Teenagers today contain multitudes. They’re more politically active than ever, resisting norms of gender and sexuality, and generally trying to clean up the mess that generations of patriarchal crap have left us with. Those multitudes are exactly what the execs behind a newly-announced Clueless reboot, currently in the works from CBS TV Studios, were presumably trying to capture.
The hour-long Clueless TV series is described as “Mean Girls meets Riverdale meets a Lizzo music video — set in high school,” as Deadline reports. “It is a baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sunglasses-wearing, oat milk latté and Adderall-fueled look at what happens when the high school queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong No. 2 Dionne steps into Cher’s vacant Air Jordans. How does Dionne deal with the pressures of being the new most popular girl in school, while also unraveling the mystery of what happened to her best friend, all in a setting that is uniquely 2020 L.A.?”
Despite the description feeling like it’s ticking off buzzwords like Gen-Z bingo, it’s worth wondering whether there’s still an audience for the kind of bubblegum teen drama that millennial viewers fell in love with when Clueless was originally released. Especially given that shows like Elite, Euphoria and Skam have won critical acclaim and huge followings by showing a darker and more nuanced side of teen life.
But reboots, after all, are big business. Jennifer Aniston stoked rumours of a Friends reunion with a cast group selfie this week, and there are new versions of Lizzie McGuire and Gossip Girl in the works too. Just this month, the cast of the newly-announced remake of 90s cult movie The Craft was unveiled, sending the internet into a frenzy. What’s less certain is whether any of the 2.0 offerings will live up to the originals.
There’s one thing we’re confident about, though. Given that it’s set in high school, the Clueless refresh will presumably have an all-new cast, so at least original Dionne actress Stacey Dash — a sometime conservative pundit who backed Trump’s plans for a US-Mexico wall — has no chance of being involved. May we remind Dash that it does not say ‘RSVP’ on the Statue of Liberty?