Gossip Girlies, Old & New
Most of our girlies; Image courtesy of IMDB.com
Gossip Girl, arguably the CW’s most famous show, was inarguably one of the most influential TV shows of its time amongst a younger American demographic. Running from 2007 to 2012, the show gained and sustained a massive following even as it slid from hour-long drama to almost unbelievable pulp by the end of its run. Based on a book series by Cecily von Ziegeser and hardly worthy of serious acclaim based on quality, the series catalogues the excesses of a group of teens living in New York City (mostly on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with notable exceptions in Brooklyn) amidst extensive wealth and privilege. The teens, who later transition to college before inexplicably leaving college behind for life in “the real world,” also face endless family tension, entanglements with the rich and powerful of New York (and other posh playgrounds), and serious trauma which the show hardly takes too seriously. An anonymous online blogger operating under the name Gossip Girl chronicles and frequently plays a pivotal role in the misery that dogs our central characters throughout the show’s 6 seasons. As the show progressed, viewers slowly came to realize that Gossip Girl is actually a person, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, though more accurately a cannibalistic wolf living amongst the other wolves, unbeknownst to them that he is anything other than an ordinary wolf. Quite a time for those who watched it when it aired and of us who watched it later when it lived on Netflix before HBO bought the broadcast rights and packed it off to HBO Max. I confess to starting the show on Netflix, mostly likely in 2012, though who can remember such an ancient time! Thankfully, we aren’t here to exclusively discuss that aged version in which flip phones were the norm and all the actors look aggressively older than the characters they play. While I’m sure exploring questions of how the glamorous main cast defined and mislaid the expectations of real-life teens who believed that they too would look like Serena van der Woodsen and Nate Archibald as they grew up would bear interesting fruit, we’re here to discuss Gossip Girl, the 2021 reboot of the beloved show which is set to air its second season in fall 2022.
Like its predecessor, the rebooted Gossip Girl follows a close-knit group of teenagers attending Constance-Billard (the girls) and St. Jude’s (the boys), two sister schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the Gossip Girl universe. Where Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Walfdorf (played, respectively, by Blake Lively and Leighton Meester) once reigned in the original series, Julien Calloway (played by Jordan Alexander, who perhaps doesn’t quite look 17 due to the fact that she is a decade older than that), holds mighty sway over both the school’s students and teachers. Unlike in Blair’s day, Julien doesn’t rule exclusively through fear, though her minions, Monet DeHaan and Luna La (played by Savannah Lee Smith and Zion Moreno, respectively) help her enforce her will using that same tool. Julien may take pages from Blerena’s books (I coined this term. Me!), but she takes after today’s influencers rather than the early 2000’s tearoom and tabloid models her predecessors embodied. When she’s not influencing, though increasingly when she is, Julien leads a friend-group consisting of her minions, her boyfriend Obie (short for Otto Bergmann IV and played by Eli Brown; I eschew his real name when I think of the moniker Obie and refer to him to myself solely as Obadiah… it’s more fun!), her best friend Audrey (played by Emily Alyn Lind, well cast), Akeno “Aki” Menzies (played by the most famous cast member on the show, skating and lifestyle (whatever that means) influencer Evan Mock), and the bad-boy Max Wolfe (played by Thomas Doherty). Into this mix jumps Zoya (portrayed by Whitney Peak, well cast), Julien’s younger half-sister whom we quickly learn was offered admission to Constance on the whim of her elder sister. Zoya stands in loud opposition to these rich and fabulous friends, at least at the beginning of the show; she takes on the mantle of the proletariat and works as hard as she can to be seen as such amongst this gaggle of grandees. Various parents enter the mix, with some playing more consequential roles than others, and the show does a decent job of ensuring that the audience is aware that the parents are aware of each other and the wider world of the shoe. Sometimes, this comes together with a little too much gusto on the part of the showrunners, as evidenced by the inorganic mashup which took place at the House of Zoya during Thanksgiving. The oddest guests and this combo dinner bring me to the characters who constitute the final pieces of the puzzle and have proven the most divisive in how the showrunners are using them in this iteration: the teachers.
