When the Stars Gossip: Episodes 3-4

by DaebakGrits

Lest we forget that outer space is not a playground for tourists on secret missions to fertilize eggs in zero gravity, our story puts our commander and gynecologist in serious peril when a spacewalk goes awry — risking not only their lives but their budding friend/relation-ship as well.

 
EPISODES 3-4

After the successful mouse surgery, Ryong — like any leading man who’s felt he wasn’t built for love until he found “the one” — hides out in his sleep pod to process his emotions. Thankfully, he has the decency to feel guilty about Go-eun, who is waiting impatiently for him to return to Earth. But, like a lot of Beanies, the speed with which Ryong seems to be falling for Eve — coupled with the fact that both he and Eve are involved with other people back on Earth — doesn’t sit right with me.

That being said, I’m going to trust the process. It’s already been established that Ryong didn’t love Go-eun prior to his little space adventure, which allows for a little leniency — so long as he doesn’t cross a line and act on those emotions. I personally like his flawed characterization, and it kind of amuses me that, after assuming he couldn’t feel love, he (presumably) found his match in freaking outer space. (With the current state of dating apps, somehow this is one of the drama’s more believable plot points.)

But, if you’re concerned about how Go-eun is going to fair after Ryong works out his feelings for Eve, then fear not, because I think our writers are also setting the stage for her and Kang-soo to become an item again. In last week’s episodes, we saw Go-eun’s administrative assistant pointedly tell her that she could have ignored Kang-soo’s phone call, and the fact that she didn’t suggests she might feel something more than indifference for her ex-boyfriend. And if the ol’ adage that the opposite of love isn’t hate (because hate suggests lingering feelings), then this week’s episodes reveal that she definitely has a lot of passionate anger left over for Kang-soo.

It turns out that Kang-soo’s previous request that Eve bring him a stack of lottery tickets was a part of his larger, well-thought-out plan to distract the rest of the space station’s crew so he could sneak off and incriminate Min-jung’s eggs with her late husband’s sperm. Back on Earth, Min-jung and Go-eun are livid that Chairman Choi and Kang-soo moved forward with their scheme without their consent, and after Kang-soo has inseminated seven of the ten available eggs, Go-eun calls Kang-soo to give him a piece of her mind. Here’s where the aforementioned “passionate anger” comes into play, as we witness a side of her personality that we’ve yet to see her display around Ryong. And given the moony expression Kang-soo wears while she rips him a new asshole, this is a Go-eun that Kang-soo is not only familiar with but clearly loves.

The problem with making Kang-soo be Go-eun’s end game is that Kang-soo is going to need a massive redemption arc. Even if the events leading up to Go-eun’s ectopic pregnancy aren’t as nefarious as we were originally led to believe, he still conspired with Chairman Choi to go against Go-eun and Min-jung’s wishes. I love buff Oh Jung-se as much as the next hot-blooded fangirl, but a man who blatantly ignores and circumvents a woman’s reproductive choices? Well, that’s a mighty tough character flaw to overcome. But, as I said before, I’m going to trust the process (and Oh Jung-se)… for now.

Our plot picks up with the announcement that Kang-soo and Eve will be performing a spacewalk to repair the solar panels that were damaged during the smaller spacecraft’s journey from Earth to the space station. Ryong is downright giddy to hear that Kang-soo will be a part of this mission, as he both half-heartedly wishes his competitor dead and sees the scheduled spacewalk as his seven-hour window of opportunity to steal back the eggs. However, he’s less gleeful when he realizes that Eve will be joining Kang-soo. In fact, every ominous word she said to him pre-space launch about the dangers of a spacewalk — namely the very graphic way she described the way he’d die if he got a hole in his space suit — comes back to him. It’s so dangerous, in fact, that before astronauts complete a spacewalk, they usually write a will.

