(Heads up: Most of the posts on here are gonna be spoilery. Also, this post is longer than expected because I needed to establish quite a bit of context for Start-Up.)
Hellohello! A warm welcome to my new subscribers! Thank you so much for subscribing. I hope you’re all having a good Wednesday~
So! I’ve been watching Start-Up on Netflix. The main draw before the show started was that it’s written by Park Hye Ryun, who also wrote a bunch of other shows I love (more on that later). Suzy and Nam Joo Hyuk are in lead roles, playing Seo Dal Mi and Nam Do San. Because these two are billed as the main leads, they’re clearly the show’s OTP. Yet, many fans on Instagram as well as the Dramabeans comments section are rooting for Seo Dal Mi’s OTP to be the 2nd male lead, Han Ji Pyeong, played by Kim Seon Ho.
Check out the title card below. The entire front credit sequence is wonderfully retro and cute. Really loving all the front credit sequences from Studio Dragon shows like The King: Eternal Monarch and It’s Okay Not To Be Okay.
Part of why I decided to start this newsletter this week was because I wanted to weigh in on this. Some of the comments I’ve seen paint Do San as ‘manipulative’ or an ‘opportunist’ with such fervor that I wondered if I was watching an entirely different show. But if you’ve not watched it, let me backtrack and tell you the what’s what before I pick my side.
Park Hye Ryun’s typical OTP set-up
Park Hye Ryun’s usual MO with setting up OTPs in her previous shows - While You Were Sleeping, Pinocchio, I Hear Your Voice - is to present them as having encountered each other in some significant way when they were younger and by the end of the first episode, you get a sense of how the characters’ earlier interactions might have affected them as adults.
(Sidebar: Park worked with director Oh Choong Won for both Start-Up and While You Were Sleeping and the aesthetics in these shows are absolutely beautiful. There’s an ethereal quality to their work that instantly transports you into these fictional worlds and you feel like you’re sitting in the middle of a sunset - it’s magical, wistful and so so pretty.)
Start-Up’s start up (feel free to skip this bit if you’re all caught up on the show)
So the thing with Start-Up is that the entire first episode sets up Seo Dal Mi and Han Ji Pyeong’s characters - Ji Pyeong was tasked by Dal Mi’s grandmother to co-write these love letters from an imaginary Do San (they picked his name out of a newspaper) to cheer her up while her parents were in the middle of a divorce. I must admit, I was a little confused as well because I assumed, from Park’s previous OTPs, that this was the OTP but I later realised, from reading the cast list, that Nam Joo Hyuk was playing Nam Do San and therefore, Han Ji Pyeong was not the main OTP. Do San was hardly in that first episode. Not to mention, the heart-tugging backstory that we now had between Dal Mi and Ji Pyeong.
It took a while before I realised that Park was deviating from her usual OTP set-up and was trying something different - she was challenging herself and it turned out to be quite a challenge because Ji Pyeong is actually a decent, likeable, very kdrama heroesque character so delaying the introduction of the male lead would also mean that Park had to go out of her way to downgrade Han Ji Pyeong’s OTP worthiness, compared to Nam Do San.
The show then fast-tracks us to 2020, where Dal Mi needs the real Do San to please show up so she can show off to her sister (who picked their money-grubby mum over their financially struggling dad) at a networking party. Grandma reconnects with Ji Pyeong and asks him to find the real Do San - Dal Mi still has no idea that the letters were kinda sorta fake (even though it’s later shown that Ji Pyeong did value writing the letters). Ji Pyeong’s a pretty successful venture capitalist and Dal Mi’s a part-timer struggling for her big break into…anything (tbh, at this point, she’s not really sure either). The real Do San is a CEO of a smol tech company, Samsan Tech - a CEO-on-paper-but-unpaid-for-two-years-cos-the-company-isn’t-going-anywhere kinda CEO.
Eventually, Ji Pyeong finds Do San, shows him the letters, tries to bribe him into pretending to be the letter writer at this networking party - Do San says rejects Ji Pyeong’s offers but shows up at the party of his own volition, because he’s read Dal Mi’s letters and has developed some sort of interest in helping her (also because main OTP so there was no way he wasn’t going to show up ahaha). Dal Mi now believes he’s a hotshot CEO AND that he’s the Do San who’s been writing her letters.
In the meantime, Ji Pyeong’s bending over backwards, behind the scenes, trying to ensure she never finds out the truth because he wants to keep her happy. As the show progresses, Ji Pyeong takes time to realise he actually DOES like Dal Mi while Do San is fully aware of his own growing feelings for her and is in prime position to act on them.
2nd lead syndrome explained
And that is why so many fans have developed 2nd Lead Syndrome (2LS) - the 2nd lead is a pretty great candidate for the main OTPship. I think it’s great writing - in the sense that Park has been able to create these characters that we can emotionally engage with and I love that she tried something different. The split fanbase is a consequence of that.