In the original Gossip Girl, teachers play integral roles in plot movement without becoming integral parts of the main cast. For this we were grateful, as the teacher storylines were often some of the most frustrating, illogical, and idiotic parts of the show. Season 2 sees the emergence of and quick dispensation with Ms. Carr, whom Dan Humphrey (the original Gossip Girl guy played by Penn Badgely of You fame) beds during the series’ obligatory putting-on-a-play episode (all teen series must have this episode). The character, though pivotal in breaking Serena and Dan up for almost a season, also shatters Blair’s hopes of attending Yale for undergrad. Meanwhile, Serena’s entire plotline is set in motion by the insinuation of a dalliance with a teacher at her Connecticut prep school, who materializes for season 4 (the first half of which is the last decent installment of the series), first as the main villain, then as a love interest, and then again as the villain when we see how creepy and possessive of a character he is. During that same season, Serena involves herself with another teacher, albeit at the collegiate level during her comically brief stint at Columbia, who naturally turns out to be a cousin of the same teacher with whom she sought entanglement during high school was later successful in acquiring in the latter half of the season when she frees him from admittedly unjust imprisonment. None of these characters stick around for very long, mercifully, but the reboot makes at least two teachers key cast members and a handful of others important for plot movement. How do the showrunners accomplish this? By making the teachers the muscle behind the erstwhile dormant machine that is Gossip Girl, the showrunners have sidestepped the first show’s central conceit and removed the mystery element from the show.
The teachers, led by Kate Keller (played by Tavi Gevinson, who achieved notability, if not widespread fame, when she started a fashion blog in the early 2000’s), revive Gossip Girl to use the site as a tool to fight back against the tyranny of their students. Yes, Ms. Keller and her cohorts become literal cyberbullies to fight back against the enfants terribles who have previously utilized parental influence to overcome the primacy of the teachers. A group of adults starting a cyberbully society to discipline students on Instagram seems a little… extreme. Regardless, the show’s creators made a choice and based on the teachers’ vivid descriptions of the regime over which they are supposed to rule but cannot, perhaps it makes sense that these hapless creatures would need to employ such a mechanism to regain some much-needed authority. A significant portion of the season focuses on a power struggle between Kate and other teachers for control of the site, but this plot is amongst the most unenjoyable and serves only to posit Kate as a mirror for Julien. Just like Julien, Kate spends the season trying to figure out how she will make an impact using the resources she feels she has earned. Also, like Julien’s actions, the impact of any initial bold moves is tempered by hesitation towards going too far in her pursuit of her goals. Sure, it’s a nice touch to draw this parallel between the two characters who most impact the world around them out of all the characters presented to us, but I sincerely doubt that the majority of fans are here to watch this contrast play out when they could be watching Julien and her affiliates. I, certainly, am amongst this theoretical majority.
The Gang of Three, Upper East Side edition; Image courtesy of IndieWire.com
I’ve now outlined who our Gossip Girlies are and the role played by the teachers in this unfolding reboot. Ample drama exists to keep things interesting; the power struggle between Julien and Zoya, the emergence of Julien as an influencer of actual importance (there’s a little irony in there somewhere), the struggles of each teen against their parents, the obligatory student-teacher hookup plot, and more. Despite relying so heavily on the blueprint laid out by the original Gossip Girl, the show struggles with defining its own stakes and hardly commits to how shocking that which takes place actually is in favor of simply moving to the next shocking plot point. In this way, the show mirrors its namesake, which swept dramas under the rug when it was time for a character to move to the next stage of their dramatic development. One tool that the older version of the show had at its disposal that the reboot does not is duration of the season, but we’ll come back to that very soon.
The show’s most dramatic moments are often undercut by the seemingly minuscule memories these characters have of other characters’ attacks against them. Part of this might be due to the fact that the stakes are, for the most part, so low (until they aren’t). When Monet sabotages Julien and Zoya during Hulaween by leaking their outfit concept, the audience knows how little actual impact this action has on the lived realities of our characters, or on the universe at large. We also learn, however, how important such conflicts seem to the characters. In this case, we receive this knowledge thanks to how vocal Julian is in her denouncement of her former ally once the subterfuge is revealed and through Monet who attempts to justify her reasoning for betraying her former liege. The falling out seems so important to both characters, and any chance of either relenting seems remote at best. That is, until the following episode. In the aftermath of this falling out, Julien already attempts to repair her relationship with Monet, which she does almost immediately with little discussion. It takes Monet exactly two episodes before all seems well again between the two characters. This may be borne of the fact that the show is, thanks to the model popularized by HBO Max and Peak TV more generally, condensed; its predecessor had on average, 22 episodes per season, while the new Gossip Girl’s first season is comprised of 12. Regardless, such a quick recovery from Monet’s betrayal on both parts initially seemed out of the question in the short term; the show needed to go on, however, and go on it did. Hopefully, such an imperfect and incomplete resolution between Julien and her erstwhile ally foreshadows impending war between the two, something which would actually give the show a much-needed jolt of excitement, but for now, all is forgiven.