Before her spacewalk, Eve writes her own will (hello, foreshadowing), using the task as a way to test out her finger dexterity while wearing her gloves, and she gives it to Ryong with instructions to read it during her spacewalk. Earlier he’d asked her if they could grab a drink when they’re back on Earth a year from now, and she said the answer to his question is in her will. She needn’t worry about him reading it prematurely, though, because Ryong is distracted by his own — potentially deadly — scheme to break into the locked cryogenic freezer to steal Min-jung’s eggs.

Now, I’m not even going to pretend to understand the working mechanics of the space station or question the plausibility of Ryong’s plan, but the most important bit is that he plans on using one of the space station’s treadmills to overpower an already-strained system and cause a section of the space station to catch on fire — thus triggering the fire alarm and unlocking the cryogenic freezer. If you thought intentionally starting a fire in space was dumb, well that’s only the beginning of Ryong’s foolishness. You see, zero gravity’s effects on the human body make excessive exercise deadly, and the cardio required to start a fire on board the space station could literally kill Ryong. But, as he tells an oblivious-to-his-plan Min-jung, he’s going to “get those eggs back, even if it kills” him.

While Ryong’s egg heist goes mostly according to plan (Mina and Seung-joon almost catch him in the act after they come to put out the fire and save their research), the same cannot be said for Eve and Kang-soo’s spacewalk. A series of unfortunate events begins when Kang-soo gets a hole in his suit and has to return to the space station, leaving Eve to complete the repairs to the solar panels herself. She’s nearly done with her portion of the repairs when a piece of wire slips from her tool belt. She reaches out to grab it — because even a small bit of floating debris can cause damage — and loses her grip on the space station. Although her tether keeps her in close proximity to the station, she’s jerked around like a yo-yo until she grabs onto one of the damaged solar panels, but the panel cuts a hole in her glove. Unlike Kang-soo, though, she’s not able to quickly return to the space station because one end of her tether is broken and the other she cannot reach. She’s stuck, and her vitals are dropping dangerously.

The suspensefulness of Eve’s spacewalk is juxtaposed with the calm introspection of her will, which Ryong reads after successfully completing his heist. Eve’s father was an American astronaut who died trying to save a colleague during a spacewalk, and in his own will he stressed the importance of appreciating even the smallest form of life because they are all miracles — a perspective that reminds me of real-life space tourist William Shatner’s reflections after his trip to space.

Eve must consider Ryong to be one of those insignificant lives because her will is actually a “set of requests” for Ryong that reads like a dog owner’s manual for their pet sitter. Except, in addition to asking Ryong to keep an eye on her mice and Public and (a pregnant!) Indecency, she tells him how to keep himself alive in space. He’s in the process of completing number four on her list (add gochujang to tuna and eat), when Eve’s vitals drop and an alarm begins blaring through the space station, alerting him to the fact that she’s in danger. So what does he do? Ryong, the dumbass space cowboy, completely ignores number six in Eve’s will (stay put and do nothing) and goes out into space to rescue her — decompression and proper space attire be damned.

Y’all, I’m struggling with the writers’ decision to have Ryong risk his life for Eve so soon in the story. Sure, it’s already been established that Ryong has a bit of a hero complex, but he’s also selfish and flawed. Given the circumstances, it’s more believable that his sense of self-preservation and a lack of experience/training would tamper his hero complex — especially since he and Eve haven’t developed a deep emotional connection that would believably supersede survival instincts or logic. But instead of establishing their relationship prior to having him rescue Eve further into our story, when it would be more emotionally impactful (for us and the characters), I guess the writers have decided to have our characters develop feelings because they went through something traumatic together.

And sure enough, after Ryong and Eve make it back onto the space station safely and go through decompression and hyperbaric treatments, Eve wakes up thinking about Ryong. Oh, she’s so pissed at him for not following her orders to stay on the damn ship that she slaps him across the face. But she also can’t get him off her mind, which just pisses her off more — for several reasons. One of which being the fact that he has a fiancée who just held a press conference to publicly announce their engagement — and wave a metaphorical middle finger at her father. Although she says she loves Ryong, I’m not sure how deeply her feelings for him evolved beyond her initial interest in using him to spite her father, who is — unequivocally — this villain of this drama.

