Whitney Peak and Jordan Alexander as Zoya Lott and Julien Calloway. Yes, you could play a drinking game around every forced cultural reference (Obie flirting by mentioning Joker is this week’s worst offender), but they’re no longer shoe-horned in at such a rapid clip.
There was a lot to prove, but thankfully the second episode doesn’t try so hard. Last week’s reveals – Gossip Girl is an Instagram account now, inspired, in a meta twist, by the original show’s blog! It’s run by teachers for vague reasons! Also, here are a dozen characters! Look how cool Gen Z and, by extension, this show, is! – all landed with a tinge of desperation. And this week, the show gets down to business. But Gossip Girl, of all ‘people’, knows that true cultural currency isn’t created but earned. After the pilot, it was easy to discount Gossip Girl as a sad attempt at a cool, Gen Z-targeted reboot.
