When the Stars Gossip Ends with 2.550% Ratings and an Ending that Outdoes itself in Stupidity and Absurdity on its Way Out
If I could shoot a drama into outer space it would be When the Stars Gossip, and even then it may not even deserve that ignominious ending because what has poor space does to deserve literal cinematic crap thrown at it. The drama ended with 2.550% ratings and that’s probably due to morbid curiosity to see how it ended, and boy was it new levels of bad. To start, this drama was NEVER about space or even romance, it was about having babies, and motherhood or lack thereof. The male lead Gong Ryong’s birth mom died giving birth and he was raised by three woman one of whom was the female lead Eve’s birth mom who abandoned her on Christmas Eve, the second female lead had a miscarriage and ended up not being able to have a baby, and another woman’s dead husband has lazy sperm so the sperm needed to go to space in order to perk up and fertilize her egg. The two leads in no believable way shape or form “fall in love” within two weeks of being in space together, have “fuck it, we’re going to die soon” space sex, then Eve who has shown zero maternal desire or instinct ends up pregnant and timing wise not discovered early enough so she goes back to space, she has to have a space pregnancy since the fetus can’t survive the 4G back to Earth but she won’t abort the baby because she suddenly has massive amounts of guilt over destroying the other woman’s embryo and also her own mother’s abandonment so she can’t abandon her own baby. Ryong who has his OG/GYN medical license revoked AND a suspended prison sentence manages to get himself back up to space in the span of like 1 day like it was a flight to another country goes to perform quick surgery to save the pregnancy, the two leads stay up in the space station until Eve deliver’s the world’s first baby born in space and then just dies…… There is a random made up montage of Ryong and Eve happily married and raising their baby on Earth in a mundane way but in reality Ryong’s stuck up in space until the space command can find a way to safely bring the now one year old baby back to Earth. I can’t make this shit up if I tried. To the very end, this drama is being heralded as “the first” in every record of setting new lows in budget to ratings and also in offending so many viewers.
I wanted to watch just because of Oh Jung Se, but with all that weird storyline, I just can’t. If the main idea was making two people fall in love in space, they chose a really absurd storyline. Probably it’s indeed carrying birth rate propaganda, so they want to mix childbirth, falling in love, and space mission into one. And have one disaster result.
The plot did appear to have a hidden agenda of pro life. LOL. *Spoiler alert!) It’s not a smart promotion though given that how the mother’s life was lost just to give birth to her baby. Many viewers did enjoy the series until they watched that sad ending in disbelief. I’m so curious how the writer came up with such a disjointed closure, like she had not done enough to alienate fans already. LOL. I’m wondering if she was coerced and commissioned to force such a social cause into the story that she decided to take revenge at the end. LOL. It looked like that way since both ML and FL looked miserable from most viewers’ perspective (one disabled and the other dead). But at lease we got to see a happy floating baby in the space station. So cute! LMAO.
On a side note, I’ve already moved quickly to follow Buried Hearts. LOL. So far so good for the first 2 eps of this new revenge thriller. Hyung Sik is so hot and sick !!! I can just stare at his pretty face without caring much about the plot LMAO. The plot is nothing that new, typical of chaebol politics and collusion. The suspension is good though. If BH is going with this right pace and momentum, then the ratings are expected to go up. Now it’s good around 8%.
I was so looking forward to Buried Hearts because I like Park Hyung Sik very much and he really gave his all for his drama. So it’s really surprising to me that I enjoy Highschool Undercover more. Maybe cos BH just offer the typical revenge plot with nothing fresh so far and the excessive hot and heavy scenes in episode 1 seem unnecessary (while I understand the significance to set the stage for revenge) other than just being provocative.
Yes, Seo Kang Joon is so attractive! Every bit a man! Undercover High School is fun, I love love it! The Fl is hilarious.
SBS weekend dramas always does well but I have a feeling that undercover highschool is going to outshine buried hearts in the coming weeks.
UHS and the male lead are already on top / no.1 on the good data ranking.
I read the news about the competition between BH and HUC. There are several reasons why I may like BH better. First, high school drama has never been my cup of tea even there are fantasy- or suspension- elements in it. Second, I’ve never been a fan of SKJ but I always like PHS. Leads still matter when two dramas are comparable in many ways. But I’ll check out HSU because currently I’m only watching BH and need to find something else to kill my time.
@Alexa, “excessive hot and heavy scenes?” Did you mean too much explicitly physical contact between the ML and his ex gf etc.? LOL. I believe that’s a setup for his revenge journey. I recall a much older revenge drama that I liked very much, The Innocent Man, starring Song Joong Ki and Moon Chae Won. SJK’s performance was awesome but it was hard for me to relate to his character’s motivation for revenge cuz nothing much really happened on screen between his character and the former love. LOL. In comparison, the revenge in BH is way more convincing given the layout in ep 1. If I were in his shoes, the chaebol family would be ready to get a helluva of hate from me. LOL. I’m so ready for his revenge journey. But all being said, Hyung Sik is so hot in the drama that everything else doesn’t matter that much LMAO.
Me too. The last scene from Episode two derailed every prediction I had for the drama. What direction is it truly going? So so fun! The side characters are interesting too. More than the female lead, I think SKJ has dollops of chemistry with the classmate who sits next to him. On a side note He did pick this script from the 100+ he received while he was in the army, here’s hoping the story telling holds up and it’s a solid choice after all
I read good reviews about Park Hyung Sik from his fellow drama partner. I am looking forward to watch this drama.
