Kimsamsoom

I am going to reply to this in the comment section as i feel it will be a good chance to address the points you made to the community.

Someone asked me what shows i thought was better than start up. So here's is my list. Agree or disagree?

I haven't watched a lot of Kdrama, but these dramas alone I would rank higher than Start Up, in no particular order.

1. Greatest Love
2. Jealousy Incarnate
3. When the Camellia Blooms
4. Crash Landing On You
5. Pasta
6. It's Okay That's Love
7. Welcome to Waikiki 1 and 2
8. Run on (ongoing, but already feels a lot better, and will most likely get a higher rating from me)
9. Mr. Queen (ongoing, but already feels a lot better, and will most likely get a higher rating from me)
10. My Love from the Star
11. Master's Sun
12. My Golden Life
13. 18 Again
14. My Greasy Melo
15. Goblin
16. Let's Eat 1 and 2
17. What's Wrong With Secretary Kim
18. Oh My Venus

Basically, this is all the Kdramas I've seen or partly seen, and I find them all much better than Start Up. The only Kdrama i've seen that I would say is worst than Start Up is TKEM, and I rated that one lower than Start Up as well.

" I mean, it would be great if you could name me few romcoms or basically popular or not so kdramas in other genre that you rated far more than this one. Maybe I watched them and I could tell where our difference of experiencing kdramas are :)"

Ok, I'm going to reply to this with a long post that details and replies to all the points you have brought up. I hope you will take the time to read it. But I don't have the time to write it now. I'll just reply to your last sentence since it's the quickest.

I haven't watched a lot of Kdrama, but these dramas alone I would rank higher than Start Up, in no particular order.

1. Greatest Love
2. Jealousy Incarnate
3. When the Camellia Blooms
4. Crash Landing On You
5. Pasta
6. It's Okay That's Love
7. Welcome to Waikiki 1 and 2
8. Run on (ongoing, but already feels a lot better, and will most likely get a higher rating from me)
9. Mr. Queen (ongoing, but already feels a lot better, and will most likely get a higher rating from me)
10. My Love from the Star
11. Master's Sun
12. My Golden Life
13. 18 Again
14. My Greasy Melo
15. Goblin
16. Let's Eat 1 and 2
17. What's Wrong With Secretary Kim
18. Oh My Venus

Basically, this is all the Kdramas I've seen, and I find them all much better than Start Up. The only Kdrama i've seen that I would say is worst than Start Up is TKEM, and I rated that one lower than Start Up as well.

Concordo, também adorei o OST :)

You want to know something interesting? 5 of Suzy's dramas all went up by .2 - .3 points. Coincidence? Maybe...

NJH's drama actually did not go up by much, some of it actually went down...

I don't know anymore with MDL, a bunch of dramas went way up and some went way down.

But Start Up is the same rating of shows I consider superior. And that's the thing about ratings, internally, we compare it to shows we've seen in the past.

The thing is Start Up for me wasn't even an average Rom Com. Welcome to waikiki 2 is rated the same rating, and after having watched that, as fluffy as it was, it had a coherent plot and consistent characters. Not even adding the fact that Waikiki 2 was really funny, and the chemistry between KSH and MGY was much hotter than NDS and SDM.

Jealousy Incarnate is a FAR superior product, with a better done love triangle as well. And it's only rated 8.2? LOL!

IMO, for the purposed of using the rating system of 10's

I think your average romcom should be rated an 8. Amazing romcoms like Mr. Queen should get an 8.5. Deeper romcoms like Run on deserves an 8.6-8.7.

And poor quality writing like Start Up should be around 7.5-7.8. It's only 8.1 because of the hype I guess. I mean even TKEM which is just as bad is 8.

And I think this is the reality of MDL, the more popular a show's stars is the higher the rating will be. Unless your The Heirs, lol!

welcome to the club :(

Sometimes when your a huge star, people are afraid to criticize you within your agency.

I mean just look at LMH right?

Voice over guy, I haven't' seen him since Pasta.

they are so cute together! Visually stunning.

For me the predictability came after Ep. 7. To place such a passionate kiss, it meant that the showrunners can end the love triangle then and there, but they extended it for another 8 episodes, for whatever reason.

Knowing the end game so early on, it made no sense why the show couldn't focus more on the business or family aspect more. To make matters worse, they really messed up everyone's character by making them do dumb things and out of character decisions.

