Why the New Gossip Girl Doesn’t Work

The show updates a lot of things brilliantly for Gen-Z but lacks a central relationship on par with Blair & Serena

At the beginning of HBO Max’s new Gossip Girl series, we zoom in on a woman riding a train into the city. If you watched the original, you can recognize the homage to the opening scene where it-girl Serena (Blake Lively rocking the trendiest hair of the late aughts) arrives back into town. However, the reboot is also sending a message as we’re not observing a rich high schooler, but instead, a lowly teacher commuting to work on the subway (she’s also tragically wearing Zara, much to the displeasure of her fashionista students). The intention is to honor the legacy of the original show while also establishing that times have changed and Gossip Girl has changed with them.

Many of the changes are welcome. In its premiere, the reboot breezes by some of the more problematic plotlines (Chuck — a man who attempted to date rape two of the main female leads in the pilot — is referenced as being pre-cancel culture), while winkingly referencing the more outlandish ones (Blair was the princess of Monaco for a few months; NBD). The show also changes its attitude towards technology to reflect a Gen-Z sensibility: keep in mind that the iPhone only debuted a few months before the original show started and Instagram didn’t exist until halfway through season 3 (for product placement purposes, they were also really into Bing). Beyond that, despite the…