It happened again.
Two episodes of Heathers, the TV reboot of the 80s cult classic film, were pulled from their US broadcast schedule on Sunday.
Deadline reports Paramount Network staffers feared the episodes’ overt references to school shootings would be disrespectful to the real-world victims of Saturday’s tragic mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, which left eleven worshippers dead.
It’s the second time those episodes of the macabre high school comedy have been kept off screens. The episodes in question show school students participate in active shooter training, and Paramount Network’s postponed the series’ scheduled release in the immediate aftermath of February’s deadly Parkland school shooting.
Paramount Network chose to put Heathers on ice, but eventually decided to air a re-edited version of the series over the space of the past week. While viewers missed out on those two particular episodes on Sunday, Deadline reports the network is expected to air the series’ finale tonight as scheduled.
It’s horrific to think that active shooter training is a perfectly valid plot line for a mainstream high school series in 2018. It’s more devastating to consider the fact that mass shootings occur with such frequency in America that a fictional depiction of the unthinkable has now been overshadowed twice. In one year.
The episodes are reportedly still available to US viewers on Paramount Network’s streaming service, for those who’d like to catch the missing episodes at another time. In Australia, the full series is currently available via Stan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQsGpUREfA
