I want to explain the tragedy of Start-Up without the bias of shipping wars, because I think viewers on both sides can agree that this drama failed its audience.

This will be long and I'm sorry for that.

Start-Up started out as a refreshing new drama with an interesting twist on the old ‘liar revealed’ trope. What made it stand out was its focus on passionate young men and women forming their own company. SMD was a strong, confident young woman who suffered through a lot growing up. Her family separated, she lost her best friend and sister to her mother’s new family, and her father lost his life before he could ever get his company off the ground. She grew up living with her paternal grandmother, who eventually sold her shop to pay SDM’s tuition. After finding that out, SDM dropped out of college and worked to raise money for a food truck for her grandmother. She swallowed that lost opportunity for the sake of the only family she had left, and despite that loss, she was still motivated to succeed. What I really loved about her character at the start of all of this was just that - her dedication, her passion, and her vision of the future. Even if she wasn’t successful and her life hadn’t gone the way she wanted it to, and even if she was too embarrassed to admit that to her sister, she believed that one day she’d make it. She’d turn the lie into reality and show the world that her father’s decision wasn’t wrong.

The real problem with the drama is that it gave us a stellar, likable cast that it squandered in the second half. SDM went from a self-sufficient, capable woman to a damsel in need of rescuing by the second half of the drama. She couldn’t do anything right and she needed other people to solve all of her problems for her. NDS went from a naive but dedicated coder with big dreams but no business know-how to a man who gleaned wealth from the success of another company, a childish opportunist who didn’t listen to what others were saying. And HJP went from a blunt and harsh businessman with a fun charm and charisma to someone who, despite being a self-made success, couldn’t even bother to confront someone he loved in the 3 years he was left alone with her. It went from a show about a group of passionate people coming together to form a company to a sappy, unnecessary love triangle where every character seems to care more about romance than they do the thing they’re supposed to be passionate about.

I’ll start this probably very extensive review by talking about the characters, because they’re the biggest tragedy in all of this. And I want to make it clear that every actor did a phenomenal job. I don’t have a single complaint about any of them, they’re fantastic and I love them all. Without them, this drama wouldn’t have been tolerable.

NDS is probably the character they did dirty the most. I know there are a lot of fans of him still out there and I understand. While I was never rooting for him all that hard, I did find him very likable in the early episodes and knew that if he ended up with SDM in the end, I would have accepted that. After all, the drama wasn’t just about romance, right? It was about this journey they were taking together… right? Well, it wasn’t. Not at the beginning. NDS was a man with a company of 3 people. In, what was it, 3 years? In 3 years, he hadn’t found any success. For as talented of a coder as he was, he didn’t know anything about running a business, so he never got his company off the ground. He never even had a business model. The money they used to operate on was invested by his family who, despite seeing no success, continued to support him. For as much as his father yelled at him and for as little progress as they were getting, he still gave them money. Maybe his parents’ expectations were too high and their vision of his future too grand because of his childhood success, but they were still there for him, waiting for the day he would turn things around. He and his friends worked out of a dingy rooftop apartment and he looked up to HJP, known for his brilliant investments, all because of an article that incorrectly quoted HJP with an inspirational speech. Up until this point, he was separate from the goings-on of the main plot - he never wrote a letter, didn’t know who SDM was or of the plot concocted by her grandmother using his name. And at this point, he was pretty likable. He decided to appear before SDM because of his own morals, not because HJP solicited him into it, to help her through this one event so that she wouldn’t feel embarrassed. We can blame HJP for the mess that it became later, at least at first.

HJP was an orphan who grew up with no one and nothing but his own skills. The first person to reach out to him was SDM’s grandmother who offered her shop as his home and helped provide for him, and he used her accounts (he wasn’t old enough for a bank account of his own) to invest and grow his earnings so that he could support himself in Seoul after graduating. Granny asks him to write letters to her granddaughter, who was left friendless and alone after her family split apart. It was an innocent wish, and he was convinced, and together they used NDS to create this fake persona of a smart, kind boy for SDM to latch onto. Just this alone tells us a lot about his character. He didn’t want to use his real name. If he had, the whole story would have fallen apart. He envied the NDS that he saw in the paper because to him, an orphan with nowhere to turn and nothing to offer, it felt like NDS had everything. And that was what he wanted, too.

