Gossip Girl

A lot of people have been asking me recently how I choose what to write about next.  And by a lot of people, I actually mean nobody – I’m just using an Instagram trope here.  Friends tend to look away sheepishly if I ever ask them directly about reading my blog.  If I wander over to a conversation about boxsets in the office, silence suddenly descends as people fear I’ll try and promote my writing and opinions.  Sure, everyone wants to tell me what to review, so now I’ve got a list of shows I’ll never get through, but then people only read if they like the programme I’m rinsing.  But no, each one of these is a gem, so please read them all.  If you don’t like the show, there’s enough rambling about me as a person to counter that.  And this week is no different.

Currently bogged down in some big old boxsets, I’m raiding the archives again.  Two things have brought Gossip Girl to the top of the list.  One is the return of colder weather to London after the inhumanity of July’s heatwave.  As a sweaty adult, I couldn’t be happier.  Winter is coming, and everyone knows back to school is the best time of year.  You can get a new pencil case, some fresh pens, and you’re another year up in school, which increases teenage coolness no end.  However, I’m thirty-three and I work in an office.  Rather than returning from the summer hols reinvented, I’ve not been off since April (though that was for a trip to Japan, so, you know…) and we don’t have pencil cases at work due to the clear desk policy and the replacement of pen and paper by laptops.  But no, it’s colder and I love it.  And if there was ever a show for giving you winter coat inspiration, just take a look at any episode of Gossip Girl.  Every character, even those on supposedly limited incomes, has an endless supply of on-fleek winterwear.  This might give you some pointers on the quality of Gossip Girl’s drama, the fact that coats are the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the show.

The second reason is that I recently passed the ten-year mark in the job I so freely berate in these posts.  In June 2008, at my final interview, I talked about Gossip Girl in answer to an important question.  In those days, the department I was entering mostly only did TV sponsorships.  My two interviewers were asking me which I had seen on telly myself.  Let’s set the scene.  I had cycled across a boiling London from my hellish old job, so I was sweaty (recurring theme) and dishevelled, with uncontrollable helmet hair.  I also had an eye infection, thanks to the effect of general London dirt on my Home Counties eyes.  So my contact lenses had been abandoned for the NHS specs I only wear behind closed doors.  On the thirteenth floor of a Holborn office block, the sun was shining directly in my face, optimising the sweat-fest conditions so much so that I had to rub the perspiration repeatedly from my clammy forehead.  Don’t worry, I totally got the job obviously, and my new colleagues later told me they got a Harry Potter vibe from me due to all the conditions of my appearance I have just described.

So what TV sponsorship should they realistically expect a twenty-three-year-old lad to talk about?  Maybe some sort of football or other ball sport?  No, I was happy to make a banging first impression by talking about Gossip Girl.  If you’re going to enjoy TV aimed at teenage girls, you might as well get that out in the open as a first step.  In those days, a combination of graduate poverty and historic media technology meant that TV could only be consumed as per the TV guide.  ITV2 seemed only to schedule Gossip Girl at 10.35pm every third Thursday as long as the moon was blue and pigs were flying.  Didn’t stop me though.  I never missed an episode, complete with Guerlain sponsorship idents for a sickly-sweet perfume aimed at teenage girls (like me) with olfactory challenges (not like me).  Cue me bossing the question with epic insights into why the brand and the programme were the perfect convergent fit.  Cue my future employers hiring me because I reminded them of Harry Potter.

After 750 words, then, I should probably tell you what the show is about.  The premise focuses on an exclusive Manhattan school for wealthy kids.  Enter via bridge or tunnel Dan Humphrey, a scholarship-endowed chap with curious side-burns, played by an actor named after a brand of tennis ball (Penn Badgley).  His crush on Serena van der Woodsen (a charmingly ingenue Blake Lively, but with a chequered past when it suited the plot) generated the tension of the first series, if I remember rightly, but luckily this was all stretched out for six series of 121 episodes.  Little bit of Mean Girls, little bit of Cruel Intentions, little bit of anything that’s ever been set in New York: this was Gossip Girl.

Well, that was the whole point: which of the main characters was actually Gossip Girl?  I never finished watching the show, so I don’t really know myself.  It doesn’t matter as I can’t be sure I ever understood what this concept was supposed to be anyway.  These were the days before smartphones and 4G.  Using the internet away from your ethernet cable was limited to noticing your ancient mobile had accidentally switched on WAP and imagining an extortionate bill on your Orange tariff.  This didn’t stop Blair Waldorf or Chuck Bass in their conniving ways, using this nebulous platform to drop dirt on friends and frenemies alike, setting us viewers up for a roller coaster of crossing, double crossing and back crossing until seeing the end credits came as a welcome release.  Each instalment would culminate in some sort of catered event: a birthday party, some welcome drinks, basically anything.  In the run up, boyfriends and girlfriends would need to betray each other in the best interests of each other (I think), resulting in a climactic unearthing of the truth on Gossip Girl, heralded by simultaneous mobile bleeping as the blast came through and the action kicked off.  I say action, but the boys were restricted to conveying emotion through smoulder only, and the girls similarly limited to pouting, so the whole thing resulted in the kind of face porn that makes you disappointed to leave the comfort of your own home and see an ugly person.  Or there might have been one in the actual house with you, which was all the more shocking due to its proximity to Nate Archibald or Vanessa Abrams.

In 2012, Gossip Girl bid us XOXO for the last time, inspiring a Beyoncé classic, but leaving a glamorous teen drama-shaped hole in all of our viewing lives.  I’m none the wiser about who ended up with whom, but the Upper East Side must be awash with genetically blessed babies by now.  A reboot wouldn’t know what to do with itself.  Gossip Girl would have to go multi-platform, with accounts on SnapChat, Tinder, Insta and probably LinkedIn.  I just hope Dorota is on more than minimum wage and that Eric van der Woodsen no longer has a centre parting.  So, to all those a lot of people who have been asking me what’s getting covered next, just chill out and keep reading yeah?  At the rate this thing is growing, you’ll be able to claim early adopter status by 2020.