Why is gossip girl so good

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You could practically draw a graph. Frankly, the original Gossip Girl did not really have enough personality traits to sustain its first cast, let alone a new one. Disclosure: I come to this new show as a viewer who found the original to run a maddening spectrum of nearly brilliant to unwatchably awful, but I also watched almost every episode, with the exception of the final season.

The new show is reiterating the same set of tired tropes as the first, so even four episodes in, it has acquired an exhausting sameness. The new students of Constance Billiard School, we learn, are terrorizing their underpaid teachers with bitchy quips about their Zara wardrobes and threats to get them fired for giving out bad grades.

Back in , all the students were well-behaved model pupils who respected authority because they were all being terrorized into submission by Gossip Girl. Before long, the teachers are happily filming their underage students changing in front of windows, digging up smut on all the cool kids, and publishing the results on Instagram for all the world to see. In exchange, they get to revel in a more respectful, more thoughtful school environment.

The chief architect of the new Gossip Girl plan is English teacher Kate Keller, played by the writer, editor, and proto-influencer Tavi Gevinson. Gevinson is not a natural actress, but her very presence functions as a campy, smirking wink to the audience: Unlike the old CW Gossip Girl , the new HBO Gossip Girl will understand the social currency of the internet.

Or at least, the wealthy New York media personality corners of the internet. When Gossip Girl can unite its camp ridiculousness with its meticulous understanding of what Manhattan clout looks like in the age of Instagram, it starts to soar. Every celebrity wanted a cameo, with many landing them. And every designer wanted the cast wearing their clothes, on and off the show, thanks to the costume design talent of Eric Daman , who had previously worked on Sex and the City. Blair, Serena and even Chuck became style icons, influencing trends in high schools everywhere.

Girls who identified as Blairs rocked headbands and tights, while the self-appointed Serenas favored boho-chic pieces. But looking back, it was really Daman's styling of Chuck Bass—ascots, pink jackets and patterned suits, oh my—that was revolutionary and ahead of its time.

I think he relaunched menswear and being able to dress like a gentleman," Daman reflected. It wasn't seen as fay or dandy. I love that he really switched a button for men to dress better. Gossip Girl was also one of the first shows to truly be impacted by spoiler culture.

Given that they filmed in New York City, often on location at outdoor places such as the Met, paparazzi and fans followed the cast's every move on and off set, spoiling storylines and reveals in the process as photos made their way online. They ended up filming multiple versions of scenes to throw fans off, like Blair choosing between Nate and Chuck at the end of season two. It felt like we were in the center of a marketing machine, a cultural pop phenomenon," Lively reflected. The show even dealt with its own Gossip Girl -esque online drama when the scripts were being leaked.

We didn't understand what was happening, because everything was getting leaked, every detail A teenager, I think either [from] Russia or Bulgaria, had hacked one of the writer's e-mails, and was selling scripts on eBay. But they were underage, so they couldn't be prosecuted. It was a f--king production nightmare. We would have to 'X' out every script. We would have to print on red paper It was like there was a Gossip Girl in our system. It was the ultimate irony for a TV show all about an anonymous online presence threatening to find themselves at the mercy of one.

But it also seemed to be an indicator of what was to come, as. As Kristen Bell , who voiced the omnipresent Gossip Girl for all six seasons, put it to Vanity Fair , "[Schwartz and Savage] were spearheading: 'What if the Internet is just a place to judge people? What if that's what it turns into? Years later, Crawford recalled the hysteria that would happen when they filmed scenes on location. Within an hour, 10 girls multiplied to ," he said. Ed and I were crossing Park Avenue and had a ring of girls around us.

We got stuck on the median and our make-up people had to fight them off. Gossip Girl is one of those stories that can be rebooted whenever technology gives a leap forward and, as you probably know, social media and the way we use our cellphones have changed a lot since the original show ended in Of course, everyone who watched the original GG and somehow made it through some of the worst plots and subplots in TV history looking at you, Season 6 took the news with a grain of salt.

Kristen Bell narration, amazing costume design, great soundtrack and had no problem improving on many of the issues that made the show fall flat before. White people problems. The original Gossip Girl was that by its very definition. The new Gossip Girl , however, is not interested in only parading straight white people around. The protagonist Julien Jordan Alexander is a Black girl with a shaved head, which curiously is the same description of Vanessa in the books.