Has it really been nine years sinceGossip Girlended?
Doesn’t it feel more like 90?
The glitzy-cheeky CW melodrama about gladiatorial Upper East Side socialites dominated the zeitgeist in its heyday.
Zión Moreno, Jordan Alexander, and Savannah Lee Smith on ‘Gossip Girl.'.Karolina Wojtasik/HBO MAX
NowHBO Maxis betting a reboot will capture the attention of an over-served streaming audience.
And just what IS that legacy?
(To clarify: More butts, less goodness.)
Whitney Peak and Jordan Alexander on ‘Gossip Girl’.Karolina Wojtasik/HBO MAX
DARREN:A school year dawns at Constance Billard, the fanciest prep school in Manhattan.
It’s a post-COVID world here inGossip Girl’s New York.
The new aristocrats aren’t old enough to remember an ancient era of blogger gossip.
They have follower armies, a social conscience, and expansive sexual interests.
Julien (Jordan Alexander) rules the school because, well, she rules the internet.
As an influencer, she dominates the central friend group.
Her limousine socialist boyfriend Obie (Eli Brown) worries he’s dating a brand, not a person.
Her bestie Audrey (Emily Alyn Lind) loves cinephile Aki (Evan Mock).
There’s a lot going on in the first four episodes of this reboot.
I have mixed-to-negative feelings about the show’s later years, and the Max-ed outGossip Girlcontinues the downward trend.
Something about the nature of streaming drama seems to require too many characters too early.
That brings up a bigger issue, Kristen.
All that social warfare is…pretty tame?
The hedonistic cad has an immediate heart of gold.
Major scandals keep ending in hugs.
“You don’t have to drink!”
I’m a dad who stays up nights worrying my kid will get bullied someday.
But I have to ask: What even is thepointofGossip Girlwithout peer pressure?
What was your relationship with the original show, Kristen?
And do you think these HBO Max kids are all right?
(Dorota 4eva!)
And I’m certainly not the sequel’s target audience, though it’s not really clear who is.
If only Kate Keller and her colleagues weren’t so painful to watch.
Despite Gevinson’s obvious efforts, Kate is a whiny, brow-furrowing worrywart.
(It doesn’t help that Gevinson, who is 25, looks as young as her students.
Alexander, for example, is 27.)
(“I am a bully!")
The original allowed the awful characters to own their awfulness.
(Blair: “You’re disgusting.”
Chuck: “Yes, I am.")
Here, everyone’s always apologizing.
Are any of these relationships working for you, Darren?
DARREN: I love that you call out Luna La and Monet.
Their amoral elitism is the only part of neo-Gossip GirlthatfeelslikeGossip Girl.
And then that hot classics teacher flirts constantly with a high schooler.
Now, we’re two parents complaining this teen show isn’t offensive enough.
Welcome to 2021, and maybe a whole generational rift over whether portraying awfulness means condoning awfulness.
I guess I am pro-awfulness, so the one subplot Ishouldsupport is an inappropriate teacher-student entanglement.
This show can’t even do lurid right.
It weirdly insists this obviously-wrong relationship stems from heartfelt concern.
Safran is the showrunner of this reboot.
The new show doesn’t seem to draw much from Cecily von Ziegesar’s novels beyond general inspiration.
Even so, the teen sensibility feels dated.
Someone says “I volunteer as tribute,” the sharpest reference of forever ago.
Gevinson was an actual successful blogger, whose thoughtfulfinal post on Rookiewastheclosing statement on the old, not-as-suffocatingly-corporate internet.
Now she’s stuck playing the worst character on the worst corner of the show.
At one point, someone describes the original Gossip Girl blog as “a lost Edith Wharton novel.”
My, we’re feeling fancy!
The reboot wants to sensitively portray treacherous wealth.
That’s a self-defeating policy.
They already destroyed the middle class; must they be so middlebrow?
Kristen, are there other creative decisions that jump out to you as troubling?
Episode four features one of the funniest character introductions of the year.
(Teeny-tiny spoiler: This person is connected to the OGGG.)
