Gossip Girl series premiere review: A lackluster and confusing beginning

Spotted:  The much-discussed Gossip Girl sequel has finally arrived on HBO Max–but is it a hit or a miss?

As far as reboots/revivals/sequels and the like go, any show has a tall order to fill, namely why. Gossip Girl answered this relatively neatly.

Enough time had passed (about 10 years) since the finale of the original series to explore new ideas:  social media and smartphones, Gen Z-ers and influencers in high school, and the necessity to create a generally more inclusive show.

(Like many, many, many television shows of its time, Gossip Girl was inordinately white and straight.)

“Just Another Girl on the MTA” is a decent pilot to showcase the same old Gossip Girl in a brand new world pitch that the show seems to be going for. A diverse and fresh young cast obsessed with Instagram followers rather than Page Six and high production values makes the show fine enough to watch, though not wholly unique.

Like Blair and Serena before, as the show blatantly reminds its viewers, the rivalry at its forefront is two half-sisters, Zoya (Whitney Peak) and Julien (Jordan Alexander).

Julien is the powerful, influencer queen bee who talks unironically about her brand. Zoya has a Stokely Carmichael poster on her wall and takes the bus (not even the subway?).

Julien and Zoya grew up having no relationship with each other, so the two hatch a plan to bring Zoya to Constance. It’s a convoluted plot that quickly unravels thanks to–you guessed it–Gossip Girl.

However, the biggest difference, in this case, is that the sequel reveals who Gossip Girl is within the show’s first ten minutes.

As the teachers complain about the students’ lack of respect, they somehow decide to teach them a lesson by bringing back the “good ole days” of Gossip Girl and band together to create an anonymous Instagram, led by Ms. Keller (Tavi Gevinson), a wannabe writer-come-Dan Humphrey.

As a result, there’s truly no excitement about what Gossip Girl is doing let alone the mystery of who she is. Not to mention, the plot mechanics are downright creepy.

Seeing a bunch of adults stalk students and take pictures through windows hits much differently than teenagers doing the same thing to each other. (The show does briefly acknowledge this, but it doesn’t really matter when the teachers still go through with it.)

It makes it hard to say where the season can go, though I can only hope that Gossip Girl will somehow be wrested from the teachers and back into the hands of a truly anonymous student as it should be.

But in the meantime, there is some compelling, if not a bit mediocre sibling rivalry drama that has the potential to develop into the fun and snappy show we all loved once upon a time.

Until next week. XOXO.

What did you think of the series premiere of Gossip Girl? Make sure to tell us in the comments below!