Being that the entire purported reason behind rebooting the 00s staple that is Gossip Girl was to set its technology in the modern era, it seems Gossip Girl 2.0 is determined to make itself just as dated in the near future (complete with the name-checking of restaurants that will be out of business within five years). And already is rather dated from the get-go, what with the fact that even “sophisticates” of a certain age on the Upper East Side just aren’t going to fuck with Instagram as heavily as TikTok. Unfortunately, in terms of being a sign of our times, Instagram is the most “writerly” app for Constance Billard English teacher Kate Keller (Tavi Gevinson, all grown up) to wield in her bid to resuscitate Gossip Girl (still voiced by Kristen Bell) so as to scare the children into being “great” again. Or at least not as cunty.
Per Kate’s estimation, the entire reason the rich youths of today are so unafraid of acting as they please—complete with verbal abuse directed at their teachers—is because there hasn’t been anyone around to police them for the past decade. Unearthing what can now best be described as “Dan’s old column,” the teachers are even quick to remark on the quaint interface of a “blog” (“do blogs even exist anymore?” Answer: yes. They’re called every website featuring article content—that means you, The Atlantic). Determined to remake Gossip Girl in their “modern,” collective image, the cabal takes on Instagram as their medium. Alas, this is one of the most initially disappointing things about Gossip Girl 2.0: it can’t even be bothered to cultivate some kind of mystery about who could actually be behind the latest rash of “tattletaling.” Some viewers might argue that such is the “genius” of the new edition—that it’s done away with the inevitable disappointment of getting through all the seasons only to find out it was Dan, of all people. But that’s just not so—half of the fun of Gossip Girl was being challenged to speculate during every episode as to who it might actually be. 2.0 could have even taken the Pretty Little Liars approach by “surprising” us with the fact that it’s been multiple posters all along, which, it is. But did we need to know right away? Is there no faith in audience attention span anymore to trust in a viewer’s ability to not need information spoon-fed immediately?
In any case, it’s still based on Cecily von Ziegesar’s source material and still guided by the original creators’ hands, Joshua Safran, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. What’s more, the leads that dominate the show are all meant to embody the same archetypes from the original. Audrey Hope (Emily Alyn Lind) is the Blair Waldorf, complete with a fashion designer mother named Kiki (Laura Benanti). Like Eleanor Waldorf was at the beginning of the original, Kiki, too, is going through a painful divorce.
As for the “new kid in town,” Zoya Lott (Whitney Peak), she’s like an amalgam of Jenny and Vanessa—the outsider disgusted with how these people live but low-key somehow wanting to be a part of it. Julien (Jordan Alexander) is like Serena, constantly causing drama that everyone else orbits around, while pretending to have no idea how self-consumed she is. She’s also the “influencer” who seems more easily influenced than anything else. Especially by her “council members,” Luna La (Zión Moreno) and Monet (Savannah Lee Smith). These two are also part of a bid to bring sexual diversity as well as ethnic diversity to the show that was missing the first time around. Max Wolfe (Thomas Doherty) brings more of the sexual kind and serves as something like the Chuck Bass of the operation, except he’s pansexual and probably won’t try to sell any of his love interests in exchange for owning a hotel (then again, it’s still early in the series).
As part of a love triangle (perhaps foreshadowed by the one between Dan, Vanessa and Olivia Burke [Hilary Duff]) with Audrey and her longtime boyfriend, Aki (Evan Mock)—whose unfortunate last name is Menzies—it is because of Max that the latter (the most “Nate” of the crew) begins to more openly address his bisexuality. Surely, Chuck could never be so nurturing and supportive of any such non-heteronormative tendencies. As for Aki’s so-called best friend, Obie (Eli Brown), he’s the most Dan-like of the group, despite the fact that he’s probably the richest one. But being rich doesn’t take away his ability to act as self-righteous and moralistic as Dan would.
The tagline for 2.0, “Reputations will be shattered,” wants to be a playful nod to how smartphones can crack and break just as easily as the people who hold them. It’s a far cry from the wink of, “You know you love me, xoxo,” a sign-off that feels as though it should still be around despite its uber-millennial sound. A form of parlance straight outta 2008.
