The pilot of the new “Gossip Girl” reboot has everything you’d think would make it a hit: A cool, diverse cast, trendy music, stylish clothes, teenage sex. Yet the big budget show fails more spectacularly than an Instagram selfie with no likes. What went wrong?
To answer this question, we must first pay homage to the original series: a trashy, mean portrait of the ultra-wealthy Upper Eastsiders of New York City who traipse about the city in designer outfits costlier than my rent.
The cast was gorgeous, the storylines ridiculous — think love children, princesses and fake cancer diagnoses — and the fandom obsessive. It played off its own edginess in a self-conscious way, always critiquing its characters as it fawned over them. In other words, it had what the reboot lacks: skepticism and self-awareness.
The posters for the original series spoke to its shamelessness, using quotes from negative reviews with images of the stars in sexy positions: “Mind-blowingly inappropriate,” “Every parent’s worst nightmare,” “A nasty piece of work.” We never had seen teen sex like this on the screen before. For better or worse, it blazed a trail.
The reboot, if you can call it that (the new show exists on a temporal continuum with the old show), feels like cheesy fan fiction of the original. Based on the pilot alone, the creators obviously love the “Gossip Girl” universe, yet they seem to lack an understanding of how the original show worked and why it succeeded.
The new series also follows a group of wealthy teens on the Upper East Side. They still attend the cutthroat prep school Constance Billard, wear plaid uniforms and hang on the steps of the Met. But the key difference is that this new group of teens is woke. They talk about their privilege, they reference wealth inequality, they say the right things.
“We’re supposed to send them out of here Barack Obamas instead of Brett Kavanaughs” is an actual quote from the pilot, for example.
But the wokeness feels like a mask. It serves as an attempt to justify the existence of a show like “Gossip Girl,” but only scratches the surface of these issues. Just because you say the right things doesn’t exempt you from criticism of the very premise of the show, which is, above all, opulence and wealth.
There’s a bevy of what I’ll call “edgy teen shows” on streaming services that employ gimmicks to mask their emptiness. I’m talking about “Generation,” “Euphoria,” “13 Reasons Why,” “Sex Education” and “Tiny Pretty Things.” What these shows lack in content, they make up for in flashiness and sexiness. I wonder why we, as a culture, are so obsessed with teenagers’ sex lives in the first place. It can’t be a reflection of reality — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than half of teens age 15 to 19 have had sex — nor should it be a fantasy. That’s edging into some unsavory territory, no?
This genre is hardly novel. What “Gossip Girl” does differently is glorify wealth while pretending to critique it. We absorb the pricey clothes, the grand habitations, the excesses of capitalism — and that’s why we watch the show, for a taste of life in the 1%.
Yet, the reboot attempts to turn its nose up to such trappings of wealth and privilege, bringing in down-to-earth references and a character who’s presented as poor (she’s on scholarship). There are so many random pop culture references — from teen pop idol Billie Eilish to tattooer Dr. Woo — that the script comes off as a strung-together assemblage of dated Gen Z referentials. It’s PC for the sake of being PC, and in the process, it’s been drained of the social satire that made the original such a hit.
When I asked my sole Gen Z friend what she thinks of the show, she noted that while the teens are unrelatable in their wealthiness, they do put the realistic work in to maintain their social statuses. The show, she said, accurately portrays the effort it takes to be popular.
I think that’s a fair observation and helps to make the show more relatable to today’s teens. Maybe I’m just too old to get it. Maybe I’m nostalgic for the original. And just maybe, the show will turn itself around as the series progresses.
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July 17, 2021 at 06:04PM
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HBO Max’s 'Gossip Girl' reboot is the wrong type of sexy - SFGate
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