Why the ‘Gossip Girl’ reboot is a weird but fun watch

“HELLO Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here.”

No other phrase takes me to my youth (OK, late teens and early 20s) than this iconic episode opener from Gossip Girl. I devoured the show when it aired almost a decade ago, making sure to get the freshest episode, hours after it aired in the US.

When it ended, I was already a young journalist and had written about the show and why it had become a shoddy mess.

So I was a bit nervous when the reboot was announced. Did we really need it? Well, nostalgia is a trap and I have gone head-first into the show, like Harry Potter used to do when Albus Dumbledore asked him to do anything dangerous.

The Gossip Girl reboot is set more than a decade after the original show ended. There’s new people, the Gossip Girl website is dead, and the scions of New York’s wealthy families still rule the city. But, this time, the characters are woke, feminists, sexually fluid, and very much all about the influencer life.

There’s Julien, who is the influencer who gets dumped by her billionaire boyfriend Obie, almost as soon as he spots Zoya, who is a newcomer in town. But there’s a plot twist, I won’t spoil for you.

As a nod to the original, Julien has two minions, Luna and Monet, who are trying to do everything to make sure that Julien remains on top of the influencer food chain.

And then there are the teachers, who, after being fed up with their wealthy students getting away with

murder, resuscitate Gossip Girl to kind of bring some sense of order and fear in their students. And this time they use Instagram instead of the website.

That the teachers are Gossip Girl is really creepy, especially since some of the things they do should get them fired. It’s an odd decision to make, especially since they could have easily used one of the main characters to be Gossip Girl.

It does provide some layered DMC (deep meaningful conversation) on the ethics of the teachers being a feared social media character, who can easily character assassinate and bully the students.

What made Gossip Girl interesting was how the creators went for the jugular, and also blurred the lines between adult and child relationships. That happens again and it’s still uncomfortable to watch.

There are some choices the writers make that wastes the characters, and there are under-utilised characters who could take the story further and make it edge-of-your-seat viewing. But there are also light-hearted times that throwback to the iconic moments of the original series.