Because of where he came from, HJP has a greedy streak. He had nothing, so he wants everything. He latches onto whatever he can in fear of losing it. We’re shown this when he has a meltdown about Granny taking his money. He lashes out at her before hearing her side of the story because he feels like he’s going to that place again where everything is gone and he’s left with nothing. Then, when he realizes that she never took his money, he feels ashamed. He’s upset with himself, and he knows that he owes Granny an endless debt, one that he hopes to pay in the future. The relationship between HJP and the grandmother is probably the best in the whole series. They have great dialogue together and they feel like a proper family, even more so than most of the actual families in the story. The story starts because he wants to repay his debt after all of these years and it’s because he truly appreciates what she did for him. But that greed remains a part of his character even as he grows up, and it’s one of the only character flaws that actually feels like good writing later on in the story. There… aren’t many of those, really.

I won’t go through the entire story scene by scene. Most of the people reading this have already seen it, you don’t need to hear it. There were problems throughout that seemed to get bigger overtime until the bad writing hit its peak in episode 10.

NDS is shown to be an opportunist. However bad he feels about it, he continues to use HJP and SDM’s history together to his advantage to stay close to SDM. There are several instances even from early on where HJP is shown wanting to tell SDM the truth and to remove the illusion of the letters. But every time he’s stopped, either by NDS or other forces, until finally the blow up happens in episode 10. Before this, NDS was starting to have poor writing. The likable character was starting to feel whiny and selfish, but it wasn’t to the degree that I didn’t like him. HJP also had his moment of weakness where he broke down, just as he did at Granny in the past, seeing the couple together and feeling like something that was his was taken away from him. Those were his letters, this should have been his story - that was how he saw it, and that’s what frustrated him. But he was able to calm himself and put their happiness above his own desires until shortly after SDM finds out the truth. And everything falls apart.

NDS became very immature as the story went on. So did SDM, but it was most noticeable with NDS in episode 10. When asked to leave SDM alone, to give her space because she’s upset and doesn’t want to see him, he continually makes his presence known to her. He follows her around, pretty much stalks her. Then while escorting her home while she’s drunk, he leaves her alone on a swing in the park to go put on… a suit. He wanted to inspire her and all that, so he left a drunk, barely coherent young woman half asleep in a park alone at night. There are dozens of scenes of him crying and feeling sorry for himself when all of this time he was taking advantage of the letters. The only one who had the right to be angry here was SDM, the only non-guilty party. This is also when characters started to not really care about their company. They spent most of their time thinking about this failed love story instead of preparing for demo day. In fact, most of their decisions were poorly made regarding their business. The only reason they succeeded was because of dumb luck, and it didn’t feel like they were growing or learning at all from their experience at SandBox. And as much as HJP’s words were unnecessarily harsh, they never listened to their mentor.

I don’t think this should have been a romance. None of the characters needed it. It’s normal to feel lost, scared and uncertain about life, but leaning on someone as a crutch or using them to fill a void that you can’t fill on your own is unhealthy, and that’s exactly what NDS was trying to do. If he really cared for SDM, he would have given her the space and time she needed to work through her feelings. He would have focused on their company and tried to push personal matters aside in favour of that because they were at such a crucial point in their business with Demo Day just around the corner. His success is SDM’s success. She couldn’t fix his problems. He didn’t need romance, he needed to figure himself out.

The same can be said for HJP, though they did handle his reaction to the reveal a lot better than they did NDS. He didn’t try to make excuses and was upfront and honest after SDM found out. He sat her down, told her the truth and answered all of her questions. He told her about his feelings not to date her but to put everything out in the open. Instead of wallowing in guilt, he stayed professional and was the only character to try to help her prepare for Demo Day because he genuinely wanted to see her succeed. And it’s obvious how much he cares for her from how well he takes care of that damn money tree. But what HJP needed wasn’t romance, he needed a family. That’s what he got after the timeskip (one of the only changes to occur after 3 years, really…). He had a family now, people he cared about who cared about him. He stayed with them on the holidays and he had people to rely on which he never had before. HJP doesn’t have any friends. He’s been alone all of his life, and finally he had what he always wanted. Even if he did care about SDM, it wasn’t necessarily her that he needed.

