The television reboot of Heathers was doomed from the start

Spoilers ahead for the US TV remake Heathers.

It should come as no surprise that the marathon release for Paramount Television Heathers collapsed. It was the boxed TV version of the 1988 comedy Delayed repeatedly over the past year, as a spate of school shootings and terrible prequel reviews made the show’s look at high school violence look like a PR disaster. Paramount tried to sell the series, after that Strongly rewritten, and combining its 10-hour episodes into five two-hour segments, removing large portions from the final episode. But it looks like the plan to launch a week-long Halloween marathon of recut release, starting Oct. 25, is coming together.

Then, on October 27, an armed anti-Semite 11 people were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue. On Monday the 29th, Paramount divested two of the merged companies Heathers episodes from the middle of its release schedule, worried that it would seem inappropriate in the wake of more American gun violence. This was the latest setback in a long and bumpy road for the series, however HeathersThe struggles weren’t just a collision of unfortunate current events and misguided nostalgia for ’80s thriller comedies. Right from the start, the show has been a terrific collection of bad decisions and a misreading of the society that produced it.

As it turns out, the world in which the original Winona Ryder and Christian Slater movie was released was really different, and not just because there have been far fewer mass shootings in the United States annually than there are. The current appalling rate. Awareness of mental illness and its treatment was much lower in 1988, and so was the standard of art infringement on the subject. in The current #NeverAgain eraa comedy centered on two high school kids whose reaction to bullies includes murder and a plan to bomb a school feels tasteless and insensitive, even before the casual homophobia and jokes about teen suicide.

the Heathers The series was announced in March 2016, when it was announced He got a pilot order from TV Land, with plans to make it a half-hour comedy. In January 2017, The network has ordered a full season as an hour-long drama, but two months into it, The series has moved to the Paramount Network without explanation. (It could simply be that Paramount, the reworked Spike Network, needed content. It’s also possible that TV Land executives realized they didn’t want Heathers in the lineup.)

In January 2018, the initial trailer sparked a backlash. (More on that in a second.) And most importantly, that School shooting in Parkland, Florida in FebruaryPay Paramount to The series has been delayed from its original debut in March 2018. Three months later, with Parkland still in the news, thanks to the student activist Paramount Voice I dropped the show entirely for what were, by then, well-stated concerns about the show’s lack of sensitivity.

Attempts to sell the completed series to another network It was unsuccessful, despite being sold internationally. In early October, Paramount began promoting its re-edited version of the series, which He removed an entire episode’s worth of material. And then, the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh prompted Paramount to skip airing two of the edited episodes—essentially cutting four of the original unedited episodes, and going straight from the fourth to the final, heavily edited episode. (More on that in a second, too.) All nine episodes, as aired in the United States, are Available for streaming on the Paramount Network website — at least as of this writing.

In addition to the fact that a revenge comedy set in an American high school would play out differently in a Post-Columbine world – the original Heathers Released 11 years before Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people in the infamous American school shooting before Parkland – the TV series makes a variety of changes to the film, almost all of them disturbing. What to make of, say, the series’ original ending, where the high school where the show is set is blown up, leading to an afterlife sequence where the students killed in the explosion are happier than when they were alive? (Good, barely All – Even in death, the main character, Veronica, cannot find peace or belonging, despite her selfish intentions.)

But only international audiences saw it happen. For the American broadcast, the climactic scenes, and most of the remainder of the final episode, were completely abandoned, with bombing left as a possible future. As far as American viewers know, the series ends with Veronica on her way to prom where a bomb may or may not go off, depending on whether her boyfriend and part-time psychopath JD can go through with his attempt to redeem himself in the name of true love.

However, the most dramatic change to the show is the decision to drastically change the lineup of the Heathers themselves. In the original film, they’re a trio of girls who are everything about the dominant social elite: they’re white, straight, traditionally beautiful, heterosexual, elitist, exclusive, judgmental, and bossy. They control and terrorize everyone other than themselves simply because they can. The TV reboot shifts that dynamic up, with a new trio of Heathers: a heavyweight girl, a biracial girl, and a genderqueer student. Together, these formerly marginalized people bully Veronica and JD — who, not coincidentally, are white, straight, traditionally beautiful, and heterosexual. Who can blame them for resisting? They just They stand their groundright?

MAGA’s obvious, terrifying use of the concept drastically changes the story being told, and that was the main reason the trailer for the show was so teasing. This is amazing a dramatic Answer when it first appeared. Critics protested that a story about strangers finding their voice was revised to suggest that strangers and marginalized children have become a dominant force that must be stopped at all costs. Comments for the season ending couldn’t have been kinder, call the offer “A loathsome, fanatical exercise in regression hides behind a veil of black comedy” W complain about it “I managed to take the most problematic aspects of the concept and somehow make them more challenging.”

A big part of the show’s tone deafness may lie in the fact that showrunner Jason Micallef seems to have fundamentally misunderstood the original. Heathers. Talking to Entertainment Weekly About criticism of the trailer in January, he said: “In the original movie, it was the Heathers who I’ve always loved, and it’s the same with the series. The Heathers are the ambitious characters… The villain is JD – that’s the same in the movie and the same in our show.”

Not to defend JD – a psychopathic parody of a rebellious kid, who’s less charming in the TV version – but the point of origin Heathers That was Veronica surrounded by “bad guys,” and that Heathers and JD were just different flavors of narcissistic toxicity that failed to see anything outside of their own desires. The final re-edited version of the show in the US makes this point somewhat by accident when Veronica likens the Heathers to JD as “cool kids” she doesn’t want to talk to.

Unfortunately, the now-missing peak has retracted this reading significantly. In the afterlife, two Heathers meet and happily ask each other, “Why were we so mean to each other there?” “Maybe because it was easier to be mean… than to be brave,” comes the drink-laden response. The message was clear. Bullies! They are socially awkward! They don’t mean to destroy lives. They were really afraid!

Heathers As a concept that feels at odds with the world we live in now – a world where The relationship between bullying and adolescent suicide More bluntly, dismissing bullying with mockery and marginalization seems disingenuous. But if anything, the TV version looks the way it does also Very in tune with the present The personification and otherization of anyone who is not white and straight. Attempts Normalize and explain bullying away It is also the moment, as well as the insincere attempts Pretending to carenext to it when Shock and cruelty are much easier to achieve. Looking at the world through the defining lens of 2018, Heathers It may, in fact, seem ambitious to a certain audience: They are strong and in control, and they are confident that they are not truly a bully at heart, no matter how bullying their words or actions may be.

But the public who might think this path isn’t it Heathers public. Or, at least, not the original Heathers public. Despite all of the film’s volatile attitude, lethal violence, and outrageous “fuck me with a chainsaw,” it’s still about the need for kindness, acceptance, and finding a humane, moderate path between extreme and aggressive viewpoints. (Think of how the movie ends, with Veronica asking the first victim of Heathers’ bullying to hang out.) Heathers. Flipping through the original text of the original without understanding any of its messages was always problematic. Bringing it into a radically changed world was even worse. The show was doomed from the start.