Part of why this short-term memory may not necessarily be one of the show’s weaknesses is because it mirrors how the average 14- to 17-year-old often operates: erratically. Julien is the most consistent example of a character who is inconsistent with her goals, her needs, and her priorities. It can be frustrating to watch her support and sabotage Zoya in alternating episodes, but this may just a reflection of the fact that Julien believes she knows who she is without actually connecting this belief to reality, which is that she doesn’t actually know who she is and is trying to find out while laboring under the illusion of self-knowledge. Which 17-year-old has the purity of purpose to know exactly what they want, how to achieve it, and what will be required in pursuit of these ends? Very few such people exist in our world, though most teens think they know and see all. While it can be frustrating to see Julien perpetually wrestle with how she approaches the world at large, her more immediate circle, and her sister, it also makes the show more realistic in its depiction of teenagers. Julien believes that she knows who she is by virtue of her status amongst her peers and on whatever corner of the Internet she exerts influence; the adoration of sycophants does not seem like the best mechanism to learn about oneself and what one wants. Not coming from a similar background or commanding the same volume of disciples as she does, it’s refreshing to know that the same problems that I faced as a teen and still face years later afflict those with the material resources that many of us whose parents do not record music with Billie Eilish do not have. Oh, yes, by the way, Julien’s dad, Davis Calloway (played by Luke Kirby, who has a lot more to work with as Lenny Bruce in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel airing on Amazon Prime Video), is a music producer for Billie Eilish, among others. I’ll just leave that there.
None of this realism towards depicting the capricious teen, unfortunately, really compensates for the fact that these characters short term memories are abysmal and fences are mended with such unwarranted ease. The Julien-Monet situation is just one manifestation of this dominant phenomenon, though I suspect that fences are only temporarily mended. Other such manifestations include the dynamic between Julien and Zoya. For the most part, Julien vacillates between seeking Zoya’s destruction and working to her benefit. When Zoya guesses that Julien and Obadiah (I shall never call him Obie!) have slept with one another at the end of the Thanksgiving episode, Zoya takes a stand against her sister by cutting her off completely. Emphasizing that they have no rivalry nor affection between them, only a permanent indifference, it only takes a couple of episodes for Zoya to invite Julien into her home as the latter flees her father’s corrosion. Retrospectively, therefore, the stakes of each confrontation are significantly reduced compared to other shows where characters’ resentments tend not to dissipate just in time for the next plot point to unfold. In the original Gossip Girl, Serena and Blair frequently butt heads; every season seems to bring their rivalry to a head, but whenever they do fall out, the show makes a point to paint a vivid, often drawn out picture of the two characters falling back in. This does not happen as much or as well in the successor series. In the original, the friendship survives endless ups and downs, but it becomes clear how much distance has grown between the two characters based on their mutually waged wars of attrition against each other by the end of the series. As of the first season’s end, Julien and Zoya are at peace, even after both make repeated attempts to destroy the other. By this series’ end, we’ll see how intact the relationship between our two main characters is.
The real-life steps of the Met on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, New York City | 16 April 2022
My suspicion is that Gossip Girl’s (2021) compressed format means that creator Josh Safran and other executives are fine with sacrificing any residual tension and undermining their own stakes if it means they can cover as much ground as possible. When the show first aired this past fall, its episodes were split between an early fall premiere and a later resumption after a weeks-long break. By the midseason finale, it felt like the show had attempted to cover a lot of ground and was successful in terms of the quantity of ground covered, if not the quality itself. By the end of the season, I am not sure if the quality improved so much as the creators’ ability to introduce situation after situation for the characters to confront and overcome but not always learn from. A somewhat separate but key failing of this show relates directly to this attempt to cram so much into a season. In doing so, the audience will notice that some characters’ plot lines remain pretty stagnant throughout, while others, specifically Julien, and a lesser extent, Zoya, face much more tumult. The minions, Luna and Monet, receive little to no character development. What character development Luna does receive is callously thrown in rather than something earned. She never grows; she just is, and we learn more about her not because she is really tested but because the show puts her in situations which she can seemingly resolve in the span of one episode. Monet is even more static, serving only as the devil on Julien’s shoulder while Audrey (and sometimes Zoya) perches on the other one as the angel and Luna flutters about somewhere in between. Hopefully, the second season does a better job of outlining her motivations and puts her on a collision course with Julien, with whom she has serious unresolved tension.
