Presented Without Comment

A listing of .mp3 files in my folder: F:\Backup\Old Computer\Old Computer\Old Computer\Scour Media Agent
(note: file modified dates range from 12/16/1998 to 4/11/1999)

(Jars of Clay) Flood.mp3
(Sixpence_None_The_Richer)-Kiss_Me~1.mp3
(Wyclef_Jean)-Gone_Till_November.mp3
13wishlist.mp3 (Pearl Jam)
Aerosmith -- Walk This Way.mp3
Animaniacs - Countries of The World.mp3
Beastie%20Boys%20-%20Intergalactic.mp3
Beatles - Her Majesty.Mp3
Beatles - Yellow Submarine.mp3
Beck - Loser.mp3
Bob Dylan -- Hurricane.mp3
Chumbawumba%20-%20Tubthumping.mp3
favgame.mp3 (The Cardigans)
Foxylady.mp3
Garbage - Push It.mp3
Garbage-Push_It.mp3
Louis Prima - Sing, Sing, Sing.mp3
Mission_Impossible-Main_theme.mp3
Pearl Jam -Do the Evolution.mp3
Pink Panther.mp3
Proclaimers - I would walk 500 miles.mp3
queen-bohemian_rhapsody.mp3
Rolling Stones - Saint of me.mp3
Rolling Stones - Saint of Me (live).mp3
thewayfastball.mp3
track_5.mp2 (a partial track of Liz Phair's "Polyester Bride")
tropicalia.mp3 (Beck)
uninvited.mp3 (Alanis Morissette)
zootsuit.mp3 (Cherry Poppin' Daddies)

Daria S01xE10 The Big House and Daria S01xE11 The Road Worrier

1. Thesis
Finally! Episodes which stand on their own merits. The Big House and The Road Worrier represent a real step forward in quality relative to what we've so far, something much more representative of the overall quality of the show. But there's something else that differentiates these episodes, and that is the relative absence of <cue Ms. Li voice> Lawndale High. In fact, unlike every other episode so far, neither episode this week has even a single scene set inside a classroom. In fact, The Road Worrier never even shows the school. And it occurred to me that a similar dynamic holds with a lot of "high school" stories: all the action takes place elsewhere. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can't Hardly Wait, Dazed And Confused: all of these are about being away from high school. Why do those movies, and these episodes of Daria, achieve their greatest success only by abandoning their ostensible subject? As you might guess, I have a theory. Read on.

2. Recap
Short: When Daria and Quinn come home late, Helen comes up with a set of ground rules, which includes a strict curfew.
Long: Daria and Quinn both arrive home late and are caught by their parents. The next morning, Helen announces a new set of family rules, which Quinn immediately evades by rebranding her date as a "study group." The next morning Jake realizes that Quinn backdated her sign-in the previous night, resulting in a session of Family Court. As Daria relates these events to Jane at school, Jodie offers tickets to a roller hockey game between the faculty and local DJs, which nearly killed Mr. DeMartino the previous year. In Family Court, where Jake is the judge and Helen is the prosecutor, Quinn and (for some reason) Daria are grounded for a month. The next day at Lawndale, Daria reveals that she is grounded, surprising everyone and baffling Kevin. The first night of grounding passes slowly; Quinn monopolizes the phone. Kevin and Brittany continue to misunderstand what is going on. Daria takes up the harmonica. The ripple effects of Kevin's confusion cause Jodie and Jane to visit during a game of Monopoly, inspiring her to plan an escape to see the roller hockey game, which turns out to be simpler than she'd expected, though her parents do discover her absence. The next day, Daria convinces Helen that grounding makes everyone unhappy, and agrees to "parole," during which she finally convinces Kevin that she is all right.

The Road Worrier
Short: Jane volunteers gas money if Trent and Jesse will take them to the upcoming Alternapalooza concert.
Long: At Jane's, Daria watches SSW while Jane works on an art project, which is interrupted by an extremely loud rehearsal for Trent's band, Mystik Spiral. Knowing Daria's crush on Trent, Jane drags her to go complain about the noise, Daria struggles to act normal and suppress her dislike for the band. Trent mentions that they're going to Alternapalooza and need gas money, Jane volunteers to chip in in exchange for a ride. At Cashman's, the Fashion Club is also planning a trip to Alternapalooza; Quinn gets a temporary tattoo to get in the spirit, leading to a discussion of music festivals at dinner that night (Jake went to Altamont). Upstairs, Daria sees Quinn's "alternative" outfit and reveals that she is also going. The next morning, Jesse and Trent arrive in their van, which only has two seats, so Daria and Jane sit on a box in the back, though only after Daria bumps her head getting in. The J's arrive for Quinn. In the van, Trent and Jesse discuss artistic integrity, to the disgust of both Daria and Jane. Daria feels ill, then falls onto an old sandwich when Trent hits a bump. We see that Kevin and Brittany are also going, along with Jodie and Mack. Daria gets stung by a bee. Meanwhile, back home, Helen and Jake are, well, they're having sex is what they're doing. The van stops at a diner (complete with stereotypically sassy waitress) where Daria laments her day, and as soon as they get back on the road they become stuck in traffic. Daria has to pee, and goes behind some bushes, then is surprised not to be made fun of. The rest of the Lawndale students stop in the same diner as the gang plays games to pass the time, but Trent hits another bump, causing Daria's glasses to get broken, just before the engine breaks down. Jane goes off with Jesse to find a phone, as Brittany and Sandy hijack the other two cars to go outlet shopping. Daria and Trent have a fairly normal conversation while they wait, Jane and Jesse couldn't find help but Jane fixes the engine with a glue gun, though not before the concert ends. As they drive home, Daria smiles.

