Feb 11, 2023·edited Feb 11, 2023Liked by Lizzie Logan
As someone who snuck down into the basement of her family home to secretly watch GG air on the CW Mondays 8/7c FOR YEARS, I was so excited and so nervous for the reboot. I wanted to love it, but I knew from the pilot that the premise was going nowhere fast. Placing GG in the hands of the teachers was a cardinal sin, IMO. The OG GG had novelty, opulence, wit, and chemistry. The reboot had... opulence, I guess? The acting (of all things!) frequently felt robotic and sexless - another cardinal sin. I think the most damning thing the reboot failed to understand is that baked into the core of every scheme, sabotage, and melodramatic showdown in the OG GG was FUN. I can't and won't elaborate further!
You're so right - a GG reboot taking place in an elite bougie boarding school bubble would've been a hit. Every point you made in this was dead on. Reading it gave me the closure I needed (lol). I can now bury the reboot, move on, and return to referring to the OG GG as the definitive Gossip Girl.
teachers as GG was WACK and you are totally right about the lack of fun. it took everything so SERIOUSLY. I want scams and schemes not a lesson in Doing The Right Thing! I do think the second season got sliiiightly more fun but the actors still looked like they were having a mostly miserable time. It's crazy how the HBO version had longer episodes and yet less going on.
You're totally right about the way the reboot just didn't do the work of making Gossip Girl an actual, relevant threat but I think this show also suffered from something simpler: wasn't horny enough! There were no characters whose chemistry carried any of the episodes - the Obie/Zoya/Julien triangle was hardly interesting and dropped pretty fast, the throuple was somehow boring to watch. The first few seasons of original Gossip Girl are buoyed by the relationships you care about seeing! As questionable as the actor Ed Westwick is, we loved Blair and Chuck! Also the GG2 parent-level storylines were somehow also sexless? Zoya's dad and the Tavi Gevinson teacher were comical to watch, one of the parents having a hired mistress played out almost totally offscreen. Sex was discussed but not present! Also the ethics of the teens was adult-level in a way that made the drama boring - teenagers are really going to be sooo honest they'll realize they should be in a throuple? I think probably they'll just cheat and have weird threesomes for a long time first! All cheating was resolved in a few short episodes instead of becoming an interesting secret. Maybe the writers thought that was reflective of the times - but is that really true for people under the age of 18? Anyway I could go on (episode lengths were OUT OF CONTROL) - but I appreciate this post!!!
oh, one thousand percent, structural issues were just one aspect that didnt work. if you cut the time the teachers spent talking about boring ethical questions you'd have a much snappier episode length, and there were NO couples to root for or against. no one had a personality!!!!! But hot take I found the throuple sort of charming???? Like I liked watching Aki and Audrey operate as a unit to help Max, etc. it was kinda sitcomy but at least it was....something!
tavi didn't make a lick of sense with either of her love interests and I feel like the show knew she wasn't working as the mastermind behind GG because they literally brought Georgina Sparks back to borrow the account for a while.
As someone who snuck down into the basement of her family home to secretly watch GG air on the CW Mondays 8/7c FOR YEARS, I was so excited and so nervous for the reboot. I wanted to love it, but I knew from the pilot that the premise was going nowhere fast. Placing GG in the hands of the teachers was a cardinal sin, IMO. The OG GG had novelty, opulence, wit, and chemistry. The reboot had... opulence, I guess? The acting (of all things!) frequently felt robotic and sexless - another cardinal sin. I think the most damning thing the reboot failed to understand is that baked into the core of every scheme, sabotage, and melodramatic showdown in the OG GG was FUN. I can't and won't elaborate further!
You're so right - a GG reboot taking place in an elite bougie boarding school bubble would've been a hit. Every point you made in this was dead on. Reading it gave me the closure I needed (lol). I can now bury the reboot, move on, and return to referring to the OG GG as the definitive Gossip Girl.
teachers as GG was WACK and you are totally right about the lack of fun. it took everything so SERIOUSLY. I want scams and schemes not a lesson in Doing The Right Thing! I do think the second season got sliiiightly more fun but the actors still looked like they were having a mostly miserable time. It's crazy how the HBO version had longer episodes and yet less going on.
You're totally right about the way the reboot just didn't do the work of making Gossip Girl an actual, relevant threat but I think this show also suffered from something simpler: wasn't horny enough! There were no characters whose chemistry carried any of the episodes - the Obie/Zoya/Julien triangle was hardly interesting and dropped pretty fast, the throuple was somehow boring to watch. The first few seasons of original Gossip Girl are buoyed by the relationships you care about seeing! As questionable as the actor Ed Westwick is, we loved Blair and Chuck! Also the GG2 parent-level storylines were somehow also sexless? Zoya's dad and the Tavi Gevinson teacher were comical to watch, one of the parents having a hired mistress played out almost totally offscreen. Sex was discussed but not present! Also the ethics of the teens was adult-level in a way that made the drama boring - teenagers are really going to be sooo honest they'll realize they should be in a throuple? I think probably they'll just cheat and have weird threesomes for a long time first! All cheating was resolved in a few short episodes instead of becoming an interesting secret. Maybe the writers thought that was reflective of the times - but is that really true for people under the age of 18? Anyway I could go on (episode lengths were OUT OF CONTROL) - but I appreciate this post!!!
oh, one thousand percent, structural issues were just one aspect that didnt work. if you cut the time the teachers spent talking about boring ethical questions you'd have a much snappier episode length, and there were NO couples to root for or against. no one had a personality!!!!! But hot take I found the throuple sort of charming???? Like I liked watching Aki and Audrey operate as a unit to help Max, etc. it was kinda sitcomy but at least it was....something!
tavi didn't make a lick of sense with either of her love interests and I feel like the show knew she wasn't working as the mastermind behind GG because they literally brought Georgina Sparks back to borrow the account for a while.
I could honestly go on and on