I do get what Ji Pyeong’s character arc is - initially, he’s superficial, jaded and not really in touch with his own emotions. He’s unapologetically mean because he believes that the truth is best delivered in its harshest form. I see how his interactions with Dal Mi humanise him quite a bit, like his interactions with Grandma and that he’s lacking a ‘family.’ The show is also setting up an BrOTP between him and Do San so they’re probably all going to be a happy little family eventually. I recognise that it’s important to be able to deliver harsh truths and he does help Dal Mi quite a bit but he never feels like a partner - he’s more of a mentor. Ji Pyeong also comes across as patronising at times, which is grating. Overall, he’s a pretty decent guy and there’s no doubt he genuinely cares for Dal Mi.
But. Ji Pyeong’s version of helping Dal Mi out is to support her from behind-the-scenes, maintain this ridiculous secret and offer to invest in the company if no one else does. I see how all of this is sweet and endearing, even if that last thing really suggests that he’s not as confident in her ability to become successful on her own. But the whole Daddy-Long-Legs routine is so 2005 (I’m sorry, Hyun Bin). Ji Pyeong isn’t really a shoulder to cry on. Despite his best intentions, he’s the guy whom you can’t cry in front of because it’s just…uncomfortable.
#TeamDoSan
Do San, on the other hand, comes across as this really smol, meek character who’s been thrust into this lead role in his company and he’s struggling to keep them afloat. Actually, Samsan Tech is not even afloat. The trio (there’s a delightful bromance here as well) are running in circles on the shore, trying to drag their little life boat back into the ocean but the currents just vomit them back onto the shore every single time. They don’t have the financial capital to stay afloat nor the cultural capital to understand what they’re doing wrong (which makes Ji Pyeong’s attitude towards Samsan Tech very frustrating).
That’s kinda where Dal Mi is with her life when the series begins too. She has her own insecurities with no college degree, no working experience at a huge company and no rich parents to pay her way into CEOship. Inspired by the hotshot CEO version of Do San, she decides to join Sandbox (a start-up accelerator where most of the drama happens) to become her own CEO and once there, she find out that Samsan Tech is there as well, revealing Do San’s non-hotshot status. Yet, she fully understands why Do San lied since she herself was pretending that she was successful to show off to her sister.
And that’s the thing with Dal Mi and Do San. They both experience the kind of self-doubt and fear that many of us might be familiar with. You know, when you graduate, you don’t realise how tough life is going to be until you’re knee-deep in quicksand. You’re surrounded by piles and piles of unanswered job applications or you’re contemplating leaving a toxic workplace and it occurs to you that maybe you can start a small business too but omg you didn’t realise how much time and money you actually need to start a small business and you start to doubt every decision you’ve made in your life like why didn’t you study harder when you were a kid or why didn’t you just hang on to that horrible job for a few months more? I relate to that debilitating self-doubt that stops you from getting out of bed in the morning - the kind that you’re sometimes only able to overcome when a loved one reminds you that you can.
That’s why I’m quite firmly (and fiercely) on #TeamDoSan. Both Dal Mi and Do San have a shared understanding of what it means to feel small and trampled on. And through the show, you see that they become partners in that they support each other, unconditionally and sincerely. They ought to believe in themselves that way that they believe in each other but they don’t. They need each other to remind themselves of that.
The big reveal + Remaining episodes
In episodes 9 & 10 that aired on Saturday and Sunday, Dal Mi finally finds out the truth - that Ji Pyeong was Do San the letter writer and the real Do San had no knowledge of any of this until recently. She’s understandably distressed and is confused as to which Do San she has feelings for, seeing as she’s thought of them as one person. It’s interesting how this revelation has affected her confidence in her work as well. I think she’ll eventually realise that Do San has been a pillar for her - he’s stood up for her several times; his idea to develop an app that would help people with visual impairments was inspired by his frustration with how Grandma was revealed to be slowly losing her sight. But I am wondering how else she might grow from this.
Do San, not without struggling, seems to have emerged from all this with a renewed strength because now, after so long, he can finally be himself and support Dal Mi the way that he would like to. He doesn’t need to tiptoe around certain inconsistencies anymore (his fake birthday, his fake childhood dream). He’s somewhat sure of how he can support her emotionally, and through whatever tech skills he brings to the Samsan tech table, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he’s going to grow in the next few episodes.
I’m also hoping that remaining episodes would feature more scenes with Ji Pyeong and Do San where the former decides to treat the latter with a little more respect and to treat him as an equal as well but we’ll see how that goes.
That’s all folks~
I wanted to write a bit about Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol too! Which airs tonight at 10pm. But I’ve gone on for way too long so I’ll wrap up here for now :)
Have a great evening, everybody <3