Air Dates: October 17  - December 6, 2020

Episodes: 16

Where to Watch: Netflix

Genre: Romantic Drama

Starring: Bae Suzy and Nam Joo Hyuk

Sandbox is a program designed to help start-up IT companies get their businesses of the ground.  Participants are chosen through a rigorous competition.  Seol Dal Mi is a young woman who dreams of establishing her own successful company.  She shows up at Sandbox by herself and builds a team who will help her try to achieve her dream and hopefully find their own success along the way.  As the community at Sandbox begins to take shape, Dal Mi finds that she is surrounded by people who share a piece of her past.

Bae Suzy as Seol Dal Mi

Seol Dal Mi has had her fair share of jobs but she has never found anything that stuck.  After meeting her "first love" again after 15 years, she is inspired to start her own company.  By a stroke of luck, she wins a CEO position at Sandbox's hackathon.  Together with a team of programmers and a publicist, they build a company and create a successful mobile app for the seeing impaired.  Business is not the only thing on her mind, as she rekindles her relationship with the computer programming genius she thinks was her first love.  Things are not what they seem, and she soon finds out that the boy she spent a year writing letters with is indeed close by, but not who she thinks he is.  So, who does she really love now;  the boy from her past who wrote letters using someone else's name or the genius she has just met with the strong, reliable hands?

Seol Dal Mi is driven and passionate.  Without any real knowledge of the coding side of app development, she is focused on finding new ideas and the financial backing to make them possible.  Loyal and charming, her character is not overly complicated.  Succeeding in a career while protecting those she loves is her main priority.  It's unfortunate that they didn't add more dimension to her character, to challenge Suzy's acting skills and allow her to show more depth.  As an actress, I think she played the part that was written;  she just wasn't allowed to really shine much.

Nam Joo Hyuk as Nam Do San

Nam Do San is a child genius without a lot of social skills.  Having never dated before, Do San is nervous at first when Han Ji Pyang asks him to pose as Dal Mi's first love, but after meeting her, he falls for her almost immediately.  Applying for Sandbox's hackathon is a way to bolster his struggling computer programming company, SamSan. Teaming up with Dal Mi as their CEO, SamSan finally stands a chance of finding success.  When Dal Mi finds out that he her grandmother and Ji Pyang had only used his name to sign the letters they wrote, Do San promises to make her fall in love with the real him.  Their business is aquired by a business in Silicon Valley, which sends the three original members of SamSan to the US for 3 years, but Do San continues to do research on the project Dal Mi's new company is working on. Once he comes home, they are able to get the team back together and Do San and Dal Mi also get back together.

Do San is an interesting character who is full of sublety and nuance.  A smart kid who grew up lonely and insecure, he is desperate for the approval of those around him.  No matter what he achieved, his parents always wanted more, so he never had time to think about his own dreams.  Do San's character is not meant to be flashy or charming.  Fading into the background is what comes naturally to him, and when he is noticed, he is quirky and awkward.  I have read a lot of reviews by people who found Do San to be flat and uninteresting, but I actually enjoyed his quiet nerdiness.  Again, I'm not sure the role allowed Nam Joo Hyuk to show off the extent of his acting ability, but he fit the part well and I believed his guarded personality.

Kim Seon Ho as Han Ji Pyang

Wow!  Where do you even start when discussing Han Ji Pyang's character.  I will get into his fan appeal below, but for now lets just say that while Do San was quiet and ackward, Ji Pyang was energetic and charming.  He and Dal Mi's grandmother were the original letter writers because her grandma felt like Dal Mi needed a friend.  When they met again, he also fell for her immediately.  Working at Sandbox for years, he was able to sign up as a mentor when he found out that Dal Mi was participating in the hackathon.  Even though he has carried feelings for Dal Mi since her letters came to him 15 years ago, he never confesses his feelings for her, and she doesn't really see him in a romantic light at all.

Kang Ha Na as Won In Jae

In the same way that there is more than enough to say about Ji Pyang's character, the opposite can be said for Won In Jae, and I will talk more about this below.  In Jae is the sister of Dal Mi.  After the divorce of their parents, In Jae left her dad and Dal Mi to go with her mother and her rich, new step dad.  Unfortunately, life with a rich and powerful father wasn't as great as she imagined.  Traditional Korean values left her undervalued as a business partner and In Jae learns what a cold and unfeeling man her father can be when crossed.  Her relationship with Dal Mi is strained as both try to prove to the other that they were the one who made the "right"choice.  But once SanSam is recruited to the US, In Jae and Dal Mi end up teaming up to form a new company.

