Though I didn’t include it on my list of 80s movies that need TV series, I could actually see a show based on Heathers being pretty cool. No, I’m not pulling your dick. And no, I didn’t have a brain tumor for breakfast. I’d continue the quoting by saying this isn’t just a spoke in my menstrual cycle, but I don’t have one of those. What I do have is a nearly twenty-year obsession with the movie as well as an odd exception when it comes to the idea of adapting it to other media. Certainly I don’t want anyone remaking Heathers on the big screen, but I’d be first in line for a campy musical version, and I’d read a comic book based on it (the thing would have to be published by Archie Comics, obviously).
Of course, I don’t expect this newly announced series idea to be very good. Network television is no place for a show based on Heathers. Not even Fox can get away with what the thing should be like. It wouldn’t be Heathers without all the swearing. And it couldn’t be as dark as it must be, either. However, provided there were some smart minds behind the idea, it could work quite well as an HBO or Showtime program. With a tone somewhere between The Sopranos and Weeds. The way I’m expecting it to be, as long as it’s on commercial television, the show may as well be called Mean Girls instead. Which would be a great idea, actually, if Tina Fey was behind it.
So, yeah, Heathers: the TV Show could be very, but it won’t be, and I see what everyone’s damage is over this news. But don’t worry, if it does ever end up on the air, it’ll soon be off and just as forgotten as the shows Ferris Bueller, Dirty Dancing and My Big Fat Greek Life.
Check out some blog responses to the news — imagine them recited in a montage of lunchtime poll answers — after the jump:
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Last Friday, while Karina and I were apparently too Oscar-anxious to notice, MTV posted this news about a scientific study of Harry Potter fans — or as they conclusively label them, addicts — and the post-conclusion depression that’s afflicted them since the final novel arrived in stores last summer. Apparently, 10% of these “addicts” went through a serious period of withdrawal, equivalent to the aftereffects of quitting smoking. This study, the results of which are being submitted to the Journal of General Psychology with the title “Harry Potter and the End of the Line: Parallels with Addiction,” involved the polling of 4,000 fans online and found that a significant number were so obsessed that their “more than four hours a day on Potter-related activities” interfered with things like eating and sleeping. Here, a positively spun quote from the study’s lead researcher, Muhlenberg College psych professor Dr. Jeffrey Rudski:
“An addiction is an addiction is an addiction,” Rudski said. “An addiction to a drug is no different than an addiction to Harry Potter or the Internet or pornography. Although it’s not always a bad thing. There’s a community that you get with Harry Potter that you don’t get with heroin.”
And despite there being only 10% actual Harry Potter “addicts”, another 20% were considered by Rudski to fall within what he calls a “critical threshold.” They include the person who wrote this: “I had trouble getting out of bed Monday morning. I was depressed and had nightmares all night long. I dreamed I was being attacked by Lucius Malfoy and Fenrir Greyback and didn’t have a wand because I was Muggle-born.” Just imagine what those 400 actual addicts are like (by the way, Rudnick refers to his daughter as one such “addict”).
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