We know we loved her, but since her polarising return to the small screen this July, Tatler Singapore has a few questions for the new Gossip Girl
Name dropped by the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, in the middle of his presidential address during the height of the show’s popularity in 2009, Gossip Girl’s cultural impact was undeniable. But labelling the original critically acclaimed television show about social surveillance as merely ‘iconic’ would not only be doing it a huge disservice, it would also be a colossal understatement.
Apart from being an irrefutable zeitgeist that defined an entire generation, the original Gossip Girl also helped redefine whistleblowing for millennials and left an indelible mark on fashion and pop culture. Informing the way we dressed, spoke and signed off our text messages, the series that made headbands, bowties and even frenemies fashionable, also made instant household names out of Blake Lively and Leighton Meester.
And since her return to the small screen this July, Gossip Girl 2.0 promises to introduce a new brood of prominent progeny for us to fawn over. But before we fall madly in love with them and rekindle our passion for one of the most famous neighbourhoods in the Big Apple all over again, the new reboot has been drawing its fair share of criticism from the franchise’s hardcore fans and new viewers.
From its feeble premise to glaring loopholes, it is our civic duty at Tatler Singapore to hold the mirror up to the highest echelons of high society—fictional and the likes—and ask Gossip Girl the hard-hitting questions. Here are some things we desperately need answers for.
1. So, the new Gossip Girl is Tavi Gevinson?
Wait? That is the premise? While we are still recovering from the worst plot twist in television history—lest we forget how Penn Badgley’s Dan Humphrey (read: Lonely Boy) was the true identity of the original Gossip Girl, this reboot spares no expense in laying bare the identity of the current author to the viewers. Revealed to be one of the teachers from the infamous fictional all-girls private school Constance Billard, former fashion darling Tavi Gevinson’s character Kate Keller is the new mastermind behind Gossip Girl. Hoping to “take back power” from their unruly spoilt students, the tutors have banded together to bend the will of their students through blackmail with an anonymous Instagram account. What? Is suspense suddenly dead?