Speaking of Audrey, the show’s first season attempts to introduce a lot of development without the proportional amount of plot focus that Julien receives. Audrey’s impact is defined by two arcs. We begin with her growing disinterest in her boyfriend and concurrent interest in Max, the stand-in for the monstrous Chuck Bass (portrayed by Ed Westwick) from the original series. We then stumble into issues of mental health and family trauma before veering directly back to her interest in Max. In between, her mother attempts to do away with herself before, naturally per the show’s modus operandi, bouncing straight back two episodes later. Audrey is one of the more likable characters, a stand-in for Blair Waldorf who also deals with the allure of a sensitive but seemingly out of control bad boy and a more stolid lover dealing with family issues. Oof. I don’t miss the Blair-Chuck-Nate love triangle, and Safran has vaguely refreshed this notion by adding a queer element, even if this is a path we have trod before and are likely doomed to trod again. Stone-faced Aki is but a tool for Audrey’s and Max’s characters to develop. The creators attempt to provide him with some development of his own in the form of his emerging queer identity, but this is mostly a characteristic of his designed to impact the characters around him, rather than one which truly shakes up his world. For now, he’s just a guy with pink hair and a mean dad. These three characters exist solely in this silo, and by the end of the season, have decided to form a throuple in an attempt to move to a bohemia which they pretend to be a part of but are very much not. This progressivism will likely result in further drama in which Julien, Zoya, and Obie will have no roles to play, leaving our throuple marooned in their fake bohemia for a season longer.
This reboot seek to inject queer storylines which were mostly missing from the original; as discussed above, the results are mixed. In Aki’s case, his world doesn’t actually change as a result of his nascent sexual awakening, reminding me of how low the stakes are for the show’s characters. Not once does anything bad happen to Aki after he comes out as bisexual, even after his father trots him out to deflect from allegations of discrimination at his company. His girlfriend stands by him after some initial trepidation, his mother supports him, he gets approached by male students, and he gets to satisfy a range of his interests thanks to the flexibility and tolerance of his new throuplemates. Throuplemates. Hmmm. I do not expect that all queer storylines include some traumatic element which sobers us up during joyful moments, but the grass seems slightly too green on the rainbow side of things. I doubt this was intentional, but part of a double edged point the show and its namesake try to make is that a certain level of wealth and power protects individuals and their children from most difficulties. The other edge is that they are not protected from all such sorrows. Therefore, we must wait to learn if Aki will experience trouble in the seasons ahead.
In the original series, each of the main characters inevitably finds their way into the beds of the others of the opposite gender. I’ve attached the link to an exceedingly complicated graphic posted and created by Reddit user u/littlehybrid (all credit to them, they definitely deserve it):
Link to map: https://www.reddit.com/r/GossipGirl/comments/bpp9v4/after_my_recent_rewatch_i_created_a_map_to_keep/
The new version may also result in such liaisons, but I hope it doesn’t (it will). The reason why the show so far makes my hope seem somewhat possible is that this reboot ramps up the earnestness of each otherwise jaded character, regardless of whether or not they are supposed to fit into the bad girl/boy or good girl/boy mold. This earnestness makes it seem as though certain characters will not cross certain lines, but my naivete may be shining through in this instance. Monet is the only character who is denied a chance to be mushy, and for that I am grateful since every other character alternates between villainy and the mushiest mush possible. The original Gossip Girl hardly shied away from the mush, especially at pivotal moments when the characters were busily undergoing sometimes horrific trials (sexual assault, miscarriage, car accidents, the murders of parents, betrayals by parents, etc.), but the lessons they learn and the resultant mush that takes place in heartbreak or triumph seem more earned and are fewer and farther between, likely due to the longer format and one other issue with the parents that I soon will approach. It takes a whole season for Serena to open up to Blair about the death of Pete Fairman; it takes less than half a season for the fathers of Julien and Zoya to patch up a rift that lasted 15 years.
