from. Their goals may have originated from something in the past, but that place was all about going ‘up’. In Dal Mi’s case, literally, since her goal was to ‘take the elevator to the top floor’. I really loved these metaphors.
Basically, it’s all about following your dream, as was written on the baseball. When the baseball player saw that Do San’s father (who was by the way played by Kim Won Hae, love that guy) was basically feeding his son what his ambitions should be, he pulled Do San aside and urged him to follow his own dream, changing the quote on the baseball especially for him from ‘Follow the Dream’ to ‘Follow Your Dream’. I liked that Do San’s improved his relationship with his dad and that his dad even stole the old SamSan Tech sign from their old office to put it up in his house, that was the sweetest thing.
Anyways, it’s about following your dreams wherever they lead you, never saying something is impossible. In some way it also reminded me a little bit of Itaewon Class in the sense that the main characters managed to build a business while they’d always been told that it would be impossible. While it took some years, they kept working hard for it, and that is what brought them all together. In the final in-between ending credit scene, we see Cheong Myeong’s new very own office building, with Dal Mi and Do San’s desks next to each other so that they’re pictures together overlap, including pictures of them getting married. The final part where they were walking to a shareholder’s meeting hand-in-hand as the ultimate power couple, and then were joined by In Jae and Ji Pyung was so satisfying to watch. I just really liked the ending, haha, it was so wholesome.

I will get back to you with my next review pretty soon I expect! It’s not a very long series 🙂 I hope this was an enjoyable review to read, I’m still improving my writing skills and please bear with me as I’m not in the most focussed review-writing mood with my current weekly schedule but I still really enjoy doing it and want to make it worth everyone’s while including my own! So I will be back soon! Bye-bee~!