Full disclosure: I watched every single episode of the original Gossip Girl, from the pilot to the finale. I loved pretty much every moment of it, too, the climactic and nonsensical revelation of Gossip Girl’s secret identity aside. (Seriously, if that’s enough to put you off the scandalous misadventures of Manhattan’s elite, you need to calm down.) I even wrote a fanfic comic about the origin of Chuck Bass, for crying out loud. It was my ideal primetime soap. I am what you might call a Gossip Man.
But that was years ago, and we’re all very different people now than we were then, are we not? So I greeted the news that HBO Max was reviving the show for a sequel series with some trepidation. Without the original characters—to say nothing of the cast, all of whom seemed to have names that sounded even snootier than those of the Upper East Siders they were playing (seriously: Leighton Meester! Taylor Momsen! Chace Crawford! Ed Westwick! Blake Lively! Penn Badgely!)—and without its original sociopolitical setting, could a revival thrive?
Based on this pilot episode (“Just Another Girl on the MTA”), I’d say the answer may well be yes. Written by series creator Joshua Safran (a veteran of the original version) and directed by music-video ace Karena Evans, it replaces Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Chuck Bass, and the rest of the original group with a new crew of the young and the consequence-free, then uses a simple but twist-filled structure to set up the big-money backstabbing that’s sure to follow.
Tags: decider, Gossip Girl, reviews, TV, TV reviews