Please Stop Rebooting Shows

Gossip Girl. Pretty Little Liars. How I Met Your Mother.

Were these perfect shows? No. Were these entertaining shows? Yes. Do I rewatch these shows? Sometimes. Over and over again, minus a few episodes. Do I want to see them get rebooted? Maybe, sure. But with different casts and storylines and basically everything else minus the title? NO.

How are we already here? It has been barely a year into the decade, and we are already running out of stories to tell? What will I be watching during my retirement years? The suite life of the nursing home?

These reboots’ storylines are not even similar to the original one. They borrow a few elements from the original one and then do a whole new sequence that doesn’t feel like the original. And if the writers can come up with new stories, why not a new title too? I get it is for the money, to implant nostalgia into audiences’ minds and entice them to watch it. But these reboots never live up to the expectations. I don’t think there is ever a reboot that has hit the numbers the original ones have, from viewership to ratings on various platforms, reboots are just another Hollywood’s pathetic attempt to get more viewers and money. Except it almost always backfires, and the reboots never go past season 3.

To do a good reboot, the writers have to take what was good from the original and adapt it to modern times. In the original Gossip Girl, the students behaved more like a senator’s mistress than high school students (fun fact, one of them was actually a senator’s mistress). They were constantly engaged in underage drinking, having sex with adults when they are minors, and doing totally nonsensical and often unethical things without batting an eye. The good thing about gossip girl was it served as an escapist show, a tiny peek into the inside world of the uber-rich. The bad thing about it was the questionable things their characters did from time to time. Like when Serena secretly filmed her and Dan having sex to get back and Blair. Or when Blair hazed a teacher. Or when Chuck sold Blair for a hotel. Or when Nate dated girls with the widest age gap. He likes them really young or really old. The wild decisions the characters made back wouldn’t bode well in today’s environment, so to make the reboot somewhat decent, they just have to fix those problems. You would think that this is a pretty simple concept to understand, but in the reboot, the teachers are gossip girl. They are the ones going around filming their students doing unspeakable things to try and discipline them. How, what, why would this be a good idea?

Also, why was Gossip Girl chosen to be rebooted when it ended only 9 years ago? Are there really no more stories left to tell? Did all writers run out of creative juices in less than 10 years? Do the studios not want more varied shows to expand their catalogue, and make their streaming queue more exciting? The same case could be made for live-action adaptations of movies. They are boring. I do not want to see the same thing twice, especially since the animated version is always better, due to the limitless possibilities of 2d. Unlike in real life, where a lion has zero emotions. Because it is a lion. And a lion’s cry sounds just like its roar. So, it’s more scary, less awww.

Reboots are lazy storytelling. I think studios and writers tend to forget, but nostalgia can only do so much. The rest of the time, it is up to a writer’s ability to craft a story that is worth audiences’ time. The only thing reboots are guaranteed to do is make the original looks more perfect and audiences will rewatch those, which is good for the studios, but am I supposed to just keep watching Gossip Girl until I die? That may sound like a dream when I was first watching it, but not so much now.

In summation, please stop rebooting shows; And remaking live actions for no reason. I believe the general public aren’t idiots. They can, in fact, watch shows and movies that have no nostalgic ties whatsoever. There are plenty of stories left to tell, and if you ever run out of ideas, you can call me.

(There are at least a hundred stories on my laptop, and it’ll be so cool to see one of them on screen.)