The reboot of Heathers was HORRIFYING!!! Like... So bad! And oddly enough, the only character I didn't hate was the male Heather, the gender-confused one! (Or trans, or whatever the fuck he was, it wasn't really clear.)

I actually downloaded and watched the SBTB reboot yesterday, 10 episodes 30 mins each. I admit I didn't pay full attention, playing cellphone games at the same time as watching, but it was really.......... Weird.

It was like 3 different shows, cut up and blended together.

The first was your official reboot, Slater and Jessie are now working at the school as a gym teacher and counselor and there is a Belding-type goofball principal that they interact with. Except they've all been dumbed down and turned into cartoonish characters, which yes, they already were in the original show, but it's even more here. Slater is basically Hot Homer Simpson. Zach is the (clueless and incompetent) California governor and Kelly is his wife, so they make some appearances too.

The second portion is the kids. There is a mini-Zach clone - Mac, which is Zach and Kelly's kid. There is a dumb hot football player Jamie, which is Jessie's kid (but not Slaters. Jessie is married to a different guy and Slater is single.) And there is their cheerleader best friend Lexi, who is basically Jazz Jennings if he was super rich and lived in Beverly Hills. He dresses like a 2000's pornstar pretending to be 2000's Paris Hilton, or maybe like Regina George from Mean Girls, IDK. He is meant to be a mean girl, who reforms and becomes a nice girl who learns empathy. He also has a reality show just like Jazz Jennings, but we barely see the show, it's only mentioned two or three times and we see one small clip from it in one episode and it's never mentioned again. He is also exclusively attracted to guys, and has a crush on the dumb football player Jamie.

The third portion is like... Fanfic. Basically Zach closed down a school in a poor neighborhood where all the black/brown/notquitewhite kids go, so now they're getting bussed to Bayside High. So you have three new characters. Daisy is the main character, she is a Latina, and basically reads like a Marysue self-insert with an outspoken activist bent. Her mom is played by Selenis Leyva (Gloria from OITNB, so that was kind of awesome!) and ay dios mio! they are pobre! and now she had to go to school with los gringos ricos! que lastima! And she has an Afro-Latina best friend, Aisha, who is plus sized and fabulous and joins the football team, and she's straight and she and the dumb football guy Jamie start dating, and Jazz Jennings Lexi gets jealous and tries to break them up. And there's also a black guy called Devante, and he's a thief, but that's okay because he's poor and he has a grandma with arthritis. Also, he's a fantastic singer and likes musicals. Devante was actually a pretty good character, but I felt like the writers really were too scared to do much with him because RACE STUFF IS SCARY.

There is a lot of RACE STUFF involved, and a lot of RICH WHITE PEOPLE PRIVILIGE STUFF and it's really cringe. Like, it's nice that they are trying to address race-stuff but... Like, I'm not black, white or latino, so as an outsider, I'm just staring at this like... It felt very patronizing to me. Maybe it will give the viewers something to think about, I guess...

There was also some foul language. People said "bitch" a lot, which is... I mean, I don't know, I thought that was a gendered slur we weren't allowed to use anymore?

Back to Jazz Jennings Lexi. Since I'm betting you will not waste 5 hours of your life watching this, I will say that in the last episode he and Jamie got together and of course the 'You have a penis, now what?' was never addressed. Him being a "Girl" is completely normalized and no one comments on it. Which, of course they don't it's Saved By The Bell.

I hope this doesn't sound homophobic, but Lexi felt like an extremely flamboyant gay guy in a dress tight stripper clothes. Or maybe like Sharpay from High School Musical, or maybe like a mini-drag queen from RuPaul's Drag Race. Like... that element of CAMP was present, I don't know if I'm expressing this right. This isn't the MTF trans we are used to seeing on the internet, this is Hollywood Trans - what clueless Hollywood people think MTF trans is, a gay guy who is so flaming gay that like a phoenix he bursts into flames and a female pornstar pops out of the ashes. Except that this character is an UNDERAGE CHILD high school sophomore. So it was really uncomfortable to watch. Also there was a lot of sexualization of underage female bodies, and girls in very skimpy, tight clothing. Now that I think of it, hot football player Jamie was given this treatment in a few scenes too, with his shirt off and everything.

Anyway, that's my essay that you didn't ask for! But thank you for letting me get it out of my system!