37 Thoughts I Had While Rewatching Episode 1 of ‘NYC Prep’

The news of any aughts-era reality show streaming on Bravo is always exciting to me (if either of my parents, who spent a significant amount of money to educate me, are reading that sentence, sorry), but I have to admit that I’m especially excited about the streaming availability of NYC Prep, the 2009 Bravo show billed as a “real-life Gossip Girl,” given that I’m an alum of two of the fancy New York City private schools featured on the show.

As a new ninth-grade student and Ghost World-style one-bestie loser in high school, I watched NYC Prep with all the disgust of the people recapping it for Gawker, telling myself that out in the real world, at least people found some comic value in how supremely wealthy and entitled many of my classmates were. Now, though, I have a weird empathy for the kids featured on the show, mostly just because I genuinely believe that nobody should be on reality TV while their soft, precious brain (however coddled and Burberry-addled it may be) is still forming. That said, I’m not above revisiting their foibles for entertainment value, so let’s dive in, shall we?

1. Oh, God, this episode is called “Top Half of One Percent,” and I’m guessing it’s not referring to milk fat percentage.
2. Just the sight of lacrosse sticks in Central Park is giving me nostalgic hives.
3. LOL, I remember feeling like such a loser hearing the kids on the show say that “everyone knows everyone on the New York prep school scene,” because, again, I pretty much just knew my one best friend. Then again, she’s still my best friend and we’re currently on a girls’ trip to Las Vegas together, so suck it, popular peers!
4. The NYC panoramas…I get the idea, but why are we dragging the Chrysler Building into this atrocity?
5. Time to meet the gang!
6. Jessie (blond, angry, into fashion) and PC (dark hair, rich, Kirkland-brand Chuck Bass) are getting drinks? At a bar? To de-stress from college applications?
7. Was the legal drinking age just a suggestion in 2009?
8. Am I the Church Lady?
9. Moving on.
10. PC saying New York is “all about money and power” really prefigures Roman Roy in a lot of ways.
11. The only thing on this show that I can vouch for is Jessie’s steely eyed resolve to get into college by any means necessary, even if it means doing stuff for others.
12. You don’t hear guys saying “Rock on” so much anymore. A shame.
13. A slap has already been threatened, five minutes in!
14. Kelli (dark hair, aspiring singer, parents live in the Hamptons and let her and her older brother live alone in the city in what seems like a very direct example of child endangerment) is ordering chicken and broccoli for her family with the credit card number she memorized long ago. City kids; we really do grow up fast!
15. It’s very adorable to see anyone’s mom asking about homework. Don’t get me wrong, homework was a big part of my New York prep-school existence, but these kids have actual lives!
16. Uh-oh, Sebastian (blond, swoopy hair; speaks French; proto-Chalamet vibes) shows up to crash Kelli’s girls’ dinner, and there are vibes.
17. Watching a teenage girl give a teenage boy her number via Blackberry has officially killed me.
18. Hey, it’s Camille (dark hair, very driven, a year ahead of me in middle school, although I obviously never knew her) planning out her life, which includes Harvard, a husband, two kids, and becoming the “business head of a genetics firm.” She’s lucky she dodged the Theranos bullet, TBH.
19. Camille is checking her SAT scores at Sarabeth’s, a restaurant that the blonde girls in my class liked very much, as I recall.
20. She did well! Yay!
21. Aw, it’s Taylor (long, dark hair; refreshingly strict mom; the lone public-school attendee on the show)!
22. I just want it to be known that Taylor would have had a much more difficult time getting into her extremely high-ranked NYC public school than any of these rich kids would have had getting into their private schools. She should be flexing, frankly!
23. The notion of a high school student spending $500 a day on a regular basis is making me slightly ill, even though I knew kids in high school who got $20,000 deposited in their accounts by their parents at the start of every semester.
24. Taylor’s mom (very reasonably) doesn’t want to pay for a party at a restaurant for Manhattan’s mini-elite, because parents just don’t understand.
25. Sebastian and Kelli are on a shopping date, which soon leads to all the girlies being out at some inscrutable, dimly lit restaurant, which soon leads to Taylor being made to feel like shit for going to public school. I want to parachute her out of here!
26. Ooh, sparks between Sebastian and Taylor are flying, despite his previous shopping date with Kelli!
27. Jessie complaining about Gossip Girl filming near her house is a delicious little piece of inanity.
28. PC and Jessie allegedly have a past, I’m learning.
29. Imagine being “well-known in the prep school scene.”
30. “In the prep-school scene, Jessie is known to be a bitch” is an iconic Camille line.
31. Wow, people using the phrase “hook up” to mean “meet up” and not “have sex”…things were different in 2009.
32. Taylor is so real for fighting with her mom at Bloomingdale’s.
33. Taylor saying she won’t take dating advice from her mom because “she’s divorced and doesn’t have a boyfriend”…I would immediately leave her at the department store, personally.
34. Sebastian is sooo addicted to swooping his hair.
35. PC is being semi-mean to Camille and Kelli at yet another fancy dinner.
36. “You guys still get grounded?” Ugh, shut up, PC.
37. Okay, episode’s over and I will officially not be raising my children in New York City. Love and light!