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Pop Culture Experts Report Gossip Girl Has Lost Its Steam

Style Versus Substance Kinon notes that Gossip Girl “catapulted into pop culture entirely on the back of its buzzworthiness - who is Gossip Girl? What was that song? Who makes those shoes S was rocking?” Not on the merits of its plot or compelling characters. Now that the initial buzz is wearing off, what’s left—the story—holds little interest to the general public.

“It’s getting a little long in the tooth,” Thompson said. “The premise of the show was so interesting and exciting in the beginning, but this season’s story lines don’t seem to be clicking. It’s not like if you watch an episode this season, you can say that it’s fundamentally worse than it was last season - it just doesn’t seem to have the shelf life of other programming.”

Stars Aren’t As Much of a Draw Where the show’s stars were the young, fresh new faces of Hollywood, their inherent newsworthiness—even as Chace Crawford graces People as their Hottest Bachelor of the year—seems to be waning as well.

“They’re no longer that interesting,” AOL Television’s Maggie Furlong told the News, also noting that her story on Gossip Girl-inspired Halloween costumes garnered only one comment from readers. “That would have never happened a year ago. Now everyone wants to argue about the Gosselins instead.”

The ratings for Gossip Girl this season seem only to reinforce these theories. In the last few weeks, the show has dipped below 2 million viewers, where it used to consistently post numbers above 3 million in its first season.

Guest Star Overload While neither Kinon or Thompson addressed the issue, I can’t help but wonder if the slew of special guest stars and press-baiting storylines has actually hurt the series more than helped. As a longtime viewer who enjoys the series, and gets paid to pay diligent attention to each excruciating detail, it saddens me to say this season of Gossip Girl truly is considerably more disjointed than either of those that came before. Forcing one-shot guest stars into an already overloaded cast has the show’s writers consistently creating plotlines that are inconsequential to the overall momentum.

Now eight episodes into season 3, the show has no underlying, cohesive plot around which its mainstays can rally—in turn, as the weeks go on, these characters interact less with each other than any other scripted show I’ve ever seen. One week Serena is frolicking with her new boyfriend Carter, and the next she’s wrangling Tyra Banks: both have since evaporated from the series.

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