The new Gossip Girl has everything: long lost half sisters, Instagram wars, plotting mean girls, indecisive boyfriends, a budding throuple, and, of course, an anonymous site hellbent on exposing everyone's dirty little secrets. It's a whole lot of fun. It's also extremely disturbing. Because, let's not forget: Gossip Girl is about a teacher stalking her students.
When Gossip Girl 2.0 started, Kate Keller — who is, again, their teacher — was posting things that, supposedly, fell into her lap. The truth about Zoya's scholarship, and even the pictures of Obie and Zoya undressing in the same apartment, weren't things she actively sought out, they came to her. (Though it's still unclear whether or not the teacher who took those photos was following them or just happened to see them during his nice evening walk in a torrential downpour.) But in Episode 2, things take a turn for the worst.
When she spots Obie and Zoya sneak out of the school's charity fundraiser event, Kate runs to the elevators to follow them. We don't see it, but given that Julien later takes a car to track them down, Kate either followed the pair on the subway or in a cab all the way to this random stationary store, where she then hid in a bodega across the street and took pictures of them. If she took a car, that means a 23-25-year-old spent act least $20 (possibly much more) to follow a 14-year-old girl and a 17-year-old-boy and watch them buy notebooks and highlighters for disadvantaged students. Read that again. An adult woman went out of her way, spending part of her no doubt criminally low salary, to spread gossip about a girl who is fresh out of middle school.
Put this woman in jail.
And Kate isn't just actively stalking them now. She's also seriously endangering their futures. She's a faculty member, so she must know that Zoya is on thin ice with the headmistress at school. And she knows that Zoya does not have the funds or power required to stay at Constance Billard should the administration decide to give her the boot for no reason other than accepting a scholarship. Even though, as Kate told Zoya in this episode, she deserved it. And yet, her decision to post about Zoya and Obie almost caused Zoya to leave school. That might not have been her intention, but she's smart enough to know that posting about Zoya would put her at risk.
Now Kate is also sitting on a video that got Zoya expelled from her last school. One that she obtained through her GG accomplices, and one she never would have even known about if Zoya hadn't confided in her as her teacher. She already sent it to Julien in exchange for verification on Instagram, and she ominously ended the episode telling her friends that she hoped she would never have to use it. YOU CAN DECIDE NOT TO, KATE.
As an adult woman who enjoys watching shows about dramatic teens, I don't often say this, but, Kate Keller, girl, you gotta stop this obsession with teenagers' love lives. It's not healthy.
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Image: HBO Max