Why the Gossip Girl reboot is way better than the original

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"As interesting as it would be to check out how Gossip Girl operated in the Instagram/TikTok era, a lot of us really didn’t miss diving back into all that Serena-Chuck-Blair drama," says Erick Massoto. "This is why, four episodes in, it’s great to see that the new Gossip Girl kept elements that helped make the original show fun to watch (e.g. 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. During most of its run, the writers forgot that the audience couldn’t relate to several problems of the wealthy 1%, and kept some other, more relatable issues at surface level at best. In Season 1, for example, Dan (Penn Badgley) and Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen) were supposed to be outsiders looking in, AKA us viewers. But it didn’t take long for them to blend in so heavily they ended up becoming variations of Serena (Blake Lively), Blair (Leighton Meester), Chuck (Ed Westwick) and Nate (Chace Crawford) with problems that mostly boiled down to fleeting relationships and expensive parties. Also, Vanessa (Jessica Szohr), the only POC in the main cast, had (to no one’s surprise) an astounding number of zero compelling storylines and ended up fading into the background, to the point of pissing off the novel series writer Cecily von Ziegesar." ALSO: How the original Gossip Girl sold a romantic fantasy that was always a lie.