gossip girl was the greatest show of our generation: the prologue
the scene, ten years ago:
a train pulls into grand central; a soft camera shutter; the backseat of a black limousine; central park at the dawn of winter; tight headbands and loose scarves; and here’s a secret: happiness does not seem to be on the menu.
If you know anything about me, you know that I hold a deep reverence for gossip girl.
I’m serious: the collective of post-gossip girl society thinks and behaves in a completely different way because of this show that premiered on the CW in September of 2007. (September 19th, 2007 at 9/8c to be exact.)
I sat down to write my magnum opus on why gossip girl was the greatest show, period. This isn’t that post.*
They don’t make shows like this anymore. By all counts, gossip girl was a terrible show—mired in melodrama and misery–but I stand by the first season of the show as the pinnacle of modern television. I cannot, in good conscience, defend any season after the first.
gossip girl was lightning in a Moët bottle: a pre-during-post meditation on the recession generation; the rich (always) getting richer; our young, budding relationship to the internet and to each other in the anonymity of cyberspace; media creation and consumption at the precipice of pixel-driven virality; a parody of celebrity before it became unchecked influence; smudged fingerprints of gilded-age wealth as the axis of capital itself has shifted; beautiful, photogenic people basically getting away with murder; the city of new york at a reckoning with itself; the kind of super rich kid problems that feel down to earth and detached in outer space; elitism and classism and all the -isms that are trivial to the people at the top; and the rest of us at the bottom, longingly watching from our voyeuristic vantage point of aspiration.
The music in gossip girl was a visceral stylistic choice (listen: this spotify playlist). This show was glamorous, glitzy, and golden: covered in lush excess, but beating with a real heart underneath. In the post-indie rock of the early 2000s to emergent edm-influenced pop of the late 2000s, emerged Josh Schwartz-produced television as a vehicle for musical discovery.
That was the most striking thing about gossip girl’s sensibility: it was musical in the way it was poppy and resplendent, yet also sullen and subtle. The original pilot was a paragon of this duality. Top 40 Radio meets undiscovered iTunes gem.
The pilot featured the hits of the 2007 heyday, with Timbaland’s “The Way I Are” introducing the Kiss on the Lips party, a whirlwind spin with Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around” after Serena’s sudden rearrival sends shockwaves through the social scene. At the same time, the series begins with the folksy twang of Peter, Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” hummed above a loud train pulling into Grand Central, later Albert Hammond Jr’s “It’s Hard to Live in the City” plays above these teens packed into a party-bound limo—cements the sonic textures of the Upper East Side that would soon become iconic.
The 2021 pilot doesn’t quite live up to the musical legacy of its predecessor, but it gets off the right foot and has enough time to grow. Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids” is precisely an inspired choice to anchor the first series trailer, and also the first glimpse of the core seven in the same scene of the Constance courtyard. The injection of “positions” by Ariana Grande marks the grand, fashionably late return to the Gossip Girl 2.0 voiceover under the tones of Kristen Bell’s long-missed signature snark. There’s a new guard in town.
*I’m not quite there yet, but perhaps I’ll gather these thoughts on paper when I’m feeling particularly sharp pangs of nostalgia during the season finale of the reboot.