They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder and, when it comes to reality TV, that’s certainly true with time. As more time passes since something aired, viewers become more enamored with a particular show, season, cast member or moment. We tend to romanticize the way things used to be and things we may have taken for granted at the time, yearning to have them back. And, for a niche subsection of TV viewer, that applied perfectly to how we viewed NYC Prep.
The one-season reality show is a Bravo classic that centered on a group of teenagers living in Manhattan and provided an inside look into the city’s elite prep school scene, where kids supposedly went out on weeknights, spent lavishly using their parents’ credit cards and climbed the social ladder, all while juggling extracurriculars and maintaining good enough GPAs to get into top colleges. Well, that or use their parents’ connections to get into top colleges.
In other words, NYC Prep was the real-life Gossip Girl, which had already taken a chokehold on the zeitgeist for a couple of years before NYC Prep premiered in June 2009. While the real-life teens spotlighted on the reality show’s lives mirrored those of the characters on Gossip Girl, there’s one key difference. Those characters were played largely by adult actors, while most of the stars of NYC Prep were minors. In hindsight, that has a major impact on how the show lands.
Last month, Bravo opened its vault and released all eight episodes of NYC Prep, among other old shows, onto Peacock — a decade and a half after it first aired. The move met viewers’ demands for the short-lived series to be made available to stream. Despite the show’s one-season run, its legacy proved to be remarkably lasting in the consciousness of the Bravo community. Calls for it to get a follow-up season weren’t uncommon.
Upon rewatch, though, it’s pretty clear why NYC Prep wasn’t picked up for a second season. In addition to feeling overall clunky and forced, there’s an uneasiness that comes from watching a group of 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds attempt to replicate the very adult-like lives of their Gossip Girl counterparts. Whereas there was a certain sexiness to the Nate-Serena-Dan love triangle, the Kelli-Sebastian-Taylor-Cole web on NYC Prep leaves you feeling uncomfortable.
How one views the show now shouldn’t live and die by how it compares to a teen soap, but the comparison is impossible to ignore when you can almost see the stars remembering in real-time that they’re supposed to channel certain archetypes that viewers were familiar with via Gossip Girl. There’s PC, a walking Chuck Bass caricature who lives a self-described “self, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” lifestyle at the age of 18. There’s Sebastian, the girl-obsessed jock with the same swooping hair that Nate Archibald helped make famous. Camille evidently aspires to be Blair Waldorf, donning the character’s signature headbands in nearly every scene and attempting to balance her smarts with snark and social manipulation. And then there’s Taylor, the youngest of the cast and the only one to attend a public school. She’s a Jenny Humphrey-slash-Vanessa-Abrams stand-in who is heartbreakingly in over her head and does her best to keep up with the likes of PC, who goes so far as to make her his “pet project.” You get the point.
There are redeeming moments on NYC Prep, to be sure. Watching Jessie genuinely pursue her dreams of working in fashion and getting into her dream school of FIT was endearing and fun, and seeing Kelli chip away at her singing aspirations and turn down being Sebastian’s sloppy seconds was affirming to see. The series also serves as a time capsule for the time period, making it an amusing trip down memory lane complete with BlackBerrys, infinity scarves and beanies, Paris Hilton sightings at New York Fashion Week and, well, references to Gossip Girl.
But the series is also one of the only reality TV case studies of its kind, serving as a cautionary tale for the ways in which being on such a show at such a young age can affect someone’s future. So much so that, upon rewatch, I found myself asking over and over again why these kids’ parents allowed them to partake in this show in the first place. Did they think it would spotlight their community service efforts and commitment to school work? Perhaps it would serve as an intriguing extracurricular on their college applications or provide them an interesting topic for their corresponding essays? Or maybe they wanted a piece of reality TV fame themselves?
Whatever the reason, it feels safe to assume that things didn’t go as planned for most of them. Camille reportedly got kicked out of her high school before her senior year because of the show and didn’t achieve her goal of going to Harvard. PC, whose sexuality was uncouthly speculated about on NYC Prep, got divorced not long after his platonic wedding wherein Tiffany Trump served as a flower girl. He’s been inactive on Instagram in the years since. Kelli released one single before giving up on her singing career. Unfortunate rumors persist about where Taylor ended up, though nothing has been substantiated; she’s been inactive on the internet for over a decade.
It isn’t difficult to see why NYC Prep connected with viewers 15 years ago, especially those of whom were in and around the stars’ age bracket like myself. Despite its efforts to portray these teens’ lives as being full of dinner parties and fashion shows and charity events, many of the issues they most authentically spar and bond over are relatable ones: hookups and invites to parties and gossiping and school rivalries. In hindsight, though, it’s important to ask whether such conflicts involving real teenagers need to be on TV to begin with. All teenagers have drama; high school is an inherently dramatic and messy time in one’s life. But let’s leave the reality TV drama to the Housewives.
Gibson Johns is an award-nominated entertainment journalist, host, podcaster, and reality TV commentator known for his Bravo hot takes, celebrity interviews and prolific tweeting. His work has appeared in Esquire, Men’s Health, Betches, Yahoo! and more. He’s conducted hundreds of interviews with top celebrities like Khloe Kardashian, Matt Damon, Chrissy Teigen, Kate Hudson and Gabrielle Union, as well as interviews with over 80 “Real Housewives.” He’s appeared as a moderator at multiple BravoCons, hosted premiere panels for Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Potomac and Dancing Queens, and been a guest on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy.
