Gossip Girl Reboot-Post Mortem

Okay let me preface by saying that I belong to the OG GG cult and thus I knew watching this reboot was going to be very hard for me to like. So presenting a highly biased but honestly true recount of the disastrous Gossip Girl Reboot!

!!MAJOR SPOILERS!!

Assumed Knowledge: You’ve watched the damn show

So let’s start with the few positives. The show does everything in its power to correct the major flaws of the OG show and welcomes itself nicely to the woke, socially conscious 2020s post pandemic era and I’m here for it. From representation and inclusivity to consent and sex positivity the environment built around the show has learnt and grown up from its predecessors. From one of the biggest GG scandals: Vanessa’s transparent dress at the snowflake ball to Julian raving about being photographed in her underwear-it’s very clear how far we've come! Further, I appreciated that the show shifted its core focus away from the economic class disparity of the Manhattan/Brooklyn divide and honed in on the more poignant disparity of power and influence in the social media age. I also appreciated that the show, for the most part, tried quite hard to create its own story, its own vibe, its own brand. The downfall however is, its not a story I care about. As a result of trying so hard to be different the show fails to stand on its own lacklustre storyline and doesn’t have the comfy cushioning of nostalgia to save it.

So why didn’t the story work? Why am I not desperately craving another season?

THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE
Tbh it took me till about halfway through the season to actually remember every characters name. The trick to a successful ensemble is well defined characters. We’re sort of directed to focus on the love triangle between Julian, Zoya and Obie but their screen time is bombarded by the host of other characters and their storylines that we never fully get to know any one character.

Its only natural to try and slot them into the roles we’re familiar with so here’s mine:

Obie=Conflated Dan and Nate
Audrey=Blair wannabe
Julian=Edgy Serena with a bit of Vanessa
Max=Chuck Impersonator
Anki=Conflated Eric and Nate (hey, maybe he’s that character Dan wrote about in his book)
Zoya=Queen Jenny
Luna and Monet=Minions moonlighting as Julian’s Social Media Managers

But okay even, if we refrain, as we should, from doing that, each character remains so one note that it becomes hard to ever truly invest in any one character or any relationship.

LITERALLY NO SUSPENSE
So the biggie, we know who Gossip Girl is from episode one. Like why? I know we were all unanimously disappointed that Dan was Gossip Girl (including Pierre Cadeaux) but telling us from the get go really dispelled the charm of the show. As a result, the show doesn’t seem to have a clear hook. I invest upwards of 6 seasons to finally find out that “thing” Mike Ross never went to Harvard, whose the mother of Ted’s kids? When will Liza reveal she’s 40? And the secret she’ll “never tell”, who is Gossip Girl!? The reboot, however doesn’t stop there. With every plot we’re given too much information right away and or it gets resolved in a matter of seconds. In the first episode we know Julian and Zoya are sisters and why they are estranged. Zoya starts dating Obie by episode 2 and everyone is on board. The massive Zoya-had-to-leave-Buffalo secret was concluded with Julian’s anti-bullying speech before I had time to process what even happened to Zoya. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is revolutionary and refreshing to see real life situations handled with care and common sense but it is a tv show after all-I need me some drama!

THE TEACHERS FACEPALM
Oh where do I start with this one. For a show that doesn’t have even one scene of the students sitting in a classroom, the massive role of the teachers is just ludicrous. This whole teachers breakfast club routine thinking that creating an instagram account and literally stalking their students is going to force their students to be nicer is just completely illogical. Lets first talk about how gross and inappropriate it is for adult teachers to stalk teenage kids, this is not something that needs to be perpetuated at all. Throw in the whole Rafa and Max relationship (tvs favourite teacher-student affair trope) and you’ve just created a really awkward and unnecessary mess. Not to mention the absolute bogus ways they con themselves into elite student events to get dirt (fashion show episode ugh). However, I think what is most troubling is the teachers relationships with Social Media. As teachers all presumably in their late 20s early 30s, Ms Kate Keller, played by Tavi Gevinson being 25 IRL herself, their fumbling ignorance towards social media is just unbelievable. These are the “millennials” who basically invented social media and shouldn’t be represented as awkward morons who don’t know what they’re doing.

SOCIAL MEDIA-The double edged sword of the show
One of the biggest points of contentions with this series is its reliance on social media to convey a story. What’s interesting to me is that OG Gossip Girl had the advantage of the novelty of social media for its time. In the world of blackberries and blogs the mythical Gossip Girl sending eblasts was enough to keep the show running. The Gossip Girl reboot is plunged into the instagram/tiktok world where an anonymous instagram account (which with one IP address search could be easily detected) like Gossip Girl is hardly omnipotent. So the show at its core cares very little about Gossip Girl and its presence and concentrates more on providing a social commentary of the influencer generation. While there are parts of that I like and I think give the show its own unique identity, every episode being surrounded around Julian’s brand leaves little time for us as an audience to soak up “the glamorous lives of Manhattan’s elite” through Gossip Girl’s eyes. What we’re left with is a show propelled by the obsession with social media rather than a show about the lives of the elite supported by social media.

To sum it up, what I truly missed in this reboot was an element of fun. The OG Gossip Girl gave us a dramatic albeit airbrushed fantasy world of the rich and famous of Manhattan populated with characters we rooted for and wanted to be (team Blair for life). The Gossip Girl reboot takes a much more sombre cue in casting a bright light on the trappings of social media but needs more time to navigate whose story to tell and how to reveal it, in true GG fashion!

I will acknowledge its been six episodes and not six seasons like OG GG and so there’s still time for the show to develop (especially given that by the midseason finale everyone is basically back to their original posts from episode 1). So here’s hoping for some stronger stories filled with suspense and glamour!
Until then,

XOXO