XOXO Gossip Girl: A review of the recently canceled HBO Max reboot of Gossip Girl recently released its season two finale. 2 words. Eight letters. Cancel It!

When I got the notification that the “Gossip Girl” HBO Max reboot dropped their second season back in November, I was skeptical. Considering that it’s a reboot, the show heavily leans on the loyalty of original “Gossip Girl” fans which isn’t that great on its own.

The show attempts to speak on social media’s control over our lives and the pressure to create the perfect version of yourself online. But this shouldn’t be the point of teen drama shows. I want to watch shows of cheating couples and sports teams drama, not a socially conscious anti-bully after school special.

The second season starts off strong, immediately addressing season one’s “major” cliffhangers but resolving them all by the third episode to move on to a boring episodic formula, with each episode focusing on the flashy event of that week, such as Monet’s birthday that get undermined by Obie’s new girlfriend or a wedding that gets caught in the middle of a drug-bust. This continues until the finale with plot twists as stale as the cast.

I immediately knew back in the show’s first season that this reboot would have trouble as it tried to turn half-sisters Zoya Lott and Julien Calloway relationship into their own version of the original’s frenemies Severna and Blair. 

However, this plotline was abandoned in the second season in exchange for a battle between Julien and her former assistant Monet De Hann to determine the Queen of Constance Billard St. Jude, because apparently all that matters is a high school social hierarchy shouldn’t even affect a show that worries more about the scandals a pharmaceutical than finals.

Their arc seems predetermined before it even begins, and both their friends and the audience are forced to watch these two in a cat fight for attention.

I will admit the positives of writings and character choices that while only making Monet slightly less likable than Julien, elevating her character from the borderline background actor she played in the first season. While these two are not who I’d choose to get more screen time this season, I could say that about anyone.

Therein lies the problem—while the original certainty had its flaws, its appealing cast were able to keep the show on the air as long as it did. The same cannot be said for this group of 20-something-year-old actors still playing high schoolers. 

I fail to see why these people were even cast in the first place when they can’t deliver one memorable line, let alone hold a scene. 

I root for no one, pity no one and hate no one in this show. Gossip Girl never makes the viewer pick a side, because the show’s villains are so clearly in the wrong even before the show explains it to the viewer with monologues that do little but defend its main cast from being hated by anyone watching. 

The show refuses to trust its characters, resorting to played-out plotlines and romantic interests that seem forced and irrelevant with stakes only millionaires and social media addicts would have any sympathy or emotional connection to—which makes me only more irritated.

But, instead of focusing on the only original thing they had going for them, they double down on a huge main cast that is almost never in the same room to take up even more screen time with the fallout of “Gossip Girl’s” latest post. 

This shows mirrors the social media it portrays: fake and filtered to the point where its been stripped of anything worth watching.