I mention earlier that the stakes remain low, until they don’t, and that what stakes are there are often undercut by the characters around them. This takes place with Audrey’s mother’s attempted suicide, which is written as a wake-up call for her but feels more like a tool hurriedly employed to speed Audrey’s character-growth along. The latter half of season 1 seems to employ a similar trick to hurry Julien’s character growth in the form of the allegations of abuse which come to light against her father, that noble comrade of Billie Eilish, Davis Calloway. The show treats this story arc well, couching it in back-and-forth discussions between Zoya, Julien, and the rest which evoke the #MeToo movement and try to convey the confusion faced by individuals put in such complicated circumstances. These conversations result in a discordant tone and lead to competing notions within Julien’s head of what the best move to make is regarding her father. In some instances, the question becomes whether or not there is a move to make at all. Gossip Girl, in my view, has done a great job of illustrating the competing, contradictory voices which resound back and forth in both private and public discourse surrounding these types of issues. The show also triumphs in its presentation of the confusion which I mention earlier that Julien consistently exhibits. In effect, the main consistency seen in her character is her inconsistent approach to the people and situations she is confronted by, and this is no different in her approach to her father. Vacillating between cutting off ties completely with him by fleeing to Zoya’s (and her inexplicably annoying father’s) apartment and embracing him publicly to demonstrate that she hasn’t given up on himher (whatever internal doubts she may be having), Julien provides a clear glimpse into how a 17-year-old put in this difficult position might react without being given a playbook by a family member. When the only family member she has really relied on is the individual facing intense public scrutiny, it’s no wonder why Julien is unable to stay the course at any point during this arc. With every new piece of information coming to light, her reaction changes, and the season ends with the character deciding that the only person she can truly rely on is herself (a realization she comes to with some help from Gossip Girl). Though the ending of the show’s first season is not the most satisfying, it’s still a far cry from the vibes of sisterhood which the original series continued to posit as the show’s defining theme, even as the sisters in question, Serena and Blair, exhausted themselves by stabbing each other in the back in almost alternating fashion.
Speaking of exhausted, one character from the original series who I sorely miss is the inimitable and always tired from dealing with her daughter Lily van der Woodsen/Bass/Humphrey, then van der Woodsen again, mother of Serena and her insignificant brother. Lily made all the smart moves that put her children in privileged positions they were easily able to fall back on throughout the show’s run. Though some such decisions were perhaps morally unjustifiable (ensuring the false imprisonment of that teacher I mentioned so as to ensure Serena’s reentry into a good private school), we came to understand why Lily did what she did over the course of the series’ first four seasons. We were even treated to plenty of scenes with her mother and a fun flashback episode/failed spin off starring Brittany Snow and Krysten Ritter (excellent actress) that defined how we thought of the character and how she interacted with the world. Lily definitely took a backseat as the show degraded; perhaps correlation finally equals causation! Regardless, a solid backstory and the balancing act she engaged in between herself preservation and looking out for her progeny presented a masterclass in how to construct an archetypal mother character without sacrificing individuality. Sure, it was perhaps unreasonable when she had Serena arrested for theft of a necklace which she had gifted to her daughter, but this did nothing but add to her well-rounded characterization. I bring Lily up because I find the lack of a corresponding character and the general lack of attention to detail paid to parents in the reboot egregious. Yes, we spend ample time with each characters’ parents in the 2021 show (all except those of the minions, criminally underserved), but each are portrayed in somewhat one-dimensional fashion. We spend the most time with Nicholas Lott, Zoya’s father (played by Johnathan Fernandez), and come away from scenes with him having learned nothing new about what his motivations are besides being a good dad. Not exactly a refreshing take on fatherhood in the big city. Helena Bergmann, Obadiah’s mother (played by Lyne Renée), is portrayed as a menacing industrialist bent on bending her son to her will, even as he flails about episode after episode (easily the series’ most annoying character).