The characters’ focus on romance is really the downfall of this drama. They start making decisions based off of their emotions, especially NDS. They sell their company in a day without even taking the time to think about it which leads to the engineers going overseas and the girls getting fired. Among the countless other issues it caused. Then, after the timeskip, nothing has changed. All of the characters are as immature as ever, all that happened was that the boys now have spending money. SDM had already gone from self-sufficient to helpless, and after the timeskip she is powerless to do… anything, really. NDS and the boys have to save her from the ransomware attack, and she proceeds to get weak-kneed. You know, because women can’t handle stress. Or something. Lot of sense they’re making there.

In the end, the writing killed the drama. I could sit here for 7 hours and talk about all the poor choices that were made and in the end, I think the romance was unnecessary. Even though I like HJP more as a character, I don’t want him to end up with SDM. I think that everyone in that love triangle is terrible for each other.

A few examples of the terrible writing:
-NDS punching HJP and them fighting. Don’t care if you don’t like each other, that’s assault, and for assaulting his mentor he could have even had lawsuits filed against him. His penchant for violence when he’s upset or things don’t go his way is not only bad writing, it also just doesn’t fit with the rest of his character.
-3 years later and it’s implied that WIJ either wasn’t told that her grandmother was going blind, or wasn’t told how bad it was getting. Either way, bad writing, makes no sense.
-3 years later and HJP never confessed? WHY? I don’t want to see them together but I can’t believe that in all that time he wouldn’t do anything.
-In several instances they talk romance when their company is LITERALLY FALLING APART. How is that okay?!
-They try to show NDS’s heartbreak through monologues and crying scenes but instead it comes off as whiny and immature, and they made his character look worse. Stop doing that to the poor boy, please! There’s also so many times when he talks about how he has nothing, and HJP has everything. How? In what sense? All HJP has is his job and wealth. NDS has friends, a loving family, the talent to succeed in a thriving field, and he even gets the girl. He’s comparing a well-loved child to an orphan. Okay.
-KYS showed little to no negative reaction to HJP throughout the entire drama but then was suddenly the brother of the man who killed himself. And we’re supposed to believe he’s putting the blame on HJP. Does that make sense? Shouldn’t he have been shown before to have some sort of reaction?
-After SamSan’s success on Demo Day, they showed flashbacks of HJP saying they wouldn’t succeed and used those to invalidate his harsh advice, but in those situations he was right. It was only after the characters adapted and changed that they were able to succeed. (And you know, the ridiculous dumb luck that they have…)
-Despite this whole thing being orchestrated by Granny, SDM NEVER has a talk with her about it. Never, not once. This is a big deal and it would have been an important character moment because of just how betrayed she felt. Instead, she doesn’t say a thing. I guess she blames everything on the boys, but she knows the truth so why is that?

This drama promised a lot of things when it started and it failed to live up. An inspirational business drama turned into 3 adult-sized toddlers whining to each other about a love triangle. And I understand why so many fans are so aggressive in the shipping war - it’s because it’s all we have left in the end. Everything else has already been destroyed. It’s so upsetting to see for a drama that was so fresh and interesting at the start. The only thing I can say is, hey, at least they didn’t turn HJP into a monster. It looked like they could have, but he’s come through on top in the end.

I don't have much to say about the last episode. It was... okay, I suppose. I was indifferent to the majority of it. I can say that I did enjoy HJP's time on screen and the closure to his little story, if you can call it that. I loved getting to see Yeo Jin Goo's little cameo, especially after hearing his voice through the series. That was the highlight of the episode. But it felt like most of the scenes were just filler. They were just padding the run time to get to the inevitable, and it showed.

It could have been worse, but it doesn’t feel like it.