Air Dates: October 17th until December 6th on tvN... Saturday and Sunday nights at 9:00 pm
tvN is a cable network so the ratings for it will be a bit lower, for this show it was 4.8% which was about 1.415 million viewers which is a new high for the series.
Subs were done by Sallyuchi.
Main Cast: Wrote this up after viewing the first episode so will be tweaking the bios and possibly adding in a few characters. For this recap added in Alex and Sa-Ha
Bae Suzy as Seo Dal-Mi.... 27 year old(?) woman who soon will have dreams of beginning her own startup company but in what is currently unknown. She's lived with her grandmother for the past fourteen years since her father died and has helped her out at her two food cafes. She's the younger sister of the next character who had gone fourteen years without seeing each other until episode one.
Kang Ha-Na as Won In-Jae.... The reason for their different last names is that In-Jae lived with her mother after she got divorced from the father. The mother remarried a wealthy man, she's been living off and on in America for fourteen years. In-Jae was the CEO of the successful Morning Nature company which she began with money from her stepfather.
Nam Joo-Hyuk as Nam Do-San.... Main leader of SAMSAN Tech which is struggling so bad it may never officially sell a product. That could change as him and his two partners have now enrolled in the SANDBOX startup prgram.
Kim Sun-Ho as Han Ji-Pyeong.... Grew up in an orphanage but at sixteen was kicked out for being too old(?), he then lived with Dal-Mi's grandmother until attending college in Seoul. When he lived with the grandmother be pretended to be Do-San as he wrote Dal-Mi letters to comfort her after the divorce. He's now a team leader at SH Venture Capital.
Kim Hae-Sook as Choi Won-Deok... The grandmother of the top two characters but hasn't seen In-Jae in fifteen years. She's raised Dal-Mi since she was thirteen and they still live together, Choi used to run a cafe but now owns a small corn dog truck. She was also responsible for Ji-Pyeong being successful as she let him stay with her when he left the orphanage.
The characters who aren't major ones but are important, actually the two SAMSAN partners roles are really increasing with each episode.
Eom Hyo-Seop as Won Doo-Jong.... In-Dae's stepfather who is quite wealthy. He gave her the funds to begin her own company and still owns 72% of the stock. However think he let her run the company so it would become successful, then his son would take over.
Moon Dong-Hyeoko as Won Sang-Su.... In-Dae's inept stepbrother, he's been her secretary at Nature Morning and his father is about to install him as CEO for the Korean branch.
Kim Do-Wan as Kim Yong-San.... A partner of Do-San's at SAMSAN Tech.
Yoo Su-Bin as Lee Chul-San.... Another partner at SAMSAN Tech.
Stephanie Lee as Jung Sa-Ha.... Was recruited by Dal-Mi to join the SAMSAN Tech team in episode five and what a snobby woman but Chul-San think's she's 'perfect'.
Kim Won-Hae as Nam Seong-Hwan.... Do-San's father who invested much $$ into his son's venture but is coming close to withdrawing.
Kim Hee-Jung as Park Geum-Jung.... Do-San's mother.
Song Seon-Mi as Cha A-Hyun.... Mother of Dal-Mi and In-Jae.
Kim Min-Seok as Park Dong-Chun.... Ji-Pyeong's underling at SH Venture.
Cho Tae-Kwan as Alex Kown.... Had been living in America but has moved to Korea to be the CEO for the '2STO' tech company's Korean branch. He's also become a mentor at SANDBOX, he wanted to be teamed with Do-San but it didn't pan out.
Seo Yi-Sook as Yoon Sun-Hak.... Director of SANDBOX and she briefly knew Dal-Mi's father as the company she ran fourteen years ago was going to invest in his startup.
SANDBOX is an organization that will be a very important part of the story. It helps up and coming startup teams and individuals realize their dreams. They have their own set of buildings where those accepted can have rent free offices, get tutoring on many business subeects and meet very many influential people plus much other help.
Recaps for the prior episodes
- Each team must come up with a practical business plan for a new tech product within 48 hours. Each team must consist of at least five members and they have free use of the huge SANDBOX database plus any other applications that would benefit them.
- At the end of the 48 hours each team will give a presentation to sell their product as if it was a real one. There's a time limit of three minutes and a panel of judges will be grading them. Only thing I'm not positive about is what happened to the the applicants that weren't chosen for a team which may have been over a hundred, are they dropped from the SANDBOX program?
