Daria: Reap-Eat-View

Originally published June 2015.

Despite not being one for television shows and "tuning in" week after week, there are some contemporary shows that appeal to me from time to time, as well as some shows from my youth that I thoroughly enjoyed. Admittedly, a fair amount of them were cartoons that revolved around my favorite comic book characters. However, there was one particular cartoon show that did not fall into this category, which I remember watching in marathon sessions--or at least having it in the background for an extended period of time throughout a Saturday.

Daria was a character-focused cartoon on MTV that first aired in the late 90s and lasted into the early 2000s. The entire series, along with its movies, was released on a DVD box set relatively recently, which I had purchased a few months ago. Such a decision proved extremely useful while I waited for my internet issues to be resolved and to have Netflix available once more. As a result, I've managed to go back and experience the show similar to how I remember watching it: binge sessions. Now that I've seen the series from beginning to end within a month and it's still fresh in my mind, I have some strong thoughts and opinions on the series. If you know the show yourself, would you expect it to hold up?

Who Is Daria?

Before we get too deep into my opinions on the series, let's do a quick synopsis for those who might be unfamiliar. Daria is a teenage comedy about a girl who moves to a suburb with her parents and sister. Daria has always been labeled as an outcast for being less than enthusiastic about being around other people. She also comes across as much smarter than her fellow students, which doesn't help her reputation much. As a person who feels--and often is--smarter than everyone around her, and is often criticized or teased for it, she's developed a deadpan, cynical sense of humor to help her cope with her moronic peers and the condescending adults who seem to know just as little.

Daria is supposed to be a junior in high school at the beginning of the series and is a graduating senior by the end of the series, marked by the second movie. In terms of an over-arching story, not too much changes from episode to episode, so you would be able to watch most of them out of order, if not for a particular character's arrival and impact on the character dynamics of the show.

Despite being a junior in high school, Daria is extremely intelligent and aware of complicated issues. She also has a strong sense of ethics and morality that often forces her further into the role of "outcast." She will quickly refuse to involve herself in something she feels even remotely relates to an issue she doesn't morally agree with, such as sucking up to the interviewer during a college application, for instance. Her position is not helped much by her coping method, which is to analytically joke in a sarcastic monotone about the things happening around her. This, by the way, is the primary delivery of humor for the show; if you care not for cynical sarcastic humor, this may not be the show for you. There are plenty of other instances where the humor does not rely on the deadpan delivery of its protagonist, but since Daria is the main character, we spend a lot of time with her.

Despite her antisocial nature and unpopularity, many of the other students, her parents, and her teachers respect her (even if they wouldn't admit it). They often come to her asking for advice, to which she replies with a degrading comment in an attempt to immediately push them away, or she gives in to her conscience and sense of morality and helps them. As the show progresses, she finds herself in some typical teenage scenarios and some not-so-typical scenarios, from which she gains a lesson or at least a reason to break down some of her ethical barriers.

Her moral compass is a strong proponent of her as a character. It's often something that leads her deeper into the outcast role and further into the bad side of her peers. Sometimes she stands firm in her decision, deals with the flack, and it all works out. Sometimes she figures that it makes more sense to give in to the pressure, though not without a fight. I remember liking her character more because of the fact that she stood up for what she believed in, but she wasn't so naive that she would be too stubborn to just do the "right" thing and go with the flow. She was a prime example of a character who had to constantly pick her battles, a dynamic that made her more relatable. Her behavior and attitude as the character with a strong sense of logic remain relatively consistent for the first few seasons and then it starts to waver as the series progresses. Unfortunately, I'd argue that this is more of a flaw to series as opposed to a sign of actual character growth, but we'll get more into the details about this later.

The Side Characters

I was recently describing the show to a co-worker who was either too young to have grown up with it, or just likely missed the show while it was still on TV. I told him that part of what made Daria so fun to watch was the side characters. To which he simply replied, "Isn't that what you need in a TV show though? Whether or not the main character is interesting, is not as important as interesting side characters to carry the rest of the weight." I haven't watched enough TV shows to prove his point right or wrong, but I've certainly watched enough movies, played enough games, and read enough books to say that as long as you have one really strong character, you've given the audience something to latch onto that can completely improve the experience. Whether or not it's enough to carry the experience, varies from one thing to another.

In Daria's case, as I said, I think that Daria herself is a strong protagonist with a fair amount of depth, not to mention she's also the main delivery of the verbal humor of the show. So we've already got a strong character to latch onto before we even get to the awesome side characters. What makes the side characters great is that many of them are funny on their own. They do more than simply provide more humor, however. They exist to build Daria as a character, as a side character should. They show how much smarter Daria is than the rest of them and often provide her with the material and set-ups for her jokes. There are a few that stand out among one another as their own humor factories, so here are a few of my favorite characters and why I like them so much.

