If you listened to our podcast episode on the original Gossip Girl, you heard me mention that I was in the midst of watching the reboot and was waiting for it to be finished with its full first season before giving too many of my thoughts. A couple weeks ago the last three episodes dropped on HBO Max, so now with the season complete, I can safely say that I was disappointed by it. A few things felt off about it as I watched, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what they were, but I think I can chalk it up to a few main things that bothered me throughout.
I’ll start with the things I did like about it, because I don’t want to be completely negative. And I absolutely will keep watching this show, so here are the reasons I’ll stay. First, I found the premise of Zoya and Julien being actual sisters interesting, especially since they planned for Zoya to join Julien at Constance unbeknownst to their fathers. It’s a fun, sneaky thing for teenagers to do that clearly wasn’t fully thought out, leading to problems when both their dads do eventually find out. This bond between Zoya and Julien is somewhat meant to mirror the dynamic between Blair and Serena, setting them up as the main friends of the show. Unlike Blair and Serena who could just fight and decide not to be in each other’s lives anymore, even when Zoya and Julien are mad at each other, they find they have to be there for their family, especially during the second part of the season. It’s an interesting way to raise the stakes and I think it paid off.
The other storyline I enjoyed and the reason I’m sticking around for season two is Aki figuring out he’s bisexual and the subsequent decision for him, Audrey, and Max to become a throuple. At the beginning of the series when Audrey and Aki were posed as having problems in their relationship and they both had separate encounters with their friend Max (the reboot’s Chuck Bass minus the predatory aspect), I rolled my eyes, assuming it would go the route of Audrey and Aki breaking up and one of them ending up with Max. Instead I was pleasantly surprised that after Audrey and Aki invited Max to have sex with them, they realized they both liked him and wanted to be in a relationship with him too. I found myself rooting for them the entire time, and I’m sure they’ll have problems next season, seeing as Max has never been in a relationship and this show is nothing without drama, but I am genuinely interested in seeing what happens between them.
Now here’s where I took issue with things. I’m not even going to touch on Gossip Girl being the teachers, since we’d be here all day. I’ll just go on record again saying that watching these adults do very ILLEGAL things to obtain information about students in hopes to keep them in line is absurd and I don’t buy the fact that they haven’t been caught yet.
I’ll start with Monet and Luna, two characters I felt were incredibly underutilized. They are posed as Julien’s PR team, seeing as Julien is an Instagram influencer. They help her look good and at first that’s seemingly all they’re there for. Seeing as I love a mean girl (see Blair Waldorf herself and Ruby on Sex Education), I was immediately drawn to Monet, who was posed from the pilot as the new “mean girl” of the group when she surveyed some of the Constance teachers and wondered aloud which one she should get fired this year. For much of the season, I wondered why Monet spent so much time working to make Julien look good when she could’ve been doing it for herself all along. An article I read over the summer pretty much sums up my feelings about Monet.
That being said, I expected to see more of Monet in part two of the season, given Joshua Safran’s comments about how she and Luna aren’t just Julien’s hangers-on. While there was interesting set-up in the finale for Monet potentially taking over and trying to become the it girl herself in season two, it still didn’t feel like she had much to work with. Luna got a bit more to do in part two, as Max began coming to her for relationship advice when he was trying to suppress his feelings for Audrey and Aki. I didn’t love that she was just giving him advice and getting nothing in return, but in the last episode when she has relationship troubles of her own, Max is similarly there for her. I actually quite enjoyed this friendship between Luna and Max that seemed to come out of nowhere, since it gave her something to do outside of styling Julien, but I still feel like I don’t know Luna on her own. I hope that season two gives both of these characters more to work with, so that they can become fully realized people like all their friends.
Overall, I feel as though the reboot lost what I enjoyed so much about the original Gossip Girl. It takes itself a bit too seriously, letting go of the more soapy aspects of the show that made me love its first iteration so much. It still has its ridiculous moments, but not in a way that makes me laugh, which I miss. It’s not a complete dealbreaker, seeing as I’ve listed above reasons why I’ll give the second season a shot, but I’ll have to save my laughing at the ridiculous behavior of horrible rich white people for when I watch Succession.
Premieres This Week
With Love premieres on Prime Video today!
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