Now that the entire picture of what the show is and wants to be is clearer, I think I can give it a fairer appraisal than I had before. More than any other character, it's now clear the show belongs to Izzy. Ketai's surefooted direction , the first-rate cast , and Peter Holland's visceral cinematography are all stellar, and a lot of the show's storytelling twists and turns feel earned. The show's considerably diverse flavor also comes as a welcome component, as too often shows set in international cultural hubs like Miami are grossly white-washed. I found myself having to pause the proceedings and walk away several times throughout this final stretch, because our heroes' questionable choices had me wringing my hands, so that's a testament to some first-class television.
All that being said, I continue to feel that StartUpshould could have been better had it lost the criminal dimension or at least minimized it, instead of letting things go so Breaking Bad. You are the CEO of a company that prides itself on protecting the identities of it's users and also what they get up to on the internet. This is the broadest media coverage I have ever seen for a Korean drama with what is happening with Squid Game, and formerly it was Crash Landing on You when it became a pan-Asia hit last year and got mainstream viewership as well on Netflix. The Netflix drama premiered on September 17th and in the two weeks since has topped various country, region, and most recently worldwide #1 ranking on the streaming platform. It's also gotten write ups in every single major newspaper in the US from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Time and all big publications in between the two coasts as well as online magazines. Now Netflix insiders are saying it's on track to become THE MOST WATCHED Netflix show of all time, currently the record holder is romance novel adaptation into a period show Bridgerton.
Even if Squid Game does gain the crown, it may not hold it for long as Bridgerton season 2 is coming back, though without breakout smexy male lead Regé-Jean Page. It feels like the plagiarism/too similar concept and set up claims have died down and this drama is trending solely due to viewers loving the series and word of mouth. Congrats to the cast and crew as this drama is bringing worldwide recognition to many deserving talent. While Paul Sr. was picking up D'Asia from school, Patrick was rushing to get to her school too. But his car broke down in the middle of the street. He ran all the way to her school just in time to see her getting in the car with his father.
He yelled for D'Asia, ran up to the car, but Paul Sr. drove off anyway. Can't imagine what D'Asia must have been thinking. Vice Principal Harrison saw the ordeal and asked Patrick if D'Asia was in danger. When she confirmed she was not, she invited Patrick up to the office for water.
He called in to work to take the rest of the day off, and Vice Principal Harrison offered to give him a ride home. While there, he told her he was a recovering drug addict and told her about the prescription pills. She essentially tells him sometimes people have to stop blaming others and look at themselves.
Patrick then goes to his father house, storms past Paul Sr. and P.J. (who came home after MJ called him and told him he needed to come home to help with things the night D'Asia stayed with her) and went upstairs to get D'Asia. Despite threatening to call the cops, Paul Sr. didn't. The episode starts where the last episode left off, Patrick has left after the intervention turned into an ambush.
MJ calls her father out on it becoming an ambush, and he continues to stress the need for people to start protecting the children instead of the adults. He asks MJ if she's going to give him the address to pick up D'Asia, but MJ opts to pick up D'Asia herself (she was at Kara's place). D'Asia stays the night with MJ, but it is clear she's not exactly buying the story that her father had to work late. Before going to sleep she asks her aunt if her dad is back on drugs, and MJ tells her he isn't and repeats the lie about him working late. Season 3 brings in a new psychopathic NSA agent, Rebecca Stroud .
The series is in this really great sweet spot where a super scary storyline reveals new reasons why we should all be calling Congress to demand that big tech be regulated, like yesterday. Season 3 is provocative, nerve-wracking, and engaging in a way that surprised me and left me wanting more. The last episode of Season 3 ends in a way that seems like there was going to be a Season 4, but perhaps production was halted due to the pandemic. As I write this review, StartUp is rated #3 in popularity on Netflix.
I hope Netflix is listening and will bring the team together for a Season 4. But this time, please invite some Black, Brown, and women writers into your writers room. Season 2 dives deeper into the choices people make in to achieve and maintain power. The writing is best when it's building in intricate layers of corruption that challenge Izzie, Ron, and Nick to push their moral compass to the edge in order to save the company and, in some situations, their lives.
Ron Perlman joins the cast as Wes Chandler, a powerful investor who comes in and changes the dynamic deliciously. What we think is power quickly shifts as promises are made and broken due to circumstances created by greed. The audience is now solidly invested in Ron, Izzie, and Nick, and it's gutting when these characters make choices that hurt one another on purpose. The stakes for each challenge are so high that you can't help but watch another episode to see how things get resolved.
