The ‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot Was So Bad That I Hate The Original Show By Proxy Now
Listen, the original Gossip Girl is an institution.
Who didn’t want to be a part of the Upper East Side after seeing how the likes of Serena and Blair lived?! Yeah, you would need to wear heavier clothes than usual – to soften the blow of all the knives going into your back, of course – but to live like royalty for a day, you would risk it all. Heck, I still don’t know what a debutante ball is, knowing it’s only stuff that really rich people do to show off to other rich people they don’t even like, but I want to go to one because it’s all vibes.
Well, I did want to do all this before I watched 2021’s Gossip Girl. Maybe I’m an optimist – or simply a sucker for punishment – but somehow, I expected this reboot to capture a semblance of spirit of the original show. Yeah, it didn’t need to be exactly the same thing, but any nostalgia tickle would do. Instead I suffered through 22 episodes of misery and moping, welcoming another Madea movie to come and finish me off once and for all. It’s so bad that I have grown to detest the Upper East Side, refusing to ever watch anything Gossip Girl-related again. In fact, keep your debutante ball to yourself, because I’d rather go to Waffle House now.
The ‘Gossip Girl’ reboot is all drama, no personality
Right out of the gate, the Gossip Girl reboot infuses the show with more drama than your aunt’s posts on Facebook. Julien is the superstar queen bee at Constance, when her nerdier half-sister Zoya joins the school at Julien’s behest. Immediately, there are strange vibes between them because of the family situation, but it gets even more complicated when Zoya falls for Julien’s beau, Obie. Then, there’s the complicated relationship between Max, Audrey, and Aki – where they all seemingly like each other but seem unsure how to navigate this situationship. Also, the adults have their own suitcase of issues. Make no mistake here: this Gossip Girl dials up the drama to TikTok after dark levels. Everyone has BIG secrets, and they’re begging to be exposed.
So, then why are all these characters blander than a bag of boiled rice? Even in the original Gossip Girl, the characters were shady and untrustworthy at the best of times, but you still received glimmers of them actually liking each other and there being more to them than meets the eye. That’s why they were able to hurt us, because we would believe they had changed, then they would disappoint us all over again. In the Gossip Girl reboot? They all suck. They’re boring and unlikable characters. You don’t want to hang out with any of them, nor get to know them any better, because they’re more stiff and soulless than AI chatbots.
In fact, the only two characters capable of eliciting any kind of emotion from the viewers are Julien and Max, who demonstrate that they are flesh and blood human beings with occasional feelings here and there. With that being said, I’m being extremely generous with this comment, because they’re the best of a bad bunch, so that’s not saying much.
The reboot misses the point of the original
One of the reasons that everyone stayed hooked to Gossip Girl for six seasons was because of the mystery of who Gossip Girl was. While we can debate about the success of the final reveal – and if it even makes any sense because of the various plotholes – the point is, it kept the viewer invested in the series. It promised a big reveal and the allure that one of our favorites was behind the account.
For some arbitrary reason, the Gossip Girl reboot decides to reveal the identity of Gossip Girl right out of the gates: it’s the teachers at Constance. Okay, so why should I care about the show since I know who’s behind it? Instead, this turns into a tale where the teachers try to cover their tracks, while the students attempt to unmask who’s behind the account. Yet, this deflates the entire point of the series, since there’s no more mystery around it.
Look, I like the angle of the teachers being behind the Gossip Girl account. It throws a curveball into the narrative mix, but it would have worked better to have been revealed in due course rather than right away. Yeah, you can see that the writers didn’t want to repeat the formula from the original show, but let’s be honest here: Gossip Girl was never Twin Peaks to begin with. The audience wants a good mystery and teen drama with compelling characters. Just give us that. It isn’t that hard, really.
The reboot has destroyed the franchise
You know how we always wish that someone could reboot or revive our favorite shows? Let’s stop that. The Gossip Girl reboot proves that there’s a way in which it can actually ruin the memory of what once was. Seriously, while watching this show, I was reminded about how bad the final season of the original series was. Gossip Girl had long run its course. There was no more fuel in the tank, but it carried on, and we forgave it since there was resolution in the end. The reboot was entirely unnecessary – a subsequent trainwreck too – and now, I may hate Gossip Girl forever because of it. XOXO.
