blackberrymoon

I wonder if any of the Knetz realize how ironic it is that their reaction to things like this does far more to hurt South Korea's image than any historically inaccurate depiction of royalty could.

This is bugging me too, but the drama would probably be only 14 episodes without it. I think they haven't handled it well though -- instead of avoiding talking about the elephant in the room, it's more like ignoring a whale in a closet. Ah well... drama... (And even though that bugs me, I still like her character overall.)

TBH, she's so dense that the boss could give her a wedding ring and she'd be like, "I wonder if he wants me to take this to a shop to get refitted so he can give it to somebody..."

I wasn't interested in the ship wars at all. I gave the drama a low rating because of NDS's actual character. Knowing what we know about NDS as viewers, he's the kind of person to be avoided as much as possible in real life situations. He lies without reservation, and is manipulative, narcissistic and overall creepy. It's textbook 101 groundwork for abusive behaviour in a relationship. The fact that this show not only avoided addressing any of those traits as dangerous but actually romanticised such imbalanced behaviour is something I found irresponsible and genuinely disgusting.

Okay, who's ready for Start-Up season 2?

Following a logical train of events set up by the first season, I've sketched a rough outline of what the second season will be like:

NDS and SDM are married, but things are rough because SDM learned almost nothing about being a CEO in season 1 and has run SST into the ground. This has caused NDS to wake up from his "dream" and start treating SDM like he treats everyone else, meaning she spends most of season 2 covering up bruises and explaining away NDS-inflicted injuries to any friends she may have (does she actually have any friends?) NDS continues his toxic festival of self pity for 15 episodes while SDM keeps forgiving him and dealing with the traumatic effects of emotional and physical abuse from the hands she once loved so much. NDS suffers no consequences for his actions (as usual) until the 16th episode when SDM finally has enough and kills NDS. The End.

WIJ is not in season 2 because "Wait... Kang Ha Na was in Start-Up??? I didn't see her. Was it a cameo role or something?"

HJP is in season 2 but gets hit by a truck while crossing the street and dies in the first 10 minutes of episode one because... well... HJP. (And, yes, he was carrying the plant when he got hit by the truck. At the scene of the accident, we see some letters he saved blowing in the breeze like flower petals.)

I truly don't know how the events in season 1 could predict much other than that for a follow up. (Actually, I guess that should be the season 2 name: "Follow-Up")

Which is why I still check the comments section here. I want to know if they somehow fix the messaging on the show without actually having to sit through something I didn't like as far as basic storytelling goes. A happy ending for most people would seem to be a good ending for HJP in some form, but a happy ending for me with this drama would be the repudiation of NDS' toxic personality despite anything regarding HJP's happiness.

To be honest, I probably would have rated it a 3 if I hadn't thought it was promoting the potentially dangerous in-real-life personality of NDS as somehow being romantic. The attitude of that character can easily be the start of both physical and emotional abuse in the real world.

Because this comment section is far more interesting than the drama itself.

And I am another who gave this drama a 1 rating.

Exactly. I dropped the show at episode 9 because I thought the plot was an unfocused mess.

I think some people (at least on MDL) have only kept watching the drama for one character because they thought the rest of the show was not very good. For me, I stopped watching at episode 9 because I thought the plot had become a complete train wreck, and that had little to do with having a favorite ship. I acknowledge that a lot of talented people worked on this and put a lot of effort into the production, but I thought the writer, while having written many good things over the years, seemed to be just relying on emotional sensation with the love triangle at the expense of any real storytelling.

Yes, you're right, Jackie the Penguin - it really is hard to be as popular as him. I have never before heard of an actor lining up a new project before their current project has finished. Truly an amazing achievement.

Oh, those wacky penguins... ;)

Such is the way of fandom. I could be wrong, but I doubt Jackie the Penguin's strange rant will have any diminishing effect on KSH's rising popularity. If anything, our little penguin friend is rallying the KSH fans in this thread with an aggressively "unbiased" view of things.

Somehow Jackie the Penguin ended up switching from talking about the characters to talking about the actors for some reason. I find it strange to not be able to separate actors from the roles they play, but maybe that's a penguin thing.

If that's your intent, you're not succeeding very well.

Wow. I haven't seen an attack-as-defense post this good in quite a while. Apparently someone is taking it personally that their favorite character isn't getting enough net love.

Well, sometimes it's not about the ship wars.