Hands down Edi Gathegi, who plays Ron, the heart of the show. He brings such emotional intelligence and depth to Ron that the audience can't help but love this troubled soul. Controlled by the wealthy 1%, the 21st century "gold rush" resides in the tech industry. If you're savvy enough to create, market, and sell the next big tech idea, you can achieve the American Dream, but what's the cost? In Episode 1, "Seed Money," we meet Izzy Morales , a brilliant coder who dropped out of Stanford to focus full time on developing her form of cryptocurrency, Gencoin.
While seeking funding at a bank, Izzy meets Nick Talman , a loan manager who is unsatisfied with his mediocre life. Initially, Nick wants no part of hiding his crooked father's ill-gotten funds, but Dad convinces Nick that his life is in danger, so Nick decides to try to hide the money by investing in Gencoin. Just as the money is transferred, Nick unexpectedly receives a late-night visit from Ronald Dacey , one of his father's investors, who is also the leader of a violent Hatian gang. Ronald wants the money he gave to Nick's dad to invest, returned in cash… or else.
Along with a change in their business strategy, the gang is also dealing with some personal changes. Ronald, who has been the street-side boy with a gun in the cargo and a gold chain hanging around his neck, is now a suited businessman with a family of his own. As for Nick, things are about to heat up for him, as he resumes his role as a co-CEO who will go to any extent to save the company.
However, the one thing that we should truly look forward to in the show is how a network which can bind millions of people around the world becomes the cause of the crack in the dynamics between the characters. The first episode opens with a gun encounter between terrorists and the military. When the brief, yet tense, encounter comes to an end, the officers discover that the terrorists have been buying illegal items and weapons online through Araknet.
As the information reaches higher officials, they waste no time crashing down on Nick and Ronald's organization which still runs on the principles of Izzy's ideas. As we know, Izzy left for a quieter life in Cuba in the last season and Ronald and Nick built Araknet together to establish it as not only the largest, but a network that people can trust. In Startup season 3, Nick Talman and Wes Chandler need Series B funding for their tech company Araknet. Araknet loses over 60 million users because of a mysterious virus in the penultimate episode of the Crackle/Netflix show, which creates major friction between Nick and his investors.
Alex wants to hear why Nick, Izzy and Ronald are so invested in GenCoin. Izzy's motivation is simple — her immigrant parents started a Cuban restaurant with no credit, and were forced to sell it to the highest bidder, they are now still living in debt to Cuban gangsters. With GenCoin, they could've gotten a direct loan for their business. GenCoin takes less than a 1% interest rate, virtually unnoticeable. Ronald, his face bruised and his arms burned, refuses to miss the appointment.
It appears that his getting beaten up was the spark that ignited Alex's monetary interest here. Ronald uses the checkered histories of all three of our heroes in their pitch to Alex Bell. Nick's dad laundering money to drug cartels motivated him to do GenCoin, to atone. Ronald explains that his getting tortured was the direct result of him investing his hood's entire stash into GenCoin, because of how much he believes in what they're trying to do.
GenCoin, Ronald says, is "for the people, by the people." Anybody, living anywhere, without the means to lift themselves up, can use GenCoin as their bank. But still… it's such a heightened incentive that it felt phony. And, it turns out later, it was a red herring motivator to Alex's interest.
We'll soon discover that Nick and Ronald have always felt superfluous to him. Ronald eats a cronut after his epic, awesome, potentially life-saving speech. Vera and Oleg discover that their network has been compromised by Phil Rask and his team. CNN's Brooke Baldwin relays the news to our heroes. GenCoin has been implicated in the FBI's takedown, and is set to collapse. Vera and Oleg return to Moscow in defeat to escape FBI capture.
It appears that Izzy has abandoned Stella, bought left her with a flatscreen television set. Nick senses Izzy's role in the leak to Phil Rask. Izzy, always brash, has abandoned and betrayed the people who mattered to her to visit something she doesn't know is there.
The curtain closes on Izzy discovering that her aunt's house appears derelict and abandoned. Wes wants Nick, Mara and himself to charter his private jet to make the pitch to School Yard, leaving Ronald and Izzy in their dust. Ronald takes it personally since, after all, it was his idea. Set amongst the unconstrained, yet opportunist streets of Miami, 'StartUp' weaves a complex and exciting narrative, featuring the high-stakes struggle of what one will do to reach ultimate success.