At first it appeared the trio of SAMSAN Tech boys weren't going to get chosen to be on a team as none of them made the cut to be a CEO. Luckily for them Dal-Mi had been appointed as a CEO and she hunted them down immediately. But so didn't her older sister In-Jae who in the end run may give the men better future opportunities and they were at a loss in what to do. But of course the trio, mainly led by Do-San, accepted Dal-Mi's offer with the competition set to begin the next day, at the time they didn't know they would need a fifth person on the team. To celebrate Do-San did bring Dal-Mi out on a mini date but won't get into specifics though the pair are growing closer. But you also need to remember that Dal-Mi is still mainly in love with the 'old Do-San' and his letter writing who in reality was Ji-Pyeong. He's becoming much more fond of her and I'm kind of rooting for him to end up with Dal-Mi as I'm sure someone will by the end of the series.
It's the following day and time for the grueling 48 hour Hackathon to begin. The main director of SANDBOX is an older woman named Yoon whose personality I really like as it's one that inspires people. She will be a mentor for the competition and also one after as each of the five winning teams will be assigned one. A mentor will oversee a team's progress, give them tips and referrals along with supplying them with money if they are doing well. May have jumped a bit ahead with describing them but one will be Ji-Pyeong. Or should I say he was going to be one, once he saw the SAMSAN Tech boys with Dal-Mi he changed his mind as he didn't want to have any contact with them and hid in the shadows. Instead he forced his SH Venture assistant Park to take his place, though a bit wishy-washy kind of like that man.
You can read about it in the previous two recaps which is that In-Jae had quit her CEO position with Nature Morning and it mainly had to do with her stepfather. He had supplied the startup money and never let In-Jae forget about that plus she was actually making the company profitable for her inept stepbrother to take over which she had ben clueless about. So she's started her own company called INJAE which she may only use for the competition. She's brought two of her former Nature Morning assistants with her to the new company but now that Do-San and his two partners refused to join her
In-Jae still needs two more for her team. In the bottom screenshot above are those two new teammates who are twins, on the left is Hyeon while his sister on the right is Jeong. They're the same age as
Do-San and his friends, they've all been rivals for quite a long time. Hyeon and Jeong are kind of 'free agents' as they often help a team or company out for a brief stretch, they make a ton of money and scoot. But the pair are better than anyone at the competition and In-Jae has the edge over her sister.
While In-Jae's team is complete and looking mighty powerful Dal-Mi still needs one more for her team and the time until the action commences is less than ten minutes away. Dal-Mi quickly made her way through the crowd without finding anyone that looked like they had potential until she ran into the woman two screenshots above. That's Sa-Ha who we did meet briefly a few shows ago when she had separate encounters with Dal-Mi and then the trio of SAMSAN lads. She's quite stuck up woman though a very excellent developer, she also seems like she'll be very difficult to work with. But time was of the essence as less than five minutes remained until the competition would start, Dal-Mi got on her knees to ask Sa-Ha to join her team which she really didn't want to do but she too had no options so agreed to her request. You also see a screenshot above with Chul-San saying 'Dal-Mi didn't go to college?' which did bother him at first though Do-San has assured him there would be no better CEO. Chul-San and Yong-San's roles weren't too important nor large in the first four episodes but that's changing and they do become quite key to the story.
That's the SANDBOX director Yoon above who kicked off the competition, as mentioned all of the teams have access to everything in the huge SANDBOX database and she'll see everyone in 48 hours. So the question boiled down to what should the teams do for a business model? There were so many possibilities and all teams would have to start from scratch. Do-San and his two best mates were scrolling through the entire network, there were too many things they could do and none could decide. So the team's CEO Dal-Mi made the suggestion of developing a handwriting application that could determine a true signature versus a forged one. There's probably a system for that already but the team thought they could improve on any of them and began their project. They used signatures, real and forged, from Jeonghom Bank and it's a good thing there's 48 hours as it won't be an easy assignment.
