REVIEW: ‘When The Stars Gossip’ Episode 7

Going into When The Stars Gossip Episode 7, I was hesitant about where things would go for Gong Ryong (Lee Min-ho) and Commander Eve Kim (Kong Hyo-jin). In the previous episode, he essentially called her a murderer and wished he’d left her to die, and it’s pretty tricky to come back from that impression. Where does a writer go from there to try to win back viewers? Well, the current strategy seems to be just ignoring it and moving forward with other experiments between the two characters.

But first, we need to jump around a bit. Episode 7 opens with Eve Kim being interviewed about her space voyage. We don’t get very far before cutting to a scene with Gong Ryong’s three moms. This results in some more sex-related humor, a staple of the series that is sure to have some laughing and others rolling their eyes. Prepare yourself, though, because there’s a lot of plot bouncing in When The Stars Gossip Episode 7.

Back in space, Ryong and his teammates celebrate the success of fertilizing the remaining egg. Ryong wanders off to find Eve and observe the lab mice they have together, but the remaining three team members stay behind. Lee Seung-jun (Heo Nam-jun), Santi (Alex Hafner), and Mina Lee (Lee Cho-hee) discuss what to do with the lottery winnings, with Seung-jun’s facial expressions show frustration at the prospect of doing the right thing. Unfortunately, Santi’s words of honor win the team over, and they sneak the ticket back into Kang Kang-su’s (Oh Jung-se) area.

Intimcy gets put on the back burner in When The Stars Gossip Episode 7, and that’s okay.

Meanwhile, Ryong finds Eve, and they observe the mice together. It’s another cute moment that also serves as a mirror to at least some of their issues. The male rodent continues to try to court the female rodent, and she’s kind of buying into it. But just as some mating is about to go down, the female moves away. Eve posits that it might be hormonal-related, but that’s just applicable to the rodents. It doesn’t entirely explain why Eve isn’t reciprocal to Ryong’s feelings, but I can think of a few reasons.

Unfortunately, the prospect of fixing rodent hormones is put on hold when the threat of space debris surfaces. The station needs to be moved out of the debris’s range or risk damage. Ever dependable, Eve takes care of the issue and eventually settles back down. Another tender moment between her and Ryong happens when he falls upon her asleep and sees she still needs to change her dressings. A flashback and conversation show that part of his behavior towards Eve has been out of a need to overcompensate.

In the flashback, back on Earth, Eve is complaining about taking Gong Ryong out into space. He’ll get in the way and contribute nothing. Eve’s need for control and compliance has been consistent throughout the entire series, although she didn’t take the team to task the way she should have for the past couple of episodes of insubordination. Ryong overheard the conversation, though, and wanted to help her and prove her wrong. In some ways, he has. In many others, he hasn’t.

In space, danger never sleeps, and neither should Eve as the station enters a Code Yellow. The debris cloud is still too close for comfort, so the team must evacuate. The danger is high enough that they may have to go back to Earth. Everyone has to think quickly about the essential items they need to take with them. Ryong focuses on the incubator because, not too long before the Code Yellow announcement, he just had to spill the beans to the MZ Group that he has one fertilized egg saved.

Other storylines don’t have the same impact in this episode.

Speaking of the MZ Group storyline, it’s left on the back burner in this episode. Despite the mystery surrounding Na Min-jeong’s (Baek Eun-hye) fate last episode, she was discovered in time and swiftly taken to a hospital. Just before the Code Yellow is announced, Ryong calls the group and promises Min-jeong will become a mother. This is enough to wake her up from the coma, and that’s basically it for that storyline. Min-jeong’s focus has been on becoming a mother, but there is no level of subtlety here, and after Episode 6’s pro-life stance, it’s a little too much.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 7 struggles to make the MZ story thread resonate. A large part of the problem is that the characters have yet to fully develop. They’re still one-dimensional. With so many varying storylines and characters to focus on, this one is the least impactful. It’s sad, considering how naturally complicated Min-jeong’s journey to motherhood has been. Outside of that focus, there’s little else memorable about her or the other MZ characters, for that matter.

Then there’s the matter of the Park Dong-a (Kim Joo-hun) cheating storyline back at the Mission Control Center. He catches Eve having a moment with Gong Ryong, and this stirs feelings of jealousy in him. He doesn’t know that Eve knows that he has been cheating on her with Kang Tae-hui (Lee El), so there’s a certain level of irony that he’d be so bothered. But seeing her with another man is enough to push him to break up with Tae-hui in When The Stars Gossip Episode 7. With too many emotions to contend with, he’s left a mess, and – honestly – it couldn’t have happened to a better character. Suffer!

Chaos and cliffhangers remind us why hope still remains for this show.

Suffering is also nigh back on the space station—and for viewers—because things don’t look good for Ryong. Eve and the crew grossly underestimated how much time they had before the debris arrives. The team gets separated from Ryong, as he becomes trapped in an Observation module while the team ends up in the Scorpion. Before Eve can even think about saving him, they depart, leaving our sad little space tourist on his own.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 7 ends with Ryong’s fate hanging in the balance. It is a successful cliffhanger that immediately stokes worry and concern for the character, especially considering that the whole reason he is now trapped and left to fend for himself is because he went back to save the incubator. It’s a moment that earns some rehabilitation points for the character. But he still has a lot to make up for.

Leaving things on such a highly tense bar makes up for the almost directionless bouncing around in the episode. Although previous episodes had a better balance of various storylines, When The Stars Gossip Episode 7 was noticeably lacking in that department. The threat of impending doom proved to be the strongest storyline, but it had the benefit of tension to hook a viewer in and better-developed characters. Other storylines didn’t.

While the next episode is poised to be emotional, When The Stars Gossip Episode 7 earns good graces for its impactful second half. If it can manage to maintain this focus going into Episode 8, it may make up ground and get things back on track.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 7 is streaming exclusively on Netflix, with new episodes every Saturday and Sunday in January through February. 

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