Now it was Niecy who told Patrick what room D'Asia was in, but all he said was thank you, grabbed D'Asia, and left. And by the look on her face, you could tell it hurt her. Add to that, she and PJ later overhear Paul Sr. apologizing to his wife about making the choice to use all their savings on Patrick and having her live in this chaos. Niecy seems to take the apology about Patrick and chaos as including dealing with her, and I took it to mean that as well.
And apparently PJ did too, because he then talks to Niecy about her needing to do more than just have a minimum wage, 20 hour a week job. He tells her it's time for everyone to step up and take care of their own, and that she can't keep waiting for someone to save her. He also tells her she has their support, and he's going to help her with it. But Niecy counters by saying everyone comes down on her, but it was her who found her father overdosing, and it was her who called and asked for help . Then she points out it's like she saved her father for D'Asia and not for herself. Flashback to his confession, and he's telling the story of Saul becoming the Apostle Paul after speaking with Jesus.
On the road to the miracle's location in Damascus, Monsignor wanders off for the last time and finds an ancient ruin. It's a light that draws him in — or maybe it's just the light the doctor is shining in Father Paul's face? Timelines are getting blurred now, and we're back on the island. Sarah tells him he's dehydrated, and he tells her he's proud of her. A compliment that seems like it's a long time coming, despite them just meeting recently. In Season 1, the series attempts to display the rich West-Indian culture, which is missed in stories about Black Americans, but the entire writing team are white guys and it shows.
Unfortunately, this aspect of the show falls short. I wonder if white male writers find guilty pleasure in writing dialogue where the Black characters use the N-word on each other over and over and over and over again. I also find it interesting how much, since The Wire, white male writers love to place Black men in gangs and create violent shootouts to resolve conflict. In one episode, Ron ends up killing at least nine Black men with an automatic pistol. The majority of the people who get violently shot and killed by bullets in this series are Black men.
StartUp is a wild ride through the tech industry. Setting the story in Florida provides the opportunity to invite ethnic diversity into the narrative and is the perfect background for the corruption, backstabbing, and intense characters the Sunshine State is famous for. Back at the house, Smurf calls over her lawyer so J can sign back over all of the businesses she put in his name while she was in jail. Once business is handled, Smurf calls a family meeting, which Deran refuses to attend. At the sit-down, Smurf tells the boys Lucy stole $7 million from Baz and promises to give them an equal cut of the money if they go down to Mexico and steal it back. This is so far the most accurate Start-Up review I have read.
A lot of viewers see Ji-pyeong through rose-colored glasses. They overlook the fact that he took money from Halmeoni and never once looked back to help her when he became successful. He only accidentally saw her corn dog truck and even then, refused to help Halmeoni with her request to find Do-san. He wasn't attracted to Dal-mi and kept griping about why he's helping all of them. He's rude, arrogant, selfish, and condescending to everyone including Dal-mi. I can't, for the life of me, understand why a lot of viewers don't remember or refused to acknowledge this part of Ji-pyeong narrative.
Sure, Do-san has baggage and insecurities, who doesn't? I blame the overly ambitious parents which is very relatable and more plausible than Ji-pyeong's backstory. How could Do-san not win anyone's heart when all his grand gestures are all coming from his innate kindness and love for Dal-mi. We have yet to see Ji-pyeong payback to Halmeoni. Mentoring Dal-mi is a job he gets paid for so, how is that payback or even affection for Dal-mi? But as the daily active users continue to drop for Pied Piper, Richard resigns himself to failure.
He directs Jared to divide up the remaining capital and close the company down. He also says, almost offhandedly, that the remaining cash "won't begin to cover the back-pay owed," which is another confounding comment on Pied Piper's financials; how is Pied Piper not currently making any money? In StartUp season 3, Araknet manages to reach 100 million users, which will allow Talman and the company to receive Series B funding from Saginaw Partners. However, they lose 60 million users because of a virus that was orchestrated by Rebecca, and then stopped by Izzy. Timlin's Mara seems to be the narrative wildcard, as she has the means and motivations to make some big moves, which may involve her father Wes instead of her boyfriend Nick. In four months, Araknet has managed to supplant Guizer.
Wes hosts the gang at a celebratory dinner while Ronnie drinks with his crew back at the mainland. StartUp needed a little padding, so invariably this is where it killed time with some excessive, cost-efficient party montages. Because this is only episode nine, it feels obvious that the celebrating here is premature.
