REVIEW: ‘When The Stars Gossip’ Episode 6

At the end of Episode 5, everything went wrong. Commander Eve Kim (Kong Hyo-jin) is viscerally angry at Gong Ryong (Lee Min-ho) and his confession after discovering that the person she thought was her partner back on Earth cheated on her with her superior. But to make matters way worse, she found out about the illegal experiment to fertilize Na Min-jeong’s (Baek Eun-hye) eggs at the behest of the Choi family and the MZ Group. Only, as of right now, Kang Kang-su (Oh Jung-se) is the only person implicated. Now, in When The Stars Gossip Episode 6, everything gets even messier.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 6 opens with Chairman Choi (Kim Eung-Soo) obnoxiously calling his daughter, Choi Go-eun (Han Ji-Eun), and his daughter-in-law, Min-jeong, to a dinner to celebrate the seven morulae that are going to be back on Earth and hopefully survive the rest of the IVF treatment. To the Choi family, these cells are babies already, which makes what happened next hit hard.

When confronted about the project and the fertilization, Kang-su lies through his teeth. In doing so, he questions the integrity and status of every scientist on board, flaunts a god-complex, and reaches new levels of reprehensible for saying that he used Santi’s sperm samples to fertilize the ovum.

Kang-su has been unlikable to this point, and as his aggression grows, there isn’t much the series can do to salvage him. He throws Santi under the bus, a man who wants children and can’t have them. Worse yet, when Eve decides what to do with the morulae, it affects him the most.

The melodrama hits an all-time high in When The Stars Gossip Episode 6.

For Eve, it makes sense. Kang’s approach to justifying the “experiment” breaks with every ethical stance needed to be a scientist without cascading into a narcissistic god-complex. On top of that, with his lie about the sperm, it looks as if he stole his crewmate’s samples and created a child with a random woman’s egg without his permission. Kang’s justification makes everything much worse than reality. In the way he presents it, he’s broken consent, he’s broken trust, and he offers no remorse.

Eve is justified in her anger at the situation, even more so because she isn’t just some woman on the ship; she’s their Commander. This is her ship, they are her crew, and ultimately, anything that goes against the law or ethics on the ILS puts every project onboard at risk of being shut down. Ryong’s selfishness in this situation is infuriating. It’s consistent insubordination, and it’s one of the first times that Eve has been cast as someone to look down on.

From Ryong’s perspective, it’s clear how much of his work depends on the fertilization’s success. More than that, Min-jeong is his patient, even if she turned tail and told him to stop working on the secret mission. Ryong’s position as Min-jeong’s OBGYN means that he has heard her story, knows how much she wants a child, and understands that this is the last chance at a child with the MZ Group’s oldest son, Choi Dong-hun’s, passing.

Where do Ryong and Eve go from here? 

Balancing being empathetic toward our leading man and understanding that the tantrum he is throwing is replicating anti-abortion talking points is a frustrating line to be forced to walk. The morulae are just cells, and Eve tries her best to explain the issues behind keeping them, the danger to them and the radiation in space, and ultimately, that they are not babies.

Using the language often hurled at women who have abortions is demeaning, especially with the reality that abortion was not decriminalized in South Korea until 2021. The loaded language casts Eve as a villain in a story that, at this point, she is entirely unaware of. And watching the episode in a post-Dobbs world as a Texas resident makes it all the harder to forgive.

The most frustrating element is that Eve and Ryong don’t do anything to discuss their fight and instead talk through the recovering mice. It’s played as a cute and comedic moment that relies on Lee Min-ho’s undeniable charm, but as Eve picks the mouse he suggested to try and get to meet with the male mouse they saved in Episode 1, it’s hard to buy in.

Add in that Ryong says, “When it comes to sex and pregnancy, I am the expert,” and it’s easy to just fall out of love with the character we’ve been rooting for. Sure, Ryong is an OBGYN, but Eve has been working on the mice project herself. In this episode, everything Ryong does and says undercuts Eve’s status as a commander, a scientist, and, in their argument, a woman. While Kang-su stands out as the most aggressively arrogant of those on the ILS, Ryong isn’t far behind him.

When you put that in the context of Ryong still lying to Eve, this is just a messy melodrama that I can’t find myself tied to. Ryong said things that he can’t take back, including, “I should have let you die.” There is no closure, just the acceptance that they’re moving forward together. No more questions asked.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 6 leaves the series in an awkward place. It’s extremely difficult to understand why Eve was able to forgive being called a murderer over and over, let alone the fact that Ryong said that he wished that didn’t save her. After such a mean and monumental blow-up, it’s hard to see why a woman like Eve would forget it.

Na Min-jeong’s moment brings emotion, but it’s skipped too quickly to land.

To top it all off, When The Stars Gossip Episode 6 also takes a lot of time to show the ramifications of Eve’s choice to abide by the space law instead of backing up Kang-su’s even worse lie. Chairman Choi is in the hospital after suffering a stress-induced heart attack, and Min-jeong? Well, we see her park her car, walk to the railing of a bridge, and then disappear after watching a video of her husband.

The events of this episode are devastating for the Choi family, and understandably so. However, by prioritizing their reactions and Ryong’s goal, Eve, at best, fades into the background and, at worst, is a villain. Her choice to destroy the morula has potentially led to someone’s death. And if that stands, as is implied by the shot, how does she come back from that?

Not to be deterred, Ryong hatches a plan to put the last three ova through IVF, turn himself into the microscope, and call in his favor with Mina Lee (Lee Cho-hee). And since Lee Seung-jun (Heo Nam-jun) and Santi (Alex Hafner) are also in on the lottery ticket, he gets their help too. To help keep his body still, Ryong decides to use an unpressurized spacesuit, and to keep him from floating, Santi and Seung-jun will hold his legs. It’s all for 500 billion won, and it’s so ridiculous that by the Kdrama laws of writing, it has to work.

Santi and Seung-jun accept the task of holding down Ryong’s legs, in large part because they understand the truth and Santi’s fertility struggles. Mina, on the other hand, comes in at the last minute and takes a bit longer to decide to break the space law. After floating in the background of the last five episodes, the lottery ticket has finally become substantial.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 6 leaves the series in an uncomfortable predicament. 

Despite the volatile beginning of When The Stars Gossip Episode 6, which included Seung-jun punching Kan-su, the camaraderie at the end is the same as before. Actually, I take that back, it’s better (if you remove Kang-su from the mix). Melodrama will always have its limitations for large fights. But, here, everything feels out of step. The joy in the back half feels like almost an entirely different episode.

The Stars Gossip Episode 6 lacks the depth that previous episodes had. Ryong, despite being our leading man, has been allowed to have faults and ultimately overcome them with his endearing connection to Eve. But here, none of it makes sense. The anger and vitriol that he sends to Eve feels out of place. The ease with which Eve forgives both insubordination and being told she should have been left to die is also out of place.

I want to root for them, and the preview for Episode 7 shows their chemistry is once again off the charts. But it feels like a bell has been rung in this episode that can’t be undone. The Stars Gossip Episode 6 is a misstep for the series that has, up until now, handled every disagreement between Ryong and Eve with care for the characters they have established. But here, Eve is a murderer, and Ryong is the hero.

When The Stars Gossip Episode 6 is streaming exclusively on Netflix, with new episodes every Saturday and Sunday in January through February. 

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