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Start-Up korean drama review
Completed
Start-Up
1 people found this review helpful
by Chardd
Aug 2, 2024
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed 2
Overall 8.0
Story 7.5
Acting/Cast 9.5
Music 9.5
Rewatch Value 6.0
This review may contain spoilers

Fine, but could have gone differently.

I generally enjoyed this series, but found that some of the story elements and character development took a path that dragged on for several episodes and ended up on a path that wasn't the most gratifying for me personally. The beginning was fun and had lots of dynamic elements with the different characters and story elements centering around the startup world, but as the series went on it slowly got sucked into a whirlpool that was the love triangle, to the point where it was predictable and I was just watching the last few episodes to complete the series. It went from being a series about startups with strong romance elements, to a series about a love triangle with a vague setting of "startups" as a backdrop.

I've watched many series where the main dramatic element was a love triangle (which is honestly super common) and thoroughly enjoyed them, but I find this one lost any excitement after the scheming ended, and it was mostly a pity party with lots of tears and denial of feelings, which didn't exactly match the poppy tone of the rest of the series, characters, and side story lines. The Seo family scenes, Ji Pyung and Mrs Choi's relationship, Dal Mi being inspired about business, the In Jae situation, or the SamSan staff scenes were generally much more interesting to me and were the highlights, and it was always a little dissapointing when it would dip back into a love triangle scene.

To confront my bias, I think that Nam Joo Hyuk did a great job acting as Do San, but he wasn't always a likeable character to me and his character arc didn't help the triangle situation. If the love story and characters had been less stagnant mid-to-late series and Ji Pyung had won out in the end, I'd likely would have been more personally satisfied. But in the end I had an attitude of "sure, okay." about the sudden wedding, and was more interested in Ji Pyung's acceptance of the situation and moving on to find more meaningful things to do, Sa Ha and Choel San's relationship, and other endings.

Overall a fine series, but this is the first one I thought flaked out enough to actually write an opinion on it.
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