YMMV / Gossip Girl (2021)

• Audience-Alienating Premise:
  • For some, the idea that adults are running the Gossip Girl account to mess with their students was too off-putting of a premise to get behind.
  • LGBTQ fans were very put off by the student/teacher plotline and all the attention it got. While eventually it's shown to be an unhealthy abuse of power, the show takes far too long treating it as just another relationship drama, so many don't make it that far. It runs headlong into an alienating conclusion as well, given that the only gay main character is cemented as a serial statutory rapist and the bisexual main characters never apologize for creating relationship problems and simply make it all work with a threesome, which made it a tough sell for the LGBTQ community.
• Fandom Rivalry: Like their predecessors before them, with Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin thanks to both being Soft Reboots of popular teen dramas focusing on a clique of high schoolers, now releasing within a relatively short timeframe and on the same streaming service HBO Max, with comparisons over which series is the better reboot being common.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In episode 5, after Audrey’s mother is hospitalized in the aftermath of an overdose, her friends comfort Audrey at the hospital. Despite the dynamic of the friend group becoming strained ever since the arrival of Gossip Girl, this moment shows that they still care about each other.
  • Aki in his interactions with Zoya. Even if they don’t interact enough, he not to only showed genuine interest in celebrating Thanksgiving at the Lott household (hoping to even be directly invited), but also calls out Obie for cheating on Zoya by sleeping with Julien.
• One True Threesome: Aki/Audrey/Max is probably the trendiest ship of the show since the pilot and even before. A lot of fans think that will resolve the general sexual tension between them. They get a Relationship Upgrade in the Season 1 finale.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Julien/Obie: Jobie
  • Zoya/Obie: Zobie (mentioned in the pilot)
  • Audrey/Aki: Audaki, Akidrey
  • Max/Aki: Akimax, Maki
  • Max/Audrey: Maudrey
  • Luna/Monet: Lunet
  • Max/Aki/Audrey: Makidrey, Akimaudrey
• Questionable Casting: Following in the footsteps of shows like Glee and Beverly Hills, 90210, Tavi Gevinson (25 years old) who plays new teacher Kate is either almost the same age as (Evan Mock, 24), or younger than (Thomas Doherty, 26; Zion Morenno, 26; Jordan Alexander, 27) the actors cast as her students.
• Rated M for Money: The fact that the series is produced for a streaming platform as opposed to a broadcast network like its predecessor (which itself was seen as too provocative for its time) allows it to be looser with its treatment of sexuality, which some see as a selling point.
• Uncertain Audience: The show in some ways suffers from trying to do two things at once. It both wants to capture the energy of the original and do hard-hitting topical social commentary, but it doesn't quite manage it. Fans who want to see spoiled rich teenagers shamelessly engaging in bad behavior don't really get their fix, but the social commentary is written in a serious way that clashes with the high-melodrama tone of the other plotlines (see Kate's earnest line about how Gossip Girl "would never shame a woman for exercising her right to choose"), which makes it come off as shallow, tacked-on, and/or unintentionally funny, putting off viewers who would enjoy an issue-based show.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Zoya and Obie’s romance starting immediately after Obie ended his relationship of several years with Zoya’s sister, with neither showing the slightest concern for how this might hurt Julien, soured a lot of fans on both characters and their relationship.
  • All of main characters (except Aki) are this due to the way they treated new freshman Zoya in Season 1. To give some examples, Monet and Luna humiliated her socially and Julien and Obie have an affair when the latter was with her and Kate acts as a Cool Teacher with her but being Gossip Girl it's more to collect informations against her.
  • Kate deciding to resurrect Gossip Girl to "educate" the students and make them "the next AOC", which is portrayed as justified because the students are (admittedly, completely accurately) rude and entitled, is this. This includes actions like stalking the kids, taking semi-intimate photos of them, and harassing them online—yes, the entire show is about how the teens are mostly jerks and unfairly get away with everything because of their rich parents, but they're still kids. Zoya is fifteen! (Not to mention she's only just arrived at Constance Billard and hasn't done anything whatsoever when Gossip Girl capitalizes on her to screw with Julien—and, in fact, due to her Soapbox Sadie tendencies she's already the kind of person Kate claims to want to create.) Kate's assertion that this is "[effecting] real social change" instead of petty revenge seems mindbogglingly naive at best, self-deluding at worst.