You should watch if you enjoy thrillers and suspension.
Same, I am so enjoying BH. It’s the only ongoing show I’m watching. Happy it’s doing well in both ratings and buzz. The drama is actually #1 in Kinolight’s rankings and one of Good Data’s ranking charts as well as having 5 of the cast taking the top 10 actors list. Hope it can hit double digits this weekend.
In addition, it is an offense to science I guess. BTW your sentence “the first baby born in space” just rang a bell and it remined me of an American movie “The space between us” (2017). I feel this drama is somehow inspired by that movie. That’s also about the first person being born on Mars and his mother also died after his birth. Similarly it was a huge flop and received negative reviews.
sorry if it’s a duplicate, I posted it once and it didn’t show up. I was saying, the phrase “the first baby born in the space” reminded me of an American movie “The space between us” (2017) which has the similar theme. It was also received huge negative reviews back then.
*it also received
Off-topic post, but am I the only one who has been having technical problem with koala page lately and not seeing new updates:(?
Hi.
Koala’s older theme is no longer supported after the website’s newest update, and she changed it to this one, which is still a little problematic, but nothing that can’t be overcome.
If you’re using Firefox, please go to
History -> Manage History -> find any entry of kaolasplayground.com -> right click on it -> Forget about this site.
This clears Firefox’s cache and next time you visit it it will load properly.
Other browsers should have a similar way to do this, but you’ll have to find out how on your own.
That said, I’ve done it a few times already, and it still doesn’t load the newest articles every time I visit. It only updates once a week or so.
The only solution I found was clicking on “ockoala” at the beginning of an article on the page, and then it loads.
Hope it helps!
No, you are not alone. It’s been crashing every time for the last few months. I remember Koala acknowledged the issue but it hasn’t been fixed since then.
Yes…my opening page is still a article from a drama that completed awhile ago. I do hope all the issues can be fixed…
Why did she die?
This was absolutely nothing but a propaganda pro life drama which butchered every single character to for the sake of its agenda. Why they needed to spend 50 billion won and 16 episodes to do this I don’t know.
Nothing wrong with pro baby propaganda for a country that fears it will literally cease to exist if it’s people don’t have more babies.
The writing is offensive in a sense of assuming everyone watching would have bricks for brains to accept this bullshit plot. But it was also low key entertaining in a how-stupider-can-this-possibly-get hype thing. its the definition of a train wreck. At several points, it reminded me of the writer who wrote the “cancer cells have feelings too” lmfao. It’s the sort of bonkers bananas writing that will be remembered for a long time.
As for the finale, most regular people can’t even leave the country with a suspended prison sentence but this guy managed to leave earth lol. The whole thing is hilarious. Someone in a very early review here claimed this was a pro-life drama and I didn’t see it initially but damn they were right. It’s just the sort of bullshit story that keeps on remaining bullshit till the end
there’s not one stand out thing – not the acting, not a subplot, not even the directing (and I’m a big fan of this PD). But collectively, it was a blast hate watching this one 
Nice that someone remembers that cancer cells thing after a decade. Netflix should stream Princess Aurora. With 150 episodes of pure, unadulterated makjang craziness, it will surely be more profitable than WTSG.
I’m happy it’s over. It was interesting to see the escalating dislike towards it but I do like many of the actors in the drama and don’t exactly enjoy them being mocked. That being said, the writer really spat at the face of those who stuck around with this ending.
Did the makers think this drama was going to be a hit? Apparently a pop up store with drama merch will be opening up soon. Who’s going to buy? Gong Hyo Jin is popular in Korea but she doesn’t have the type of fan base that will be flocking to the store to buy merch. Lee Min Ho’s fan base was always in SEA, his upcoming Seoul fan meeting has only sold half the seats and the venue isn’t even that big.
Seems like TvN expected a big hit, even if Netflix knew otherwise. Last year tvn lost some revenue with QoT only starting pop ups 3 months after ending. In fact they are still running some QoT popups overseas. tvn prob expected at least half that popularity and produced merch ahead of time and it’s now too late to cancel. Anyone remember any other drama other than QoT/LR that had popups? I doubt it’s common. LMH’s fan base wasn’t ever strong in Korea to begin with so not surprised by the lack of interest in his FM. But even if he was popular there, it still feels futile to have a pop up for this specific drama as I doubt theres anyone interested in any of these merch.
Don’t know if there are other pop ups other than for QOT and LR, but you would think they’re only associated with super popular dramas. Someone was jumping the gun by producing the WTSG merch ahead of time. Who knows, they might sell well in SEA.
QOT actually made 54B won in profit, it was Jeongnyeon that lost money despite getting high ratings.
https://m.news.nate.com/view/20250128n03135?mid=e02&list=recent&cpcd=
@Marie, Oh yea, anyone with sense wouldn’t be questioning QoT making money. It’s tvn’s biggest hit since CLOY and it was humongous. But if tvn produced merch ahead of the launch, they would have sold more because the hype is always bigger during and right after airing vs 3 months later. Still, they’re making money from QoT till today. For WTSG, unless it’s an online store, they are sinking more cash by setting up physical stores no one will visit.
Gotta agree with everything you said Koala!
Whoever said Lee Min ho never had a large fan base in SK must be a Kdrama newbie. His fans may have fallen off but at one time he was the “IT” boy. I was never of a fan nor a hater, I’m just commenting on what actually was Facts.
As for this terrible drama: How did they incinerate Eve’s remains on the space station? Why is Chief Kang telling Byeol that her first word should be Mama? That’s sick and twisted.