Remember the Gossip Girl pilot? It almost seems like it was part of a dream; 2007 was a long, long time ago. But starting tonight, the Style network is reairing three episodes of GG every Wednesday, plunging us back into that faraway world of just-so headbands and private-school pomp. However one might feel about the direction the show has taken in recent years (“y’know, not that great” probably being the most common feeling), there’s no way around how terrific that first season was. And the pilot — that pilot is just about perfect.
“The Kiss-On-The-Lips Dance.” Were we ever so young? So chaste? So in danger of being date-raped by Chuck Bass? We were. The proliferation of slightly dark teen dramas on ABC Family (Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game) might make the serious tinge of GG feel routine, or its reliance on texting seem ordinary, but once upon a time, GG was the one innovating and putting fresh spins on the creaky teen genre. As the summer winds down and there’s next to nothing on TV except for Sunday nights, what better time to revisit some of our old Constance Billard pals. To that end:
- Here’s our very first Gossip Girl recap, where the believability/unbeilevabilty counts came out dead even!
- Here’s our intro to the characters of GG, where we compared Jenny Humphrey to Lindsay Lohan’s character from Mean Girls. Times change.
- And here’s our 2008 cover story about how the show ushered in the modern era of TV kibbitzing.
XOXO, etc.