I dropped this drama and gave it one star simply because I thought it was one of the worst dramas I'd seen in a while. Chaotic storytelling that never gave any hint it would get better and thoroughly unlikable characters everywhere. Yes, the NDS character was the main reason I dropped this drama, but it had nothing to do with a love triangle or comparing him to HJP. It had everything to do with how absolutely repulsive I found his character to be. I really like NJH. I even thought he was great in The School Nurse Files, and about the best part of that otherwise lukewarm short drama. Unfortunately, he got stuck with a thinly written character with no room for redeeming qualities this time around. NJH did his best, but his character, coupled with the overall sloppy and lazy storytelling, made me stop watching. I admit that if NJH had not been listed as the ML there's a very slim chance I may have stayed with this drama longer to see if it got any better, but for SDM to be going out with an immature piece of trash like his character was a complete turnoff for me. I've known far too many people like him in real life to want to deal with watching it on my screen for 16 episodes. Especially when his character shows no growth. It's just the same thing. Every. Single. Episode. But, that kind of personality rarely changes in real life, so maybe the writer actually did do one thing right after all.

Enough about the NDS character. As already mentioned, I thought the story itself was bad. The "plot" was like an optical illusion - it appeared like it was going somewhere, but when I thought about it and looked closer, it had barely moved (and, judging from the comments here, it seems like it still hasn't really moved since I dropped it.) I could say that this show was "no substance and all emotional rollercoaster," but that would still be inaccurate -- it was more like one of those needle drop rides at amusement parks that only go up and down in a stationary position. Unless it's simply a slice-of-life thing, I like my storytelling to actually tell me a story instead of being a redundant exercise in presenting different variations of the exact same thing every episode, with almost no real character development. Yes, dramas are supposed to be heavy on emotional ups and downs, but when there's no real storytelling foundation for those ups and downs, it becomes a hollow and frustrating viewing experience. No wonder people are mainly arguing about the ship wars -- that's pretty much all there is in this drama. Not only that, but the relationships themselves don't seem to be going anywhere either, so the viewer is essentially left with nothing. I feel bad for the talented actors and actresses that got stuck in this mess of a drama, although I am glad that KSH seems to be getting more notice from his performance here. I feel really bad for for NJH though -- the character HJP may be getting done dirty by the writer, but the actor NJH is actually the one truly getting done dirty by the writer. I hope NJH gets a better role to showcase his talent next time instead of a one-dimensional study in immaturity whose defining traits seem to be crying and throwing temper tantrums. What a waste.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the drama and why I gave it a low rating. Sometimes it's not about the ship wars. Sometimes it's simply about bad writing.

I write this as someone who dropped this drama a couple episodes ago, so, aside from comments here, I'm not really aware of how things are going. but I don't see that NDS loves SDM at all. What I see is neediness and insecurity mixed with an easy attraction and masquerading as "love". To me, all of NDS' actions seem self-serving and coming from a place of fear instead of love.

I have no problem with flawed characters in a drama (isn't that what makes up drama, after all?), but I do have a problem watching a character that acts like a man-child treating himself and other people horribly and showing more signs of regression than growth as the show goes on. I didn't really like any of the characters that much in this drama at the start - they're all obviously flawed in different ways - but I was willing to go with them and see how they would grow through the course of 16 episodes. As we know, that's how dramas work. And, almost all of the characters were showing signs of introspection and growth as the drama went on... except for NDS. NDS just kept seeming more immature and distasteful with every passing episode, which is fine for an antagonist or even a protagonist if it seems like it's interspersed with something resembling growth along the way, but I didn't see that happening. Instead, I see a FL falling for a guy whose only ambition in the relationship seems to be not wanting to get hurt, and unless this drama is trying to make a sober point about what being in a bad relationship is like (which definitely can be interesting if it's done well), that's not really something I'm into watching, at least not under the guise of romcom. Quite simply, I dropped this drama because the NDS character reached a point where, for me, he was irredeemable and any attempt by the writer to reverse that would have just been too infuriating to watch.

Anyway, that's my contribution to the discussion. I hope the rest of you get what you want out of the drama and enjoy it more than I did. I'm sure I'll catch up on how everything turned out in this comment section after it has finished airing :)

P.S. @Kimsamsoom - sorry for hijacking your post with such a long comment

Thoroughly agree! I dislike NDS so much that it's made me drop this drama.