Jake (Dad)

Fitting into the niche of hilarious dads on cartoon TV shows, Jake is easily my favorite character of the show. He's frequently stressed out about finances or what he's reading in the paper and constantly screams about it in public. During a majority of his outbursts, he mentions how something reminds him of his father's strict and negligent parenting methods or his damaged childhood. He's so caught up in himself and his problems that he's often oblivious to his kids or his wife's subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to get him to try to be a parent--Daria at one point claims that this is almost intentional on his part so he can "hide from his problems behind the veil of obliviousness."

The reason Jake is my favorite is because he is the wildcard of the show--he's similar to Charlie Day's character on Always Sunny in Philadelphia. His outbursts are random, unexpected, and usually hilarious in their nature. They also add to the characteristics of his individual family members, which often result in further hilarity.

One quotable example is: In the first Daria movie he's eating breakfast. When he finishes his waffles, he notices the packaging says that the waffles were expired by a few days. When he starts freaking out about it, his wife, Helen, tells him that it's the sell-by date and that they're fine. To which he replies, "That's easy for you to say, you didn't just eat four poisoned waffles!"

Mr. DiMartino

Similar to how Jake is funny for his frequent outbursts, DiMartino is the teacher who is constantly shouting in class as he struggles to teach history to his moronic students. While Jake is yelling because he's stressed, damaged, and emotionally unstable, DiMartino is yelling because he's constantly holding back a blinding rage from his frustration. So blinding is his rage, that one eyeball is constantly bulging out of his head on the verge of popping from its socket.

DiMartino is something of an angry extension of Daria. In some ways, I like to think that Daria would end up the same way if she became a teacher and were unable to keep her monotone defenses up. He uses patronizing sarcasm in how he interacts with the other characters but gets far more personal in his insults, which often leads to laugh-out-loud situations, especially when his insults are too intelligent for the subject to understand. It's easy to tell that he's one of the few other smart characters in the show with the extensive vocabulary he uses in his insults. When I first watched this show as a teenager, I lacked the lexicon I needed to understand all of his jokes. Viewing as an adult, the man has only gotten funnier.

Jane

Jane is Daria's best friend. She often assists with the setups to Daria's punch lines and has some good jokes of her own. She shares Daria's cynicism and dark sense of humor, though she delivers her jokes in a slightly more animated manner. She often provides the extra seasoning to Daria's jokes and her presence helps liven up the monotone delivery substantially.

Jane was always characterized as an outcast who was a little more willing to conform than Daria. She was presented in a way that indicated that, while she may not be a literary genius like her counterpart, she was very capable in the arts and whatever maniacal schemes she might come up with. The main thing that I liked about Jane was her rebellious attitude which was coupled by her laziness and sarcasm. She delivered some great punch lines throughout the series and served as the linchpin to many an episode. However, she fell victim to the same sort of character changes that Daria underwent as the series progressed that felt more like flaws than growth, which I swear we will get to in a bit.

Trent

Trent is Jane's deadbeat older brother. A couple years her senior, he plays guitar in his band Mystic Spiral (they're thinking of changing the name), and serves as the primary love interest for Daria for the first few seasons. Trent has graduated high school and is still living at home, uninterested in pursuing any further education. A majority of what he does in the show is sleep and practice in his band, which could get off the ground if their members were more motivated to practice, or not arguing about stupid things (a familiar scenario to anyone who's been in a band).

Part of what makes Trent such a likable character is the fact that he's very honest and blunt in his opinions and observations. There is very little reservation in what he says. Since he's uneducated, he can occasionally act as the foil to Daria or Jane by providing a perspective they didn't consider. The perspective he gives is often pretty funny too, due to his somewhat dazed and melancholic/apathetic delivery. Trent as a character seems like the physical representation of Nine Inch Nails songs from the Downward Spiral (wonder if there's a connection with the band name) and Fragile albums.

Trent's involvement in the show actually marks the turning point in the show's overall quality. Spoilers I guess The point when Daria is no longer romantically interested in Trent is pretty much where the show begins to focus on the more trivial matters and introduces drama that feels slightly forced or uncharacteristic of its main protagonists. Daria's interest in Trent was always pretty funny because she would behave uncharacteristically around him due to her crush, and the fact that Jane made fun of Daria for it added to the humor. This all felt better than how Daria and Jane would come to behave in the episodes that followed Daria and Trent's "not-break-up," but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Show's Progression

In a nutshell: Daria starts out strong and holds up to the end with its topics and humor. There are episodes where the topical focus is somewhat uninteresting or unimpressive, but it usually makes up for it with some genuinely funny moments or jokes. My biggest criticism is the show's attempt at changing its two main characters.

