Summary
Episode 7 doesn’t do much to improve When the Stars Gossip, but the cliffhanger ending could be a fruitful turn.
It’s the script, isn’t it? I think that’s what’s irking me about When the Stars Gossip. We’re on Episode 7 now and the K-Drama still hasn’t really improved in any meaningful sense, despite its obviously fervent attempts to do so with quasi-dramatic twists – one of which caps off this latest installment, as a matter of fact. But none of it is landing the way it should.
The script can be faulted for the weird tonal pivots, for everything feeling a tad underbaked, for the comedy not being that funny, and the drama not being that dramatic. It’s a hodgepodge of different elements and has a sense of novelty that would ordinarily help a show like this to stand out, but because none of those elements is very refined, holistically the show just feels odd and off-putting. It’s a shame, really.
Picking up from where we left things in Episode 6, spirits are high. Ryong’s mission was a success, everyone’s buzzing about the lottery winnings, and Ryong and Eve are bonding over trying to get the mice to breed, continuing one of the show’s ongoing metaphorical techniques of using other lifeforms to depict where they are in their relationship. Case in point: The female mouse keeps swerving the advances. If hormones might be at fault for the mice, might that hold true for the humans?
In the meantime, there’s another space emergency to consider – debris. Eve needs to shift the station out of the way to avoid a collision, which is easily accomplished, but it leaves Eve restless, which is unsurprising given she has plenty on her mind at the moment with Dong-a and Tae-hui, not to mention Ryong, who is a bit more up-front with her about how he has been trying to make himself useful – and inadvertently causing her trouble – since he overheard her badmouthing him.
Generally unengaging though it might be, this aspect of When the Stars Gossip Episode 7 is at least better than the earthbound drama, with Min-jeong being rushed to hospital and then eventually waking up once Ryong calls to report his success in fertilizing the egg. The terrestrial elements of this show still feel very one-note and tacked on.
Anyway, not to worry, since there’s more going on in space. As it turns out, the debris is more of a problem than it first seemed and is dangerously close to hitting the station, which means that everyone needs to leave ASAP. The valuables need to be quickly rounded up and then everyone needs to be aboard. Naturally, this doesn’t go especially well.
Because Ryong needs to recover the incubator with the fertilized egg inside, he’s delayed enough that when the debris hits earlier than anticipated, he’s trapped inside and separated from everyone else. The lottery ticket doesn’t fare well, either. Despite Eve’s valiant efforts to spacewalk back over and save the tourist from a no-doubt grisly fate alone in the great beyond, the doors are locked and Ryong is left behind.
This is where When the Stars Gossip Episode 7 ends and, to be fair, I really like this development. Ryong alone in space should hopefully trim a lot of the show’s fat away and allow him to show some new characteristics, although the obvious worry is that we’ll be spending more time on Earth as a result, which I don’t imagine would be a good thing. Still, I’m hoping that isn’t the case and that this new pivot yields some stronger drama, but we’ll have to wait and see.
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