Why The ‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot Failed

What’s your favourite science fiction TV show? Mine has always been Gossip Girl.

A show that on its face is about the lives of the rich felt more like a retelling of New York beamed to us from another universe — and it was thrilling.

Serena drank hard liquor at hotel bars without being carded; Bart Bass died in Season 2 only to rise from the dead in Season 6; Blair married an evil prince; Jenny infiltrated the fashion industry at the age of 15, and Chuck Bass traded his girlfriend for a hotel.

Since its premiere in 2007, the shenanigans, secret societies and scandalous socialites of the Upper East Side cemented Gossip Girl as the gold standard for teen drama. The novel series, written by Cecily von Ziegesar, was expertly developed into the television phenomenon by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who changed how an entire generation consumed fashion, music and culture.

So when the Gossip Girl reboot was announced, the return of Schwartz and Savage softened the blow. There was some hope yet for the reimagining of the almost-perfect Gossip Girl. And I say almost perfect because, as someone who’s rewatched the show more times than I can count, it undeniably has its issues. Just like Sex and the City, Seinfeld, Girls, and Friends, Gossip Girl depicted an eerily straight, white and sanitised version of New York City.

The reboot, however, promised to fix these issues, with more criticisms of the rich, and an injection of diversity that included more sexually fluid characters that also spanned the gender spectrum. The series showrunner Josh Safran, who also was the showrunner for the original Gossip Girl, told Variety that the new characters would “wrestle with their privilege in a way that I think the original didn’t.”

And while I sympathise with the near-impossible task of recreating a show about the rich and somehow criticising it while still being fun, this was not it. Despite having the foundation to create something spectacular, we were instead given 12 lacklustre episodes that felt void of drama and allergic to fun, not to mention drowning in vapid sloganeering. So what went wrong?

Shiny, New, And Hollow

The new Gossip Girl follows the plight of two half-sisters, Julien Calloway and Zoya Lott whose lives couldn’t be more different. While Julien is a fawned-over Instagram influencer who’s propped up by besties and PR mavens Luna La and Monet de Haan, Zoya is new to the city, moving from Buffalo on a scholarship to be closer to her sister. The tension of this dynamic — which begins with fighting over a boy — is responsible for the rhythm of the show, which I won’t deny, at first really felt promising.

Episode one opens with quick quips about Berghain and celebrity gossip Instagram account deuxmoi, all of which felt in-line with Gossip Girl’s penchant for au courant references. I was intrigued and my mind raced with possibility: Which restaurants would become go-to haunts? What New York institutions would be added to my Gossip Girl sightseeing list? And which guest appearances would attempt to correct the immortal sin of that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner cameo?

All these promises fall flat within the first three episodes and watching the rest became an unfulfilling task I implored myself to complete. As a diehard Gossip Girl fan, it felt necessary to give this new series a chance.

Most of these characters aren’t ever given the room to fill out these identities, leaving behind lifeless and hollow paper cutouts of people we’re supposed to care about.

For all the diversity the show gives us, most of it is only skin-deep. The two main characters — Julien and Zoya — are Black women, Luna is a transgender woman, Monet is a powerful Black lesbian, while Aki is a half-Filipino bisexual man. And yet, most of these characters aren’t ever given the room to fill out these identities, leaving behind lifeless and hollow paper cutouts of people we’re supposed to care about. The writers barely even interrogate the racial wealth gap, let alone spend more than an episode on Luna.

And while most of the Black and people of colour in the show are left to clean up the messes of their white counterparts, the privilege that the show promised to criticise is gleaned over. When Julien’s dad is publicly accused of sexual assault, she deals with the fallout of being ostracised from school, losing her clout and friends while he slinks away to another state never to be seen again.

So are these writers even capable of interrogating the wider lives of these characters without diverting into trauma porn?

This series is markedly shorter than the original cable show: while Gossip Girl once got an 18-episode run, this 12-episode series can barely continue the tension of one fight over two episodes, let alone give characters a chance to grow and be rich, rounded people.

Sure, the original iteration was filled with rich, hot white dummies but the absurdist storylines and continued failings actually feel like criticisms of the rich compared to the reboot’s tepid attempt at “rich guilt.”

This brings us to Otto “Obie” Bergmann IV, the only character — besides Zoya — to question his privilege, wealth, his parents and how his peers treat the few that fall below the 1 percent. You can draw comparisons to the original series hunk Nate Archibald, who also questioned his wealth leading to rich kid ennui and an aimless approach to life. But where Nate actually deals with losing his wealth (albeit momentarily), Obie continues to live in a cushy penthouse while attending protests of his parents’ developments.

But the show’s biggest mistake isn’t in failing its cast, characters or storylines — it’s creating a show void of entertainment.

Be Bad, But Never Be Boring

Gone are the days of Blair trying to weasel herself into Yale by bribing the Dean’s receptionist with rare cat figurines, only to fall flat on her ass when Serena gets in the way of her masterful plan. See, the rich can’t always win. The new Gossip Girl is drenched in misery, and it exists somewhere between its relentless moralising and the kissing scene filmed against the background of a protest-turned-riot.

There are brief glimpses of greatness — like the Hanukkah episode that sees the return of Blair’s iconic mother Eleanor Waldorf and stepfather Cyrus Rose as well as the inimitable Dorota. But this comparison reveals that the original characters were so much larger than life, leaving you to wonder if the reboot is even about Manhattan’s elite at all.

Then there’s Shan Barnes, the show’s only character who brings any excitement, as she leads good-girl Zoya down a treacherous path of skipping school, nail art and breaking curfews. Sure, it all feels a little trivial compared to Georgina Sparks, but it’s about as close as we get. But even then, Shan is pushed to the sidelines and plays but a minor role as the show continues to be suffocated with the rigamarole of the show, like Jules trying to win the fickle Obie back.

Between Tiger King references and an incomprehensible lack of cliffhangers, there’s no greater sin in the reboot than the teachers.

Tavi Gevinson, who plays Kate Keller, an English professor at Constance Billard, is driven to resurrect Gossip Girl — with a gaggle of meek and downright unlikeable cast of teachers — to take revenge and teach a lesson to the mean students and their rich parents.

What’s worse than the show revealing Gossip Girl’s identity from the start has to be that Kate is ultimately dull, turning what was originally an all-seeing and all-knowing watchdog into a cowardly gang of adults that are at best cringeworthy and at worst, spineless.

It’s impossible to see how the new Gossip Girl can come back from such a mediocre debut, especially after it’s pushed itself into a corner of flawed righteousness and HBO-branded misery.

For all the original series did wrong, it gave us what we wanted: unadulterated entertainment that was exciting and imbued with mystery, told to us through characters we actually rooted for, and mostly against. At least it made us feel something.

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Kish Lal is a writer and critic based in New York City. She is on Twitter.