TV

What The Hell Is Wrong With The Teachers In The ‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot?

"The teachers are such losers. Go make a lesson plan."

by Michelle Rennex  14 July 2021
gossip girl teachers suck reboot

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The HBO Gossip Girl reboot is finally here, and it’s a whole lot different from the original.

For starters, the only real similarity between the new group of filthy rich Upper East Side school kids and the original cast is… the fact that they both happen to be filthy rich Upper East Side school kids.

*obvious spoilers ahead*

Surprisingly, the biggest difference between the new cast and our beloved original five isn’t just how oddly “woke” show writers have tried to make the originally problematic 14 to 16 year-olds seem. The biggest change is that viewers did not need to spend another five years being left in the dark on the identity of the anonymous troll, Gossip Girl.

Of course, in the original, we eventually found out that the “Gossip Girl” tormenting Serena, Blair, Dan, Chuck, and Nate was actually Dan Humphrey, the “poor” friend of the group who lived in a luxurious Brooklyn warehouse, even though it made zero sense to the plot. But unlike OG Gossip Girl, audiences didn’t need to wait more than five minutes find out the identity of the new-and-improved Gossip Girl in the reboot.

Spoiler Alert: It’s the teachers. The loser teachers of Constance Billard are the weirdos behind Gossip Girl 2.0. Yes, really.

The new Gossip Girl follows the story of two half-sisters, Zoya and Julien.

Julien, the unofficial Queen Bee of the new wave of Constance students, is the rich daughter of a recording executive who hatches a plan to seamlessly bring her half-sister into her friendship group.

Naturally, that all goes bust when the teachers at Constance decide to relaunch Gossip Girl to get back at the “mean” students who don’t like their outfits, instead of, I don’t know, going to therapy or getting a job at a different school.

After one of the teachers is fired for not changing the grade of a wealthy student, a teacher by the name of Rebecca Sherman decides to name drop a bunch of the original cast as she flags that she actually went to school at the same time as Nate and Co. In case you were wondering, Rebecca Sherman did very, very briefly feature in the original series in Season 2 when the gang speculated she might be Gossip Girl.

Anyway, as the teachers continue to bitch and moan in the teacher’s lounge, Rebecca flags that the rowdy students in her time were always kept in line thanks to “an Orwellian Big Sister that kept tabs on the students it deemed important” through the anonymous figure, Gossip Girl.

So, to prove they have no lives and should 1000 percent not be in roles where their whole job is to care for children, Kate Keller along with Rebecca and two other teachers decide to revive Gossip Girl.

The whole thing is hilarious because there was such an easy fix to this whole situation.

If a teacher getting fired over a student having a bad grade was what pushed the revival of Gossip Girl, one would think that the teachers would simply try and work a little harder with the students they are paid to teach.

Perhaps putting some time into stronger lesson plans or working 1:1 with students who are struggling would be a more mature and legal reaction to a bunch of little kids bullying you. Hey, maybe even changing schools would be a logical decision to make if the Upper East Side rich kids not thinking you’re cool or fashionable enough was getting too much for you.

What likely isn’t the answer is creating an anonymous page to bully the students who have wronged you, and even coming for those who haven’t — like Zoya, a brand new student who has been on the receiving end of most of the teacher’s gossip updates. And what’s most definitely not the answer is snapping photos of 14-year-old students getting dressed by windows, and then uploading that to a shitty little Instagram page.

I mean, I’m sorry that one girl said your Zara outfit was ugly and called you poor, but the snap reaction to create “Gossip Girl 2.0” in response is giving the same desperate energy as those creepy PE teachers who craved validation from students so were always way too friendly with the hot and popular kids.

Now beyond the obvious issues with teachers literally spending all their time bullying students, the problem with these teachers is they absolutely suck at attempting to be Gossip Girl in a modern era.

As her first point of action as GG, Kate sends out a tweet trying to expose one of the students. But how did a millennial, who is meant to be well-versed in social media, not understand why a tweet with no hashtags or mentions would get no interaction?

While the new Gossip Girl gang eventually learned that Instagram was the key to engaging the tech-savvy teens at Constance, it’s really only a matter of time before they’re caught out with how little they seem to know about the internet.

Do the writers of Gossip Girl really think that viewers are going to believe that a group of teachers, who don’t even understand how Twitter works, will be able to anonymously bully a bunch of very rich children with very powerful connections?

I mean, Kate literally has PUSH notifications on for the Gossip Girl Instagram account — and the notifications ping off her phone out loud while she’s on the train. And you’re telling me that these elite children couldn’t just pay coders and hackers to find out the IP addresses of those responsible in about three seconds flat?!

Sadly for us, it’s very obvious that these teachers are positioned to be some sort of “underdog” that the series wants us to root for, but it’s very clear that the audience isn’t going to do that.

Between the victim mentality, the clear abuse of power going on, the strange obsession with children, and the fact that adults are taking wildly inappropriate photos of the very people they’re meant to be caring for ALL happening in just one episode, the teachers on the show aren’t looking too great so far.

And everyone watching the new Gossip Girl reboot agrees: The teachers are losers, who need to see a therapist STAT.

Oh, and that Kate Keller and Will Schuester from Glee exude the exact same, horrific energy and should not be allowed near students. Ever.

You can stream ‘Gossip Girl’ on BINGE where episodes drop weekly. 

Michelle Rennex is a senior writer at Junkee. She tweets at @michellerennex.