First rumored in 2009 as a Fox series, then promptly forgotten about as revenge fantasies against privileged teenagers were shelved in favor of regular fantasies involving privileged teenagers, the TV adaptation of Heathers is now reportedly back on at Bravo, cable's dead gay son. According to The Hollywood Reporter, producer Jennifer Bicks—who recently mined cancer for occasional chuckles on The Big C—remains intent on doing the same for teenage suicide, where TV's strict maxim of "don't do it" promises its own Big Fun.
In fact, the synopsis already hints at the way Michael Lehmann's 1989 pitch-black comedy might be diluted enough to sustain a weekly series: The show finds an adult version of Winona Ryder's Veronica returning to Sherwood with her own teenage daughter, who wrangles with "the next generation of mean girls: the Ashleys, the daughters of the surviving Heathers." The inclusion of "mean girls" is probably not coincidental, given that it still sounds more like a small-screen version of that film's less controversial, less murderous take on upsetting the adolescent social order. There will likely be no chainsaw-fucking, gentle or otherwise, no guns in cafeterias or poison in coffee cups—just teenage girls being bitchy to each other, which TV already has plenty of. To quote a film that should be left alone, what say instead we just grow up, be adults, and die?