Conspiracy, theft, betrayal, adultery, romance, deceit. Are all of these…characteristics of Shakespeare’s plays? Perhaps a melodrama? Not at all. Try his mid-August show about a group of preppy high school students whose favorite accessories are multi-thousand dollar designer shoes and candy-colored leggings.Of course I’m talking about the original work. gossip girl.
This show premiered when I was six years old, and I thought I had a lot in common with Constance Billard and the boys and girls at St. Jude. I went to school in Manhattan, walked around the city wearing a Catholic high school uniform, and roamed the streets of New York City with a crew like thousands of other high school students. I’m not an Upper East Sider (a student who attends here on a scholarship), and the closest art museum to my alma mater at West 13th was at the Whitney, but at least I had a chance to visit some of my old favorites. I wanted to see it on the screen and feel it. A wave of nostalgia. Urban teens, no matter where they were from, snacked on $1 pizza and Arizona Girlfriend Tea after school. Apparently not!
Watching Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen, and the rest of New York’s fictional 1% is like a fever dream: a dramatic, high-stakes, intrigue-filled fever dream. I felt like I was inside. But I worked hard. And what I can say for sure is that I was never bored.
Here’s what I thought after watching season 1: gossip girl.
I wasn’t prepared for how many scenes would leave my jaw on the floor.
Chuck Bass is mean and boring. This was the first thing I wrote down after I gasped comically when Chuck – scorned and perhaps heartbroken – revealed to Gossip Girl that Blair was nearly pregnant. That was the moment when a switch was flipped. One moment Blair was belittling her, the next she was lashing out at his business via text messages on her Motorola Q.
Also, while I thought I was used to Constance Billard’s casual schemes and intrigues with the girls, I wasn’t ready for Georgina Sparks to get into this. When she cries at Dan’s command and pulls stories of her boyfriend and stalker out of thin air. She took out the battery from her cell phone. Then I hooked up with him, it was all because Serena was going back to the club with her…I knew I hadn’t even seen the worst of the Upper East Side yet. But what made Georgina’s behavior problematic was that the girl clearly had talent. Maybe she should have channeled it into her Hollywood career instead of just some teenage shenanigans?
Is 2000s fashion back? Or maybe you just stared at colored leggings for too long?
I’ve probably seen more colored tights on the streets of New York this month than I’ve probably seen since the 2010s (I’ll be honest, I’ve only seen red tights about three times), and one thing I knew: , gossip girl The show has doubled down on that trend. It did not disappoint.
