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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
12
Mixed:
13
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews
Nov 28, 2022
Season 2 Review:
In its second season, Gossip Girl has morphed into exactly what you want from a reboot. The costumes and directorial work are more refined and swoon-worthy than the original, and even though the drama is new, it feels familiar. There is a real sense that this is a new chapter in a beloved story.
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The Daily BeastJul 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
This is Gossip Girl, so obviously there are love triangles and betrayals and backstabbing and upsettingly grown-up teen machinations. Some of those threads titillate. Some are incredibly dumb. Which is to say, it is every bit the soap opera you’d expect. Those are the diversions that hook you in each episode. ... But these diversions only work because they’re bolstered by some actually heady thematics.
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ColliderNov 28, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Gossip Girl Season 2 doesn’t take any huge leaps, either in terms of the timeline or storylines it covers, but that’s okay. The show knows what it is and what it’s good at, and it’s smartly leaning in to highlight fan-favorite characters we didn’t see as much of in the first season.
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Jul 9, 2021
Jul 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The camp aspects of the show aren’t funny, but the excess often is. ... The men of “Gossip Girl” are almost uniformly inept, ineffectual and/or incessantly annoying. ... But the women in the show—and their relationships—often ring true. Even better, they’re entertaining. So are their witty asides.
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Jul 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Like the original, this "GG" can be pithy and clever (that Forster line tells you as much) but unlike the original, at times glum and muddled too. It's a sibling-rivalry drama set in the age of Instagram and COVID, where social media is the true villain. That part may be accurate — just not quite as much fun.
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iDec 3, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The high schoolers are sexy and naughty and have the streak of delicious nastiness that fell away towards the later series of the original. But in pitting them against the teachers as well each other adds a cringeworthy (dare I say, cheugy) dynamic that upsets the very fabric of the series.
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Jul 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
While Gossip Girl has savviness galore when it comes to the complexities of clout-chasing, when it comes to making its characters feel like real and interesting people, it has no idea what it’s doing. Which wouldn’t be so bad if Gossip Girl didn’t have aspirations to make you care about its characters and to develop some sort of heart.
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Jul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
This take is riskier, raunchier and more profane — but just as smart and entertaining. It’s also more ethnically diverse and socially aware, although the latter evolution sometimes seems heavy-handed. The show’s biggest misstep is its whiplash plot twists. ... There’s a tendency toward the unbelievable, too.
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Jul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The new Gossip Girl is vastly more sensitive about everything, in a way that feels at once wholly sincere and brutally boring. ... It's tempting to call this reboot a fustercluck, but there could be something here — if Safran and Co. are willing to go back to the basics of bitchiness.
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IndieWireJul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Gossip Girl” ends up as a series built on absence; there’s no Serena and Dan, so no central romance; there’s no Serena vs. Blair, which means no central conflict; Gossip Girl is there to evoke a reaction, but these kids are refusing to play along. Without any interior drama from the characters or exterior commentary about their place in society, “Gossip Girl” 2.0 feels as glossy, buttoned up, and boring as its influencer’s Instagram page.
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Jul 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s so concerned about empathy it’s a little dull. ... Having money gives these high schoolers a rarefied, strange, challenging life, and on the show it’s the people who don’t have it, who want it, who have their face pressed up to the glass, who get warped. But the show can’t extend this insight as far as it should go.
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Jul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
HBO Max’s reboot of Gossip Girl is half bland rehash of the soapy beats from the original series and half perplexing but semi-ambitious premise-overhaul that the series isn’t prepared to fully engage in. More than anything, this new Gossip Girl just feels behind the curve, a meek attempt to keep pace with shows like HBO Max’s Generation or Netflix’s Elite.
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Jul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The show’s most appealing, fascinating, outright fun elements are the parts where it so clearly owns itself, enjoys itself, preens with one hand at the same time as it flips a casual bird with the other. ... It is fundamentally hollow at the core, frivolous and frothy, studded with sequins and infidelities and students who lust for their teachers (but gay!). It seems uneasy with that emptiness, but it lacks the desire or capability to backfill everything with earnestness or do-goodery, and some later scenes in the series where it attempts to suddenly find sincerity are among the worst, most cringeworthy parts of the four episodes provided to critics.
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The Daily BeastNov 30, 2022
Season 2 Review:
With the reboot bringing back old characters from the original series, it’s safe to say that Gossip Girl is acknowledging at least some of the problems that made its first season such a harrowing disappointment. And at least there have at least been efforts to fix them. Though it’s a vacant endeavor, the fan service at least buys the show some time. But like the characters themselves say aloud in their cringey, internet-speak: Gossip Girl is in her flop era.
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Jul 9, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Apart from the setup, which implicates viewers more than anyone—the obsessive investment of a bunch of so-called grown-ups in the lives of beautiful young adults feels creepy at best—the new show is a carbon copy of the old one, only less white and less straight. ... The reboot rarely connects with its characters; instead, it seems to feel faintly sorry for these icons of doomed youth, as constrained by their self-presentation as they are.
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Jul 9, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Better stories have been built around less, which gives this "Gossip Girl" even less of an excuse for failure. ... The reboot dooms itself by placing non-white characters in clones of roles originated by a white cast and expecting viewers not to notice. This robs them of the opportunity to create truly original personalities for the show and ensures they'll be walking similar loops to their predecessors – circles that eventually bored the audience.
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RogerEbert.comJul 8, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Diversity, while it may be the bare minimum for progress, does not unquestionably translate into good art, or into good entertainment. Over the four episodes provided for review, “Gossip Girl” struggles to shade in its characters, to outline its narrative stakes, or to make an argument for why it should exist in the first place.
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Jul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Oh "Gossip Girl," you really should have stayed retired, kid. Instead, the show comes back via HBO Max, in another reboot that makes the case that not all intellectual property deserves a second chance. Misguided on multiple levels, this "Girl" gives 'em something to talk about, not much of it good.
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Jul 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The show is, indeed, very much attuned to contemporary political awareness and, yes, does also make an attempt at wickedness. But it gets the balance all wrong, taking its mission too seriously and thus sucking out all the fun. ... The performances are mostly lacking in that same way. All the young starlets certainly look the part, a gang of glamazons who cut sufficiently intimidating figures. The acting, though, is stiff, withdrawn, uncomfortable.
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Jul 8, 2021
Season 1 Review:
There is something so pathologically deranged about the reboot that it inevitably will win some fans. They'll come for its flaws, for the messy narrative, humorously bad acting and absurd plot twists. But this is not the kind of show that deserves acclaim for its inanity.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 20, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Toxic reboot. ... Indifferently acted by a cast that looks more suited for grad than elite high school. [19 Jul - 1 Aug 2021, p.7]
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