Gossip Girl reboot was supposed to be progressive, so why is it using the student-teacher relationship trope?

Los Angeles Times

"The teacher-student trope is a common one in teen dramas, including Dawson’s Creek, Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale," says Whitney Friedlander. "Even the latest season of teen comedy Never Have I Ever has what is meant to be a joke about a student who went to the school in the ‘90s and is still legendary for getting one of the teachers pregnant. In the original Gossip Girl, which aired for six seasons on the CW and on which Safran served as a writer and producer, Penn Badgley’s high school student, Dan Humphrey, has a brief affair with teacher Rachel Carr (Laura Breckenridge). When things don’t go well, the audience is meant to pity her as just another victim of Leighton Meester’s queen bee, Blair Waldorf." Friedlander wonders why the new Gossip Girl had to resort to a student-teacher romance. "The new iteration of Gossip Girl prides itself on being more progressive than the original — many have used the term 'woke' —in both the stories it tells and the characters around which it revolves," says Friedlander. Creator Joshua Safran says in response: “Within the writers room, we talked a lot about the sort of scandals that happens at these private schools and there are many scandals related to teacher and student relationships or relations." Safran calls his show's student-teacher relationship "morally wrong," adding that “the goal in watching that is that you’re not meant to be celebrating that this is happening."

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