Gossip Girl (2021)

Outside of Gossip Girl as a revived cyberbully, the show expands the cast of core characters into a group of friends with dynamics both familiar and refreshing.

Although there’s nudity, cursing, and suggestive marketing material, the show’s plot lines like walking red carpets, dueling parties, cruising bathhouses, and finding out parents’ secret romantic trysts seem, well, safe.

The old magic isn’t back yet in a woke reboot that forgets a guilty conscience is no substitute for a guilty pleasure. But when these privileged teens get their digital knives out the result is wicked, compulsively watchable fun and deliciously addictive.

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.

The revised premise, which I’ve been asked not to say much more about before the premiere drops, requires some willful suspension of disbelief. But if you can make that leap, the setup works surprisingly well.

Yes, this is a sexier, more drug-fueled and risqué “Gossip Girl,” but only by a matter of degrees. It’s not all debauchery and the conflict generally comes from character and not gender (so far, no cat fights).

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.

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.

The new Gossip Girl stumbles, but hot drama is hot drama. To quote one anonymous blogger, you know you love it, though a clumsy homage straining for relevance isn’t likely to court a new generation of devotees.

If the new Gossip Girl can loosen its grip enough to let its Upper East Siders become the actual bullies they not-so-secretly are, there’s a chance it may capture something great once again. If not, Gossip Girl may need to sign off, for good.

So far the new model feels less insubstantial — casually diverting, full of shiny, pretty people — but short on chemistry where we are meant most to find it.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

The original series was nowhere near being the most profound television of its time, but at least it was entertaining. The Gossip Girl reboot’s uninteresting storylines, paper-thin characters, and lack of purpose cannot even claim that praise.

It all seems very much the same as it did by the end of the first series: Tired and repetitive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is so much to mine here – about adolescence and identity and internet currency – but all is left squandered.