I like your review, so I wanted to respond to it.

** Many viewers complain about how superficial and unrealistic the startup scenes are depicted there - Personally, I don’t fully agree. Though I agree the writers could have toned down the path to success slightly in later episodes, I liked how all key elements are incorporated. Some of the tough aspects are shown in Mr. Seo’s story or the early days of San Sam Tech. If you want to watch stories of real-life startups I am sure there are tons of drama/ documentaries for you to watch. Don’t waste your time on a 16 episode Korean drama full of pretty actors/ actresses, hope and dreams. I think this should have been clear when the ML walks into FL’s life like Cinderella in episode 2.

Nobody is denying the the first 6 episodes paved the way for the possibility of Start Up being one of the better shows of 2020. In fact many people raved about episode 1 for how much emotion it invoked. So all those things showing the hardships or startups and the technical aspects, occurred during the first 6 episodes. And people watch technical dramas for some amount of realism. It's like, imagine watching Dr. Romantic, and seeing them cure bacterial infection with some ibruprophen. People who know this won't work, will lambast the technical aspect of the show. When a show uses actual Tech terms, actual companies, and actual people in it's plot, it's obviously trying to invoke some sort of realism, so you can't discount peoples need for realism in Kdrama. People are not even asking for hyper realism, just semi-accuracy, which the show failed to live up to.


** Female lead becomes someone who is solely dependent on her choice of a man - I don’t know why many think this way, at the end, the FL was doing a great job working for her sister In Jae. She is hard-working, smart, ambitious, and dares to dream - she would have been a successful start-up CEO wherever she goes and would not have needed a man...

Hmmm, SDM starts off as a quick witted retail employee without any experience. Through her moxie, she is able to move past certain hindrances. But let's not pretend that she would have gotten where she is right now if not for her connections to NDS, HJP and WIJ. NDS had a very biased reason for hiring SDM as the CEO of SST. WIJ, also hired SDM based on nepotism really, something prevalent in Korea and parts of Asia.

Claiming that SDM would have been a successful start up CEO whereever she goes, is a big assumption. I made this thought in the comment section, and I will repeat it here. SDM has not shown in the show how she is a competent CEO, even up until the last few episodes, she was still making a lot of mistakes, and there were far too many things she didn't know. The difference of WIJ and SDM in terms of skill became so much clearer whenever they shared the same screen.

And, there are at least 5 times when NDS comes to "Save" SDM from tough situations. But that is the main grip of the critics, why does an independent woman like SDM, need NDS to save her everytime things get tough? A lot of the situations she was in, she did not need saving, and in fact, her getting out of the sticky situation would have shown the audience she had the skill necessary to be a competent CEO. But instead of seeing character growth from SDM, we instead see, someone who needs a man to save her whenever the going gets tough.

Imagine if Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, needed her CTO to answer the tough questions for her when she is being interviewed. Or always needing her husband to defend her, when a rival CEO is saying some mean things to her? Sheryl Sandberg would LOSE so much integrity ad a CEO, and this is the truth more so in the male dominated tech industry. Notice in the meeting of Alex with NDS and SDM, he shakes NDS hands first. Normally in most business meeting, you shake the hands of the CEO first, as a sign of respect.

** ML becomes useless without the FL. - Well first, he is not really useless but just realizes how much she means to him. That the fame and the money he dreamt of isn't that interesting if he is all by himself. In the end, the Dal Mi really helped SST to get to where they were in the first place.
Though I agree it's slightly exaggerated but isn’t this what we all want to see from the ML in a Korean romance drama?

I don't know if the ML was useless, but people had a problem with the ML making the FL his dream, trophy, and goal. It comes off as quite exhausting and obsessive. The ML and FL essentially had a co-dependent relationship, where the FL enabled the bad behavior of the ML. None of the questionable acts of the ML is questioned by the FL, instead it's romanticized. Kdrama or not, people do not appreciate these kinds of relationships.

NDS makes us think that SDM had a big part to SST success, but from the viewers perspective, she does not. After the time skip, you can argue she became more important, but prior to it, most people thought she really did not add too much value. And this became more blatant when compared to WIJ, and seeing her being "saved' constantly by someone. Going back to my Sheryl Sandberg example.