As I mentioned, the turning point in the show has to do with Trent no longer holding a romantic interest for Daria. There was another change in the show that could mark the transition of the characters, and that's the introduction of the new character: Tom. Tom is first introduced at the end of season 3 as Jane's new boyfriend. His injection into the show creates some friction between Daria and Jane that seems less natural to their relationships than any sort of conflicts they had before.

The first time I could recall any conflict between Daria and Jane was an episode where Jane went against Daria's ethical standards and joined the track team. It didn't last beyond an episode, but the main reason that conflict was more acceptable than the new conflict that came with Tom's arrival was the fact that it applied to Daria's morals, something that constantly causes friction with everyone. The friction that would follow Tom's arrival was much more trivial and uncharacteristic. From here on out, there would be intermittent conflicts between Daria and Jane on a much more regular basis. Much of the time it would be about Tom, naturally.

More spoilers ahead.
It starts out that Daria hates Tom because she feels like he's stealing her friend from her. Yet, Tom is just a nice enough guy who can bounce back from her cynical attitude and is mostly interested in being a friend to her, for Jane's sake. At least, this is how it starts, but it doesn't take long to notice the direction in which the show is heading. After over only a few episodes, Tom and Jane are on the rocks with their relationship. Jane gets paranoid and jealous of Daria for no reason. Then she's given a reason to be jealous as Daria inadvertently moves in and picks Tom up in the middle of their relationship.

Naturally, this creates drama over the betrayal and heartbreak. This type of drama is easy enough to write but tends to go against the standards that the show established. Part of what made Daria so fun to watch for me was the fact that the writing didn't feel lazy and that the characters stayed consistent. In the moments of inconsistency, there was some intelligent justification. The drama of friends back-stabbing each other in the back, stealing dates, and causing jealousy is something that belongs on a soap opera, or any show other than Daria. It's lazy and it forces the characters into behaving in a way that may be realistic due to the situation, but inconsistent and less relatable to how they were.

Soon, both Daria and Jane are acting like immature teenagers towards each other, Tom, and anyone else in their way; this is especially true for Daria. It makes sense for them to act this way as they are indeed teenagers in the show, but up to this point, neither of them acted as such. That is the main problem. As soon as the character no longer behaves like themselves, you run the risk of alienating your audiences who have become attached to the characters. Daria still manages to deliver the same sarcastic humor, and her jokes are still funny and full of the same intelligent punch as before, but she also gets angry with everyone a lot more and gets upset over things that I would not have expected from a character who had always been so intelligent, logical, and level-headed.

This change is extremely apparent when Daria starts dating Tom because she often lashes out at him for no reason other than she's an angsty teenager. In some instances, the argument Tom had in his defense called out the very things that were so irritating about this change in her. I'm paraphrasing, but essentially he says in response to her being upset about them not going out on more extravagant dates, "Part of why I like you is because you aren't the typical girl who is interested in all that stuff." It's almost like Tom was voicing the opinions of the viewers, or me at least. This shift to make Daria act like a "typical girl," based on someone's expectations of how girls act, caused me to lose my love for Daria a bit and get annoyed with her behavior for how fickle and immature she suddenly started behaving towards the end of the series.

Does it Hold up?

I realize that the last section was a lengthy bit of nitpicking, but in my overall opinion of the show, it doesn't change the fact that Daria is still one of my favorite shows from my youth. Despite the things that annoyed me at the end, Daria has managed to actually make me like it more without nostalgia playing a factor. The jokes are much funnier to me, now that I understand them better, and the topics tackled in the show hold a lot more weight.

In fact, the topics of the show stand up surprisingly well. A fair amount of the time, shows or movies from the 90s will show their age in the style and dialogue of the characters. Daria manages to avoid most of the trappings that would make it feel dated. They still talk about the internet using terms like "The Net," and there is the occasional reference that is out of date, but the rest of the show seems like it could have been released only a few years ago.

There's actually an episode about the Dot-Com companies that were exploding at the time. In the episode, they mentioned how even the employees didn't know what their companies were doing, but they were getting 6-figure paychecks to just sit there and act like something was happening. Some of the dialogue and situations of that episode ring especially true with how we have another software boom in Silicon Valley and it made me wonder how things will turn out this time. I was also quite surprised and a little disappointed with how some of the real-world topics covered in the show that unfortunately have yet to be resolved, including the concept of having food or soft-drink companies funding schools in exchange for the ability to market to children. If you watch the show yourself, you might be surprised how well the show still rings true.

Closing Thoughts

Despite my gripes with how characters in the series behaved towards the end, I think Daria is a fantastic show that is still very funny from beginning to end. Give it a watch if you can, or buy the box set the next time it’s on sale.