Other language discrepancies that pertain to what a difference almost a decade can make is how Gossip Girl a.k.a. Kate takes hold of her signature opening to instead say, “Good morning followers, Gossip Girl here.” Which just sounds so much worse than “Good morning, Upper East Siders.” The intent to highlight how much tangibility has become a thing of the past also unwittingly highlights how irrelevant living in New York is anymore. Less a status symbol and more a sign of a head injury and/or extreme wealth, there is no mark of “greatness” about still being there that made the city appear “aspirational” on the original GG. Even though the ones who stayed after the pandemic would like to claim remaining as some kind of badge of honor, what honor is to be had in masochism? Unless it’s hara-kiri? Ah, and speaking of suicide, the social variety of that practice is very much alive and well. Even Jules isn’t immune to being “cancelled” after her father gets #MeToo’d, and all as the many corona variants that no one in the show bothers addressing continue to propagate. Which is rather true to life, because said variants really won’t affect rich people.
After the show took a mid-series break ending on episode six, “Parentsite,” it resumed with the final six episodes—proving its paper-thin penchant for sustaining melodrama for an entire twenty-two episodes (the average amount for a season) the way the original Gossip Girl could. Sure, that meant the series was bound to jump the shark here and there (including the Blair marries a prince plotline and the presence of Elizabeth Hurley), but that was the risk of staying committed to the sleaze Gossip Girl as a symbol would have desired.
Wanting to hedge their bets for success via a built-in audience, the creators chose to “Bret Easton Ellis” the universe in that these characters all exist in the same one as their predecessors. Which is why, in episode ten, “Final Cancellation,” it’s corroborated that Kiki very much has the Eleanor Waldorf vibe when Audrey insists that they attend Eleanor and Cyrus’ Hanukkah dinner so that Kiki can pitch her new line. As worlds of Gossip Girl past and present collide, we’re even bequeathed with a cameo from Dorota, looking ever the same. And yet, rather than making us “feel at ease” or assuring us that the latest edition of GG has the old one’s blessing, it merely serves as a reminder that what is old can only be made new again in a truly innovative way when it’s West Side Story repackaging Romeo and Juliet.
As for the “legitimate reason” to remake Gossip Girl: doing it under the guise of “affecting generational change” is too Gen Z-sounding even for Gen Z. Which this show clearly isn’t tailored to. In fact, it’s difficult to pinpoint who it really is for—caught somewhere between the two generations branded as “snowflake.” One aspect they also get wrong is assuming that these “kids” would be impressed by the usual coterie of Only Famous in New York-type celebrities, including Jeremy O. Harris—happy to cameo more than once. There’s also Princess Nokia and Marc Shaiman. But the original Gossip Girl seemed more aware of what “the kids” outside of New York would be impressed by, featuring a robust list of cameos that included Robyn, Gwen Stefani, Florence Welch and Karlie Kloss. They even managed to nab Lady Gaga for a 2009 episode called “The Last Days of Disco Stick.” To that end, there’s no denying the difficulty of imagining the “Oscar winner” bothering with the current iteration of the show. And in many ways, the original Gossip Girl was more special and influential because it served as a launching point for pop culture that would become “a thing” (e.g. being among the first mainstream enterprises to play Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”).
In contrast, the new Gossip Girl merely takes what’s already on-trend (like, say, playing “brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo after GG pulls a Regina George and shares all the receipts online) and spotlights it for, ultimately, the purposes of its own eventual social suicide in the form of assured datedness. In episode eleven, “You Can’t Take It With Jules,” we’re presented with more of what millennials have done already via a Burn Book moment when the last woman standing manning the account insists, “Fuck ‘em all! I am going to post every last tip that we ever got. And I’m gonna name who they came from. Every last one. And then, I am going to watch them tear each other apart like it was ancient Rome and I’m the only who got out into the hills on time.” It’s exactly like the 2021 equivalent of Regina George photocopying all the pages of the Burn Book and scattering them throughout the school, knowing full well that each person will pinpoint the source of the information leak based on how they only told such things to one specific person.
At the very least, Gossip Girl 2.0 does its best to better play up the horribleness of rich people more openly and overtly. Especially ones like Obie who think that their guilt and “do-gooding” is a way to excuse themselves when the only action that could is using some of the funds to hide out in the Himalayas before throwing all the rest out the window of a skyscraper. To that point, Zoya’s new and only non-pod person friend, Shan Barnes (Grace Duah), has to be the one to remind Zoya that she should trust none of Julien’s friends—least of all Julien herself—because, well, “Shitty people make shitty babies.” And who’s shittier than the rich? Who live and die in, by and for New York, world capital of shitty people. Which is, to be honest, something that’s hard to get wrong in the reboot of a show that was explicitly about privileged knaves doing knavish things. All that’s missing in 2.0 is another cameo from Ivanka Trump.
