Start Up was surely one of my anticipated dramas of recent times. The cast looked good and the story seemed quite promising. I was sold to the idea of independent youth with dreams, trying to make it big. But what I watched was somehow very different.

PLOT:
I am not sure if the drama was marketed the right away. They kept focusing on the FL wanting to be a young female CEO. I thought, "Great. Although it's Suzy, I'm willing to give it a try". Oh I did, okay? This drama started out wonderfully. The child actors were amazing at the beginning was probably the best thing in the drama.

Contrary to most people who were a fan of this writer, I've dropped all her dramas in the past. Somehow I didn't drop this one and kept watching it out of boredom. I don't think the writer did even a remotely acceptable job of the plot. Initial build ups failed, the main AND side characters were a snooze till they became MORE annoying and the romance fell flat before eventually drowning in an endless ditch. There were more pointless plotlines than I can count. The unnecessary ones were shoved down our throat and the ones with potential were all forgotten or abandoned by the writer midway.

This drama is more discouraging than encouraging but it depends on how one takes it. What they've shown in this drama was incredibly naive, unrealistic and seemed to have been written by someone who's never worked in a corporate or start-up company before. The issues were laughably bad and this is the biggest peeve for me with this drama. It had a sort of realistic take in the beginning but it was a laughable mess by the end.

The other peeve was the sudden melodramatic angle. I say again that it is discouraging, because it shows that only bad things happen to the good people. It's message is: good people are never meant to be happy and misery will follow them till the end. The plot with the Grandmother was incredibly sad. Nothing is right in her life. The other pitiful person was OF COURSE the second lead Han Ji Pyeong. He's also portrayed as an orphan who was born to be alone and no one would ever love him. I tell you, this drama looks spunky but it was incredibly depressing to me. It wasn't about finding your dreams, but about living in nightmares. I wouldn't have complained if they had marketed it as a dark melodrama because these characters were contradicting the supposed main plot.

CHARACTERS:
A shout out to Grandma and Dad. They were the only wholly nice and kind people in the drama.The FL had spark in the beginning which I loved. She kind of swayed because her journey was itself a mess. Also, she wasn't as empathetic as she was supposed to be because she is plainly cold to the SML. She is blind for the ML. The ML was kind of cute and naive in the beginning but comes off as selfish and scheming later. The SML is lonely, abandoned and no hope in his life. The sister In Jae had amazing potential as a tsundere character but they didn't even bother with giving the actress enough of a plot to be central to the plot. I'm not going to comment on the side characters because majority of the time they were in a competition for being the most annoying.

ACTING:
Not a fan of Suzy but I find her charming. I was very impressed with her in the first 10 episodes of the drama but her acting went back to mediocre in the later parts. Nam Joo Hyuk was okay at best, there wasn't much he could have done with his weird character. Kim Han Na did amazing as Won In Jae. Kim Seon Ho was great and he translated perfectly from the younger to older version of the character. He had incredible chemistry with everyone and I will be glad to see his future works.

OST:
The OST is golden. I love almost all the songs and highly recommend listening to it.

OVERALL:
A dumb, pointless drama. It's got some YAYYY fun moments, decent kisses and amazing lines. The problem is the plot fizzled out hopelessly and there was no saving it. The casting isn't as bad as they ended up being here. I think I will tread with caution for this writer's future dramas as my record has been BAD. I'm out with the memorable OST and won't ever bother to give this drama a second watch.