Gossip Girl
I was a little late to Gossip Girl. I had a teenage cousin addicted to the show and my mom got her all the Cecily von Ziegesar books for her way back in 2007 right after the show premiered. So I wasn't ignorant, I just hadn't tuned in yet. Which happened about a year later and I was hooked. While many of the actors have gone onto bigger careers, I never really connected with anyone, but Penn Badgley's post Gossip Girl evolution just tickles me. But I connected to the stories. They were ape shit crazy. They were eighties soap operas on crack. They turned it up to eleven and I watched it all the way to the very end, miscarriages, stalkings, affairs, divorces, royals, incest, I could never get enough, even if the ending literally makes no sense. And Kristen Bell was the wry narrator throughout, and this was at the height of my Kristen Bell/Veronica Mars obsession which the revival destroyed. Therefore I was excited when HBO Max announced they were bringing it back. Who wouldn't want more over-the-top Upper East Siders? Especially given that Kristen Bell was returning. And seeing as it's a continuation not a reboot it's within the same universe so there were chances at many a cameo from the original cast. But the show premiered and it was lackluster to say the least. Or as my brother bluntly says, it was bad. The concept of the teachers running Gossip Girl was clever, but they needed to go darker, like Cecily von Siegsar when she turned her first Gossip Girl book into an American Psycho parody. No morals, go fully amoral. Plus the kids... Um, has a show been ever this badly cast? None of these actors have any charisma, which love or hate the original cast you couldn't deny they had IT! You don't like or care for a single one of these new characters, and as for the love triangle with Obie, he's actually a black hole of charisma. He sucks your will to live every time he's on screen. Oh and don't get me started on how unrealistic these teenagers are, seducing teachers, acting like stereotypes of old Jewish talent agents, behaving like married couples celebrating their silver wedding anniversary who have to spice up their marriage with a throuple? Yes, adding this all up makes me wonder why I kept watching, and the answer is I'm a completest and there were bright spots, Laura Benanti, Luke Kirby, Lucy Punch, and of course Kristen Bell. Though again, the way they underutilized the narrator feature and made it mushy with too much wallpaper music is a major flaw. But there was a spark on the horizon, as in Georgina Sparks! She kind of saved it for two episodes, but not really. Because Kate's motivation for running Gossip Girl shifted so dramatically in season two that the show literally stopped making sense. What's more I finally found the perfect analogy to describe this new iteration, it's a show made up entirely of Vanessas; AKA not just the worst character in the history OG Gossip Girl but in the history of TV for a multitude of sins. Thankfully this "continuation" has been discontinued.
Back in 2018 when I first heard about You I was instantly hooked by the idea that Dan Humphrey had finally reached the pinnacle of his evolution. He was nothing more than a stalker on Gossip Girl, so to actually end up killing the object of his affection, well, that was logical wasn't it? I applaud Penn Badgley for being willing to not just rewrite the history of what made him a teenage heartthrob, but to lean into the creepier aspects of Dan to become Joe. Season one of You was a powerhouse of stalking and bookish New York with Joe's bookstore and Beck's delusions of being an author, just throw in a rare L. Frank Baum book and a Salinger, and the book geek in me was as obsessed with this show as Joe was with Beck. Therefore I was a little hesitant as to how I'd like season two. Joe was being yanked out of his New York intelligentsia bubble and being transplanted in Los Angeles, the least Joe place I can think of. And yet... it worked. It REALLY worked. Joe meant to kept his head down and just survive and here he is being drawn into the world of Love Quinn and her co-dependent brother Forty. The stalking of Love is on a much more equal footing than with Beck. She herself has dark secrets and a past and somehow like calls to like and you find yourself rooting for these two crazy people to succeed. At the same time as this there's a part of Joe trying to be a social justice warrior. We saw this in season one with his care of the neighbor kid Paco and here he embraces his landlord's little sister Ellie. Because of these he gets pulled into the world of comedian and friend of Forty, Henderson, who is just as creepy on screen as off. So in barely no time at all Joe has forged new connections and a new life for himself, this time with people who are willing to back up his murderous inclinations. But we know that a happily ever after couldn't be on the cards for a killer... so the story continues and who knows who will be his next obsession. Could it be you? 