** It's a useless triangle, and the drama is abusing 2nd ML. - We shall recall that the Han Jin Pyong did not visit her after he found her again. He also did not admit his feeling to her and kept on being warm and cold with her. On the other hand, Nam Do San has been drawn to FL the moment he saw her and there are countless moments at which Do San did things for FL without hidden agenda, such as appearing at the event for her. For me, it was very clear, that Han Jin Pyong, although being a very loveable character and supportive mentor to the FL, did not have any chance. I found the maker did a great job by having Han Jin Pyong realizing exactly that and open the path for Nam Do San and Dal Mi to become happy. What do you want from a love who does not love you back?

HJP's last line to SDM feels so forced to be honest. Keep in mind HJP is already being selfless at this point and pushing NDS to SDM, so who knows what the letters really meant, or what did before, no time or backstory is ever given to it.

There are things NDS does for SDM without hidden agenda, BUT there are also things he does WITH hidden agenda. A clear problem of the love triangle was how useless it was to have it in the first place, and how long it lasted for.

For most shows I know with a shipping far, Start Up is probably the show with the biggest imbalance of people rooting for NDS versus HJP. When Suzy and NJH themselves admit via interview that they feel uncomfortable with NDS actions, then that is saying a lot. The writer wrote NDS too weak of a ML, and HJP too strong of a SML, that's the reality of things.

Also, after episode 6, the writing went downhill fast, with a lot of plot points either being forgotten, or thrown in the back burner. A lot of the characters experienced writing inconsistencies.

In the end, Start Up could have been one of the better show sin 2020, but instead it will end up in the same category as TKEM, overhyped shows that didn't amount to much. It's viewership ratings in Korea actually drops in the last few episodes.

You should check out Run On or Mr. Queen, I've just started watching them, and they are really good.

Seems like their vying for KSH. He has been linked to another role, this time with Shin Min Ah!

https://kisskh.at/683929-mr-hong

I'm on the first 15 minutes and I can already tell i'm going to like this. And the chef is the guy from Pasta, bonus!

Everytime they say your highness, All I hear is mama, Lol!

I think it's cute that SDM has all thse "Aha" moments, because as a viewer, I kept having the "Huh"? moments.

One scene in particular when SDM and NDS are sitting down, and she tells him NDS is still the same Dosan from 15 years ago, because he understands her like no one else.

I'm like huh? how good is NDS at faking it. Because he hasn't done anything that supported SDM's statement.

Then NDS tells SDM that he has changed from before (Duh!), and SDM is like, nope I don't see it.

Once again I go HUH?!?

SDM is Anna of Frozen in the first half when she falls for Han, because
"they finish each other's sandwiches" :))

I think it's so ironic she is in fact Anna in the corporate presentation...

Ok, you have your opinions, and let's leave it at that. You obviously are strong in your convictions so facts won't change anything.

have a good day :)))

"and if everyone was dragging HJP and praising NDS I'd have done the same for HJP."

Ok, if you say so :)))

Yup, I agree with this. Plus I've only discovered SSK here, she is pretty great! Why do people dislike her acting? I feel she's a lot better than Suzy.

I think this is because ISW and SSK are almost the same height.

Heels would make him look shorter LOL!

You also probably get this feeling because of the lack of blaring OST music every time the ML and FL are together.

Run On chooses to use light and simple melodies for most of it's run time.

I think this effects the feeling we get while watching it.

Honestly, if SDM was a real person, and NDS was a real person.

I would see it as SDM being an opportunist. SDM comes from a poor family, and she knows she only got her position due to nepotism and the CTO is her boyfriend. So if she breaks up with NDS, the company will crash and burn because they won't be able to separate professional and emotions (something SDM even admits).

So even if she's miserable, she's going to continue the sham marriage due to money.

This is no different from all those super wealthy couples who only stay together because of money. It is even worse in Asian countries. Because in Asian culture, Pre-nups are becoming more popular. So some wives are left in loveless marriage, but are unable to leave, because if they leave the marriage, they end up with nothing. Being used to such a lavish lifestyle, they just trudge along even if their husbands are abusive or worse, they are having affairs.

I see SDM just having a similar relationship, she needs NDS if she is to reach the wealth status she wants. HJP in the end is just an employee and won't be as rich as NDS could potentially be. It's a money thing if Start Up was real life. And SDM is literally marrying her way to the top.