polothesecond

Are you sure that was her own company? I was skipping a lot of scenes by then so I may have missed it, but it seemed to me that was WIJ's company. TARZAN was just the project name or something. In any case, I felt the business storyline left a lot to be desired. Everything happened too easily or was resolved too easily, and we didn't see her struggling in a prolonged realistic way to get her business up and running. I think I just set my expectations too high in the first couple of episodes.

A review:

https://thetech.com/2021/01/27/start-up-review

She was project manager; not CEO. It's pretty telling to me that the scene in which SDM invites herself to an interview was written so that WIJ and her colleagues seemed very dissatisfied with all the other people they interviewed. The writer obviously didn't think SDM could plausibly get that position if she'd had tough competition. It would've come across as nepotism. SDM had too much plot armour. That undermined all of her successes.

I honestly believe that viewers are far more interested in the characters of a drama than they are in the famous faces of a drama. Don't get me wrong. Famous faces help. However, the thing that's going to attract the most amount of people is the characters and the plot; not the famous actors. That's why I keep insisting that HJP would've brought in the viewers far more successfully than Suzy and NJH. Not because people don't like Suzy and NJH, but because their characters just weren't as captivating as HJP. The fact that Suzy and NJH brought in viewers because of their fans is perfectly true, but it says nothing about the drama's quality, plot, and characters. I don't know what people are trying to achieve when they say that they wouldn't have watched this drama if not for Suzy and NJH. Aren't they undermining the characters by saying that? So if NDS and SDM had been played by unknowns, are we to understand they wouldn't have been interested? For many of the viewers, HJP was what made this drama watchable. KSH was well cast, but as long as they hired a competent actor to play the role I believe people would've stuck around for that character regardless of the actor. Had his character been promoted more, and had he not been second fiddle to the main leads, this drama would've done much better. Given how popular the character is and what wonders the character has been doing for KSH's career, I don't think that's an unreasonable or illogical conclusion.

It was an achievement but I think you're exaggerating by calling it huge. She became the CEO of a failing company by winning a competition. I would've liked to see her start from scratch with her own company. That would've been a huge achievement (assuming she was successful).

Indeed. I accidentally deleted that comment absentmindedly. For anyone wondering I just made the point that while most NJH fans probably aren't happy, I doubt most of them are responsible for giving KSH grief. It's just the ones on the fringes.

YS himself admitted that he just needed someone to blame. We didn't really get enough detail about the suicide to say HJP was responsible. It was a very underdeveloped plot point. In the end it was just there to rock HJP's confidence and cause tension between him and SST. All in all, a pretty cheap way to write about suicide.

I'd say mediocre dramas frequently only become popular because they have famous actors in them. But a good drama doesn't need famous actors. This drama had HJP which elevated it a lot. A bad actor wouldn't have been able to do the character justice, and that may have hurt its success, but with KSH in the role I think this drama did better than it would've done without the character.

It's not the actors people hate but the characters. I personally think if HJP had been the male lead, and if it had been advertised that way, it actually would've done better even if Suzy and NJH weren't part of it. I don't think it's KSH who carried the drama. I think it's HJP. But I do think KSH was perfect for the role.

Does that mean he's confirmed? I'm surprised I haven't come across the news on twitter. Maybe I missed it.

Hahahaha!

The user was arguing that PHR was attempting to play with tropes, but the result was very unsatisfying for the viewers because there's a reason that tropes are tropes: they work. It is possible to play with tropes successfully. I gave the example a while a go of 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. George RR Martin frequently pulls the rug out from under the readers, but he can only do that because he has another equally good or even better rug underneath. You can play with tropes only if you use enough of them. PHR played with the tropes of first love, orphaned male lead, love letters, etc. but failed to associate NDS with any tropes that would make him a better option. I believe she did that deliberately, and that it backfired due to a plot change, but the user was saying it was an accident.

SDM does backtrack slightly when she's talking to HJP, but she also adds that she got over it quickly because she knew she was pathetic; thereby implying that she understood it was fair criticism. The fact that the SST boys are always complaining about HJP doesn't mean that the viewers were supposed to agree with them. I think we were meant to disagree with them. Or partly agree but overall come down on his side.

I don't believe we were meant to see HJP as a villain. In episode 12 SDM comforts HJP by telling him that she doesn't believe anything he said to them was too much. This proved to me that the writer was fully aware that NDS' response to HJP was not the right one. HJP is the one who got punched first, and he has a very emotional scene with Halmoni afterwards that was very clearly meant to evoke sympathy for him. You could say we were meant to see it as romantic that NDS punched HJP, and that HJP's emotional scene wasn't meant to evoke sympathy but satisfaction, but that was extremely clumsy on the writer's part if that's the case. Too clumsy for me to believe that's what she was going for. I don't think HJP is comparable to the politician character in TKEM (I assume that's who you're referring to). I can understand why you might not see her as a villain, but it's very clear that the writer was pushing her as a villain. It's nowhere near as obvious with HJP. I don't think PHR was going for irony by having Halmoni nickname him 'good boy'.

I'm almost laughing at how depressing that is. Such an unfitting ending for a character who carried the drama. I really think we need a season 2. Just a short one so that HJP can get a happy ending.

His relationship with Halmoni is a good one for sure, but for a man in his late 30s to only have a grandmother figure in his life is very sad.

My impression is that the point of this story was meant to be HJP finding a family, but that ended up getting thrown out.

I've said the same thing to Sahar, but it's the production details that get me. I realise I'm backtracking a little by saying that. In my initial response to Sahar I said comments like the one she posted make me more confident of my suspicion, but it's more that they give me further insight into what PHR was originally planning.

I really liked that comment, but I still say there was a plot change. Whenever I come across observations like that it just convinces me more and more that PHR was originally going for something very different. However, if we assume that there was no plot change then subversion is indeed our best guess as to what PHR was trying to pull. That's what I believed while watching the first half. I thought she was trying to be clever but failing.

Considering how the drama turned out, I think it's problem is that it attracted the wrong audience in terms of preferences and taste. HJP added a tone to this drama that it otherwise would've missed, so for that reason many of the viewers were watching a drama that normally wouldn't be to their taste. Had HJP not existed, it's not that we wouldn't have been disappointed, it's that we wouldn't have stuck around. HJP's character didn't really belong in this drama because he was too strong and independent from the main storyline. It's not as though he was a typical second lead who just got in the way (I personally think NDS better suits that description). He had a strong storyline (up to a point) in his own right, and it was very different in tone and style to the main storyline which is why the drama attracted the wrong audience for what it ultimately was.