Because I don't think I've ever talked about my affinity for MTV's "Daria".
I was fresh out of high school when I first "met" Daria Morgendorffer. It was a second-season episode - I forget which one specifically, but I remember that it dealt with Daria's feelings for Trent. I remember that because I'd gone through the exact same thing a few months earlier, developed a huge crush on someone who couldn't have been more wrong for me. And I handled it the way Daria handled it: miserably. A few months later, I ran into him and had this... epiphany that it never would've worked anyway. And that was it.
It's not that "Daria" is a completely accurate rendition of my (or anyone's) high school years; I would've loved to have her gift for deadpan sarcasm, we didn't have a Fashion Club to mock relentlessly, and while our teachers could be a bit sadistic, they weren't quite as far gone as Lawndale High's staff.
But we did have a Kevin and a Brittany. (Come to think of it, we've had Kevin and Britney too.) And I had a maladjusted best friend who spent most of her time drawing in a little notebook which she'd never let me see.
So when "Daria" comes out on DVD, I'll be there. Because it actually offers two pleasures for the price of one: nostalgia for my fonder memories of high school, and absolutely scorching satire of the parts I could've done without. The fact that it's one of my favorite coming-of-age stories of the '90s is, of course, an added bonus.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Expanding on my Feb. 12 post
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11 comments:
Kazekage
said...
Man alive--you have some amazing "ex" stories. :)
I kinda liked the whole Trent plotline--I liked that the show had the courage to show that everyone involved made a constant string of boneheaded decisions and rather than making every character seem like an idiot, they seemed more fallible, relatable and oddly likable.
Diana Kingston-Gabai
said...
About average, I'd say, though they certainly seem a lot funnier now than they did at the time. :)
And I think that's exactly why I loved the show so much: coming off the heels of the whole Saved by the Bell "pris-teen" era where the worst thing that could happen to you is caffeine addiction, it was so refreshing to see people my age acting like people my age: they're allowed (and expected) to make mistakes, and even Daria stumbled every now and then despite supposedly having it all figured out. I'm even in that minority that liked Tom's storyline, because it was awkward and uncomfortable and exactly how it feels when your ex-boyfriend hooks up with your best friend.
Kazekage
said...
Hindsight tends to magnify the comedy quotient a lot, I've found. My ex stories are generally more in the Hunter S. Thomspon vein. ;)
My big thing with the show is that generally it played to a concept that could all too easily just have been "one smart chick against a nation of idiots and obviously she's always right" and weren't afraid to let her be on the wrong side of things at times. The Tom storyline was when it became most acute, but I remember one or two episodes where that happened also.
Diana Kingston-Gabai
said...
Could be worse: they could've been in the Spider Jerusalem vein, with the bowel disruptors and the stump-necked inbred babies. :)
I remember one episode where Daria's stumped with her writing: she's at her cynical, outrageous best, imagining Jane as a cheerleader or Jodie as a Hamlet-esque witch, but she's not getting anywhere. And of all the characters, it's Helen who ends up giving her the insight she needs. Even the parents weren't completely clueless. How often do you see that in a teen-centric show?
Kazekage
said...
All of which tastes like a mightily ersatz version of the HST version, curiously enough. ;)
It was a pretty even-handed show, wasn't it? Considering that it would have been very easy for the show to just anchor itself to the title character, I was rather surprised by how they never sacrificed any character to raise Daria up (well, except for the ones who were there to do that be design, of course)
Diana Kingston-Gabai
said...
Indeed. ;)
That's probably why I still adore it after all these years - the cliche of the One-Eyed Teen in the Mall of the Blind is so pervasive and overdone, even today, that "Daria" is noteworthy for daring to break convention at all, let alone doing so in an entertaining fashion. :)
Kazekage
said...
Yeah. It amazing (God, especially now) when a character is allowed to fail or be wrong in their own vehicle, isn't it? I mean, you have "mistakes" which function more as plot drivers rather than character drivers, but really, it was really cool how Daria was allowed to be wrong, or to fail, or to lose a few points with the viewers.
Diana Kingston-Gabai
said...
Of course, it's debatable whether the fanbase at large really understood that that's what was going on - people still ship Daria/Trent, even though the whole point of that was to demonstrate Daria's own blind spots; she was the only one who actually thought something could happen between them, and even she figured it out eventually. But mention that to a shipper and they'll drop an iceberg on you. :)
Kazekage
said...
Well, shipping to me has always called to mind Holmes' warning about "shaping facts to fit theories," rather than the other way around, so Not Getting The Point may well be standard operating procedure for them, really. :)
Diana Kingston-Gabai
said...
Quite true. Of course, some couples are easier to root for than others...
Kazekage
said...
C'est vrai, c'est vrai. ;)
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