HBO’s Gossip Girl sequel series is an interesting beast. Keenly self-aware that what worked for its parent show in 2007 won’t work today, both content-wise in terms of character relationships and particularly the way male characters treat the female leads, and presentationally in terms of modern youth’s perception of and relationships to wealth, the wealthy, and how those things interact structurally with the public.
There’s a very obvious and conscious effort to avoid all of the easy criticisms of the first show; characters are aware of their privilege but not above it and not so aware that they’re not believably terrible enough to necessitate the resuscitation of a Gossip Girl to hold them accountable. Gossip Girl’s identity is revealed immediately in the first episode rather than being teased as an impossible and unsatisfying mystery. The social issues covered feel a lot more grounded and on-the-pulse, and unlike the vast majority of shows about teens that try to tackle online or “woke” culture, they MOSTLY feel pretty lived in and true to how shit head rich assholes would want to perform social justice, and how they might be challenged by normal people around them if, in real life, any normal people had that chance and any rich shit head was obligated to listen. The cast was touted before premiere as “majority queer and POC” and this miraculously carries through with only one guy in the entire thing who is both straight and white, and multiple male-identified characters who kiss and fuck other dudes on screen in a very normal way? Penises out on this show? It’s really nice?
And yet, somehow, despite seeming to try to be the anti-Gossip Girl Gossip Girl, GG 2021’s first six episodes (half of the first season, all that’s been released so far) manage to fall into nearly all of the same dramatic traps that the original did, made all the more glaring by the illusion of HBO Prestige and obviously outrageous budget that combined with its newfound “down to earth” subject matter lends it a superficial degree of ostensible respectability over it’s often comically underfunded, proudly juvenile, stupendously tacky mid-aughts CW forebear.
Here we are, still forcing the show to contort itself around an exceptionally unnatural feud between its two central women who don’t really have a real reason to be feuding and who are more interesting (separately and apart) when their relationship is a conspiratorial one rather than adversarial; still finding ourselves halfway interested in having our characters interact with touchy real life current events and then making those events into tasteless window dressing for emotionally charged break ups and hook ups that could really have been instigated anywhere and by anything probably; still doing deeply misguided teacher/student hook up storylines???? Making them both dudes doesn’t help! It’s very interesting to see all the ways that this is very much Still Just Gossip Girl, even as it’s Gossip Girl with seemingly more genuine heart and possibly more genuine brains.
So as you can see, there’s a lot to chew on here. If Gossip Girl 07 was a show that I couldn’t ignore when it was on in the room because it was so loud and obnoxious and on one all the time, Gossip Girl 21 is a genuinely fascinating look at the ways a concept does and doesn’t change with the times. I can’t get enough of it.
Which makes KIRBY’S DREAM LAND 2 THAT MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE because as long as this shit was in my hands and my single earbud was connecting my 3DS to my left ear I didn’t give a SHIT about Julien and Zoya and all their stupid fucking friends KIRBY HAS COPY ABILITIES NOW
THEY CAN RIDE IN A FISH’S MOUTH
THE FISH HOPS AROUND IT LOOKS FUCKING STUPID
IT’S SO CUTE
IT’S SO CUTE
IT’S KIRBY
FIVE OUTTA FIVE BRO
There’s a very obvious and conscious effort to avoid all of the easy criticisms of the first show; characters are aware of their privilege but not above it and not so aware that they’re not believably terrible enough to necessitate the resuscitation of a Gossip Girl to hold them accountable. Gossip Girl’s identity is revealed immediately in the first episode rather than being teased as an impossible and unsatisfying mystery. The social issues covered feel a lot more grounded and on-the-pulse, and unlike the vast majority of shows about teens that try to tackle online or “woke” culture, they MOSTLY feel pretty lived in and true to how shit head rich assholes would want to perform social justice, and how they might be challenged by normal people around them if, in real life, any normal people had that chance and any rich shit head was obligated to listen. The cast was touted before premiere as “majority queer and POC” and this miraculously carries through with only one guy in the entire thing who is both straight and white, and multiple male-identified characters who kiss and fuck other dudes on screen in a very normal way? Penises out on this show? It’s really nice?
And yet, somehow, despite seeming to try to be the anti-Gossip Girl Gossip Girl, GG 2021’s first six episodes (half of the first season, all that’s been released so far) manage to fall into nearly all of the same dramatic traps that the original did, made all the more glaring by the illusion of HBO Prestige and obviously outrageous budget that combined with its newfound “down to earth” subject matter lends it a superficial degree of ostensible respectability over it’s often comically underfunded, proudly juvenile, stupendously tacky mid-aughts CW forebear.
Here we are, still forcing the show to contort itself around an exceptionally unnatural feud between its two central women who don’t really have a real reason to be feuding and who are more interesting (separately and apart) when their relationship is a conspiratorial one rather than adversarial; still finding ourselves halfway interested in having our characters interact with touchy real life current events and then making those events into tasteless window dressing for emotionally charged break ups and hook ups that could really have been instigated anywhere and by anything probably; still doing deeply misguided teacher/student hook up storylines???? Making them both dudes doesn’t help! It’s very interesting to see all the ways that this is very much Still Just Gossip Girl, even as it’s Gossip Girl with seemingly more genuine heart and possibly more genuine brains.
So as you can see, there’s a lot to chew on here. If Gossip Girl 07 was a show that I couldn’t ignore when it was on in the room because it was so loud and obnoxious and on one all the time, Gossip Girl 21 is a genuinely fascinating look at the ways a concept does and doesn’t change with the times. I can’t get enough of it.
Which makes KIRBY’S DREAM LAND 2 THAT MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE because as long as this shit was in my hands and my single earbud was connecting my 3DS to my left ear I didn’t give a SHIT about Julien and Zoya and all their stupid fucking friends KIRBY HAS COPY ABILITIES NOW
THEY CAN RIDE IN A FISH’S MOUTH
THE FISH HOPS AROUND IT LOOKS FUCKING STUPID
IT’S SO CUTE
IT’S SO CUTE
IT’S KIRBY
FIVE OUTTA FIVE BRO