The parent with whom it feels like we spend the most time is Audrey’s mother (played by Laura Benanti), whose name escapes me. This character seems like a stand in for all the broken upper-class women in the world. Stuck in a perpetual depressive episode until she’s shaken out of it in the aftermath of her attempted suicide, all her actions seem to be the product of the show’s needs for Audrey’s character to develop and not due to the actual circumstances of her life. I do not seek to trivialize mental health, but there’s no dimension to provide context for why Kiki (the name hath come to me!) struggles with her’s. We know why she is depressed; her business has failed and her marriage has ended. Yet, we learn nothing of why her marriage ended, nor why her business failed (though it seems that the latter will soon be revived by the end of the season). After a confrontation between Audrey and her mother in which Kiki (rightfully!) accuses Audrey of only trying to improve conditions in her mother’s life to pursue her own selfish needs, I thought that the interaction did a great job of laying out Audrey’s motivations and how she approaches the world at large. Sadly, we learned nothing new about her mother, other than that Kiki hates her friends and that they bully her. Maybe I’m being impatient, but if a show is going to provide depth for a character, it should probably start sooner rather than later. There is the case of Davis Calloway, that skinny rake whose sexual assault allegations define the latter half of the reboot’s first season. His characterization is decent at best. We get a glimpse into his struggles with alcoholism, which plague him partially due to his wife leaving him for Zoya’s father and come to understand that he is not who he seems to be. His situation isn’t resolved by the end of the season, but rampant allegations in real-life against comparable figures help flesh out his motivations and character more than any in-show dialogue does. I also don’t contend that the original series was perfect in its characterization of all its main characters’ parents, but after seeing what a fantastic job that show did with Lily, it’s a shame that we don’t have a corollary in its successor series.
If it’s not to replicate the successes of the original series, what is Gossip Girl (2021)’s raison d'être? The old series was not only equipped with a book series upon which to rely to ensure its engaging plot; it also had almost double the season length. Callbacks to the original series sometimes elicit a light eyeroll, but for the most part set the right tone between nostalgic and useful for plot. Few characters in the Gossip Girl pantheon are as singular as Georgina Sparks (portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg in the initial series and reportedly in the second season of the second series), and the introduction of her son Milo was a light piece of bait for the audience to enjoy. Nelly Yuki’s appearance in the show (portrayed once again by Yin Chang) was also a fun inclusion, though she didn’t really have anything to do other than scold her lackey for an overreach. After Monet’s betrayal of the sisters’ costume idea to the public, Julien has a burst of insight into how to rectify the Hulaween debacle. Julien’s two competitors for the positions of New York’s high school it-girls attend Hulaween dressed as Serena and Blair, which inspires Julien to pretend that the plan all along was to dress as their husbands, former Gossip Guy Dan Humphrey and Chuck Bass. While it was slightly corny to see Julien and Zoya don suits to try to pass themselves off as those two less-than-beloved characters, the whole tableau reminded the audience of how important Serena and Blair were to in-universe New York society, even as high-schoolers. Ten years ago, our two lead characters meant a great deal to their viewers as well; viewers either thought of themselves as a Serena or a Blair and then perhaps sought to adopt traits of the one they were not. However irrational and idiotic these two were throughout the show’s run, these characters meant something.
A show like Gossip Girl needs to be grounded in characters that are not just icons because they are icons; they need to prove that they are by what they do in the show, especially relative to the other characters. The new series’ first episode was the only installment of the series in which it seemed like the show was attempting to transfer Serena’s star power and social impact (the irony) to her successor, Julien, during the fashion show in which we are treated to an excellent shot of Julien facing off against Zoya. Otherwise, Julien does things that we can imagine taking place in the real world but never feel special or particularly iconic, a word I hesitate to use but simply must. Julien frets about her followers while seeking endorsements and deals with makeup brands, things which make sense in our world because every influencer must do this while trying to establish themselves as the very thing that eludes them. Serena never seeks to build such a following, and Blair only seeks to do so within the confines of elite New York WASP society. It was the almost unhinged things they did which really cemented them as memorable characters in our minds and in the minds of those individuals living in universe. I’m not suggesting that Zoya push Julien into a fountain or that she marries a prince because she’s so heartbroken that Obie (ugh) and she can’t be together. This may be a tall order, but Julien and her cadre must walk the fine line between overborrowing and seeking sufficient inspiration from the characters who established what is now a decades long franchise. With this inspiration in mind, the characters will hopefully be able to break new ground and perhaps reach the status of their predecessors. This is the fundamental challenge of any reboot and it remains to be seen if this series is equal to the task ahead of it. So far, it hasn’t quite proven that it is, but has provided a ludicrously enjoyable or enjoyably ludicrous at-home adventure. Though it’s been ten years, the antics of these characters definitely hearken back to those of Serena, Blair, and Co. and will hopefully do a better job in subsequent seasons.
Jersey City, seen from Brookfield Place near One World Trade, New York City | 16 April 2022