Just when you thought Chairman Choi couldn’t get anymore diabolical, his controlling nature reaches a new level. The stress of trying to have a successful IVF treatment — and all the space opera-level drama that went along with it — finally got to Min-jung and she collapsed at work. When Chairman Choi comes to visit her in the hospital, he’s excited about Kang-soo’s success with the egg inseminations and boasts about how well he’s going to take care of his future grandchild. Problem is Min-jung knows the pedestal he promises to put the child on is really a prison, and instead of smartly keeping her future plans to herself, she lets her frustration get the better of her. She tells Chairman Choi that she will not let him raise her child. After the baby is born, she plans on raising it on her own, as her husband — who hated living under his father’s thumb — would have wanted.

Chairman Choi is angered by her words, but he also knows it’s not within her ability to defy him — money, power, and all that. Instead, he has the audacity to tell her to quit her job because “what’s so great about being a damn doctor.” (Excuse me.) And when it’s clear she has no intention of quitting her job, Chairman Choi orders the hospital director to fire her. (We get it, writers, he symbolizes all that’s wrong with the patriarchy, but can you make him a little less punchable so that I’m less likely to rage-destroy my television screen?)

Back in space, Eve is giving Ryong the cold shoulder, and he doesn’t like it. In fact, I’d argue he’s more upset by her disapproval than his own near-death experience — but either way Santiago and Seung-joon are there to cheer him up with smuggled liquor and comforting words. They admire Ryong for his heroics, and like Ryong, they’re confused as to why Eve punished him. After all, he saved her life and, as shown by the presence of the booze on board, everyone breaks the rules a little bit. And with that Ryong officially becomes a member of their wolf pack, and I’m in love with this new bromance. I’m going to need these three to have their own space adventure ASAP.

After having his fill of alcohol, a drunk and extra lonely Ryong systematically visits each of the astronauts. He vows to a sleeping Santiago that he will fix his crooked sperm so he can have kids, and he tells Mina that she should keep the winning lottery ticket that she found belonging to Kang-soo because he already has more money than he knows what to do with. Then, after clinging to Seung-joon and encouraging him to do well with his Alzheimer’s research, he seeks out Eve. Although she’s been listening to his movements outside her pod, she acts displeased to see him — but she’s legitimately displeased when she realizes he’s been drinking. She questions him about the source of the alcohol, but instead of snitching on his new friends, he switches the subject and asks if it is okay for him to like her. (Cue: intense staring and roll credits.)

Overall, I was less invested in these episodes than I was the premiere week, and I think it’s largely due to the fact that the charm and humor of the first two episodes was largely sacrificed for the inclusion of a high-stakes, life-or-death situation that, as I mentioned before, should have been saved for a later in our story. What little humor we were given either fell flat (the whole side plot with Mina and her found lottery ticket) or occurred late in Episode 4 (drunk wolf pack) after I was already emotionally exhausted by the space rescue and Chairman Choi’s insufferableness. I still find this show enjoyable, but it definitely shines brighter when it’s giving space slice-of-life and leaning more into the absurd.

Although these episodes didn’t shine as brightly as their predecessors, they still had a few things going for them (outside my new favorite bromance trio, of course). For starters, there was more interaction with Ryong’s moms, JI HWA-JA (Jeon Soo-kyung), JANG MI-HWA (Choi Jung-won), and JUNG NA-MI (Jung Young-joo), and last week I was kind of worried that this iconic trio of veteran actresses would be underutilized since they are on Earth and removed from most of the plot’s action. That’s where Ryong’s best Earth friend JEON YI-MAN (Im Sung-jae) comes into play. He’s kind of a liaison between Ryong and the people on Earth, and he’s a regular at the restaurant Ryong’s mothers run. And — omo! — is Mi-hwa correct in thinking Yi-man has a crush on her? Or is she confusing politeness with attraction because she likes the idea of receiving a younger man’s attention?

 
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