Kim Do Wan and  Yoo Soo Bin as Kim Yong San and Lee Cheol San

Kim Yong San and Lee Cheol San make up the rest of SamSan with Do San.  Both had programming jobs working for other people, but after Cheol San is involved in a ransomware situation they decide to form their own company.  As their leader, Yong San and Cheol San always follow Do San without question.  They have his back without question, even though much of what happens within the company could not happen without their contribution.

SamSan Nerds

These guys are friend goals all over the place.  The interaction between this sweet group of guys was heartwarming and gave a great demostration of true friendship.  Ego and pride seldom factored into the decisions they made as a group, and I really appreciated their selflessness and understanding toward each other.   

Sandbox

Just the concept of the Sandbox is fascinating to me.  That a place could exist, that, while definitely competitive, could mentor start-up companies and teach them how to turn their ideas and skills into a lucrative business is fascinating to me.  Of course, I know this place is fictional but the core ideas are uplifting and the principal is interesting.

Han Ji Pyang

So, second lead syndrome was alive and well in this drama, to the point of causing war between the fans.  The writers really did a disservice to the fans here.  Do San's character was never going to be any competition for a character as charismatic as Ji Pyang.  That isn't the actors fault.  But whoever you wanted Dal Mi to end up with in the end, it is hard not to fall in love with Kim Seon Ho.  He is adorable character and his relationship with Dal Mi's grandmother would melt the coldest heart.  

Time Jump

Time jumps in general are not my favorite, but this one was particularly frustrating.  Namely, what was the point, when no one seemed to have changed or matured at all.  Do San and Dal Mi spent the whole 3 years waiting for each other.  Ji Pyang never got up the nerve to confess his feelings for Dal Mi during the whole time, even though he knew Do San was only on a 3 year contract and would be home soon. And in that whole time, no one bothered to tell In Jae that her grandmother was losing her eyesight and she should go visit her as soon as possible, even though Dal Mi and In Jae worked together every day.  Seriously, were they all just frozen in ice the whole time?  Doesn't it all seem pointless?

Dal Mi

Dal Mi's character was disappointing because she started out as such a strong, independant woman with a dream.  But once she meets Do San and Ji Pyang she regresses into a helpless damsel in distress.  How many times did she run to one of them to be rescued instead of relying on her own skills to find an answer?  She started out as such a great business role model and I was happy that they made her the CEO instead of Do San, but I would have loved to see her character continue to grown and blossom as a leader.  Instead, she just seemed to go backward and become less capable.

Won In Jae

Poor Won In Jae had so much potential to be a second female lead with an interesting side story.  Whether it was focused more on her relationship with her sister, a romantic interest, or her strained relationship with her stepdad, there were plenty of opportunities to explore her character.  But instead, the only time we found out anything about her character was if she happened to be with one of the leads.  This seems like a wasted chance to have an interesting side story and as an actress, I believe Kang Ha Na deserved more.

I liked that Start-Up had a happy ending for Do San and Dal Mi, but I would have like to see hints of a happy ending for other characters as well.  Ji Pyang threatens to run away to somewhere where he could lick his wounds, but thankfully in the end he was there as a part of the business with Do San, In Jae, and Dal Mi.  In Jae finally disolves her ties with her stepdad, which allows her to feel free to reestablish her ties with her grandmother.  Other than that, we see a wedding ring photo to tell us that Do San and Dal Mi are married.  That's about it.  As for the other team members, I think it is safe to say they are all still working together but that is just my own speculation and need for a well-rounded happy ending.

Start-Up is a good romantic drama.  With a unique storyline and some interesting character backstories, I expect it to make plenty of top drama lists for this year.  It does a good job of showing the world of computer technology and start-up businesses without digging too far into the technicalities of it all, and the message of "Follow Your Dreams" is inspiring.  As long as you enjoy the romance genre, there aren't a lot of reasons I wouldn't recommend it, but the romance really takes the focus away from any in-depth character development or side stories.  I didn't rate it as highly as I thought I might because, for me, it was just a nice, sweet story that I enjoyed watching, but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression.  I give Start-Up a 3 out of 5 ramen.

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