Also having a problem with what to develop was In-Jae and her team, In-Jae is such a superb business woman and seller but don't think she's quite a master at development. But her new recruits are and in a bit of low move they copied Dal-Mi's idea thanks to the twin girl Jeong. She had been passing by their table and overheard(eavesdropped?) about their handwriting idea, Jeong told In-Jae about it who soon said let's top whatever Dal-Mi's team can come up with! With a pair of experts her team quickly created a unique program which we'll see at their presentation. While the other forty(?) teams were still hard at work In-Jae and her four teammates wrapped up their project in an less than a day and departed the SANDBOX hall. Every other team was struggling mightily and that includes Dal-Mi's who just can't get a high enough accuracy rate for their handwriting program. They're trying to base it on a 'machine learning' program which is hindering them as it's not giving them enough possibilities.
As In-Jae triumphantly left the hall with her team she ran into her sister and let her know about the success her team has had. In-Jae also had to let Dal-Mi know that they too developed a handwriting program with the data from the same bank. At first that really discouraged Dal-Mi but not for too long as she's such an upbeat woman but it did bring down the mood of the SAMSAN Tech trio who were still struggling with their program. Probably getting tired too as none of the five teammates left the hall save to get snacks, they all ended up working for 48 straight hours. One problem may have been they were making the program a bit too complex and with a suggestion by Dal-Mi they've opted to use a slimmer network structure and such, though I do know much about computers some programming jargon flies over my head.
Dal-Mi had mentioned everyone has different tastes and preference, she used the example of Tarzan and Jane on s deserted island. While most females might think the island's flowers would be a nice gift a rock may be better as it's more practical, with that logic the team started to look at that side of the equation. And were successful as while Dal-Mi was having that mini chat with In-Jae the team completed the project and according to Do-San the accuracy rate is 99.8%. They didn't make it with much time to spare either, they may have used up close to every minute of the 48 hours. Now the question was how to present their product, Dal-Mi being the CEO gave her the right but Do-San's two partners weren't too pleased with that. Setting them in place was Ji-Pyeong who we didn't see as much of this episode, he did give up his mentor position but now that the competition is complete he's taken it back from his assistant Park. Ji-Pyeong told the two that no person on the team would be better at pitching their idea than Dal-Mi which was seconded by Do-San. Ji-Pyeong was so sure of himself he even said he'd invest in their company if she failed.
So it decided but with that bit of reluctance that Dal-Mi would be their spokesperson and she had received some tips from Ji-Pyeong before appearing on stage. She was quite petrified about being before the judges, it wasn't as much of a case of nerves or lack of confidence but she had witnessed a another team who failed miserably in their presentation which stuck in her mind. Nothing to worry about as Dal-Mi was perfect presenting their new handwriting program and the judges were quite impressed as it appears the team will pass the stage rather easily. Up next was In-Jae who of course had the same idea but their product was slightly different as her team had created a new font format that would go undetected by a handwriting system. To In-Jae's dismay who should be one of the judges but her now hated stepfather Won who asked wouldn't those programs work better if they were combined plus was perhaps one of then better? Yes, there was one better program which was the one designed by In-Jae's team and could that crush the chances of Dal-Mi's team moving on as one of the five winning teams?
With that unique font system Do-San couldn't detect whether the handwriting was real or forged and he almost had a mini breakdown on stage when his program was beaten. But it would take a while for the judges to decide on the five teams, during that period Dal-Mi had grabbed Ji-Pyeong aside to have a truthful chat with him. She's been wondering about so many things and especially why he's been helping the team out so much. But like Dal-Mi's other attempts her probing was interrupted and this time by Do-San who told the pair to look at a monitor. On it were the five winning teams and of course one was.... SAMSAN Tech(!) in a bit of a surprise, naturally INJAE was also a winning team. Unknown to them the thanks need to go to a new character who is Alex Kown, a Korean who had been living in America but had just returned. Though they've never met he's impressed with Do-San and his team, especially after they won the CODA award and it was him who chose them as the fifth and final team to enter SANDBOX. As the episode came to it's conclusion Dal-Mi and Do-San had their first major 'hug' in jubilation, a dejected and jealous Ji-Pyeong quietly slithered away.
Up until now all the recaps were four segments with 12-13 paragraphs, if you noticed this was three segments with ten paragraphs. After writing up seven thought there's got to be a way to make these recaps a bit shorter which is tough as the episodes are twenty minutes longer than other shows. So tried a new way of writing which seemed to work and if I use it for a whole recap perhaps can get away with only eight paragraphs. Realized not every detail needs to be told or explained 100% and that's a problem I've always had so am hoping that new style may work out well for an entire post.
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