3. Recapitulation
So, up in part one, you may well have thought of any number of counterexamples, high school movies that do stay in the school. And you are correct! The first to jump to my mind were The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls, and there are plenty of others. But what I suddenly realized about those movies and others like them is this: they are really about middle school.

(Note: there is another reasonably large category: high school stories that are adaptations of other works, such as Clueless, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 10 Things I Hate About You, etc. I'm leaving them out of this discussion.)

While I was instantly convinced of the truth of my observation, it took me a bit longer to determine what exactly it was I was observing. What did I mean, really? What distinguished these stories as "middle school" in particular? The conclusion I reached was this: "middle school" drama is clique-based. Conflicts are almost always about a.) Who is or is not part of a given clique, and/or b.) Competition between cliques.

High school, however, isn't really like that. Certainly cliques exist, and are taken seriously, but the wider scope of high school gives each of them enough security that conflicts are generally within the clique, and even then, they rarely threaten anyone's membership. By high school, people tend to have more conflicts with their elders than their peers. Middle schoolers seek acceptance, high schoolers seek independence.

With that distinction in mind, Daria is pretty clearly a high school drama. Friendships are rarely threatened (even in the People's Front of Judea that is the Fashion Club), and Daria tends to clash with family and teachers more frequently than with her fellow students. But, like much else in this first season, that distinction is coming more from instinct than design. The show is (and will continue to be) enamored with the idea that it presents a conflict between "brains" and "popular people" (as personified by Daria and Quinn). And the general cartoonishness of the Morgendorffers' fellow Lawndale students would hardly look out of place next to Regina George or Ally Sheedy or, for that matter, Minkus.


But these two episodes (mostly) leave all that nonsense behind. In retrospect, "The Big House" is an ironic title, because it's an episode that actually sets Daria free. In TBH, Daria directly confronts her parents, and over the most fundamental conflict of adolescence: her right to independence. Not only that, but she wins, and that against a woman in Helen who is not accustomed to losing. Then, in TRW, Daria confronts the fear that has been haunting her (like all of us) since puberty: the fear, not just of being rejected by a boy she likes, but of disgusting him. And to her amazement, she finds that said boy (i.e., Trent) enjoys her company just fine! A full day of pain and embarrassment is made worthwhile by this single moment of realization. And it's a realization that, in middle school, Daria would have been incapable of making.

4. Closeup
So, let's talk a bit about Helen and Jake. We learn a bit more about them in these two episodes, particularly TBH. We've known since the first scene of the series that Helen is the dominant partner in the relationship, but this episode provides an inside look at their relationship, and gives us a more nuanced look at how it works. Helen's dominance is still clear: not only was Jake not consulted in the new family rules, he didn't even think that Daria and Quinn had misbehaved in the first place. What's interesting is the balance that he strikes: he certainly supports Helen and in general, and it would take a lot for him to contradict her, especially in front of the children. But he also clearly has his own independent point of view, and knows it. He is generally of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" persuasion, and he (correctly) feels that his kids are essentially good, well-behaved children. But when Helen summons him to hold court, he unhesitatingly accepts.

Part of this is the admittedly patronizing way that Helen manipulates him, giving him the empty position of "judge" when both of them know that Helen will always be, to coin a phrase, the decider. And there is an element to their relationship that is almost distasteful; Helen really does treat Jake like a child, and he really does play into it, completely falling for her cynical attempt to co-opt him through what is essentially a game of dress up. His self-satisfied "I hear that judge is pretty tough" line more or less epitomizes this.

And yet, ultimately their relationship is pretty healthy. Part of this again comes from the voice work. The fact is that every time Jake expresses his own opinion, he sounds self-assured, even as everybody knows he's about to get shouted down by Helen. His own artlessness is his salvation, counted on by Helen just as much as everyone. As she would probably be the first to admit, she doesn't really want Jake to submit to her will. She feels that she is virtually always right, and she is glad to have found somebody, in Jake, feels the same. But the key is that he really does believe that. He's not just going along with Helen not to get yelled at, and the proof of this is his constant willingness to get yelled at for speaking his mind. If he was really broken, he would never let Daria know that he had also been unaware of her curfew. He may always be happy to run things, but it is a choice he is continually, freely, and actively making, and that is ultimately the salvation of their relationship, and their family.

5. Bullet points!
-Just a couple episodes ago, Helen made "put the spice back in my marriage" her number one priority. When she sets out to do something, it gets done.
-In case you think MTV half-assed their DVD release: disk 2's menu has a light BLUE background, where disk 1's menu was light YELLOW. So clearly, they went all out.
-Also, my handmade DVD set matches up disk breaks to season breaks. Unlike certain other DVD sets I could mention.
-As always, I enjoyed the Daria Day intro for TRW, amusing because it acknowledges that this was episode was really the most unpleasant in the series for Daria's character. She certainly has various humiliations ahead, but none so focused as in this episode.
-One of the signs of improvement in these episodes is the Thomas Jefferson runner in TBH. The first usage is great (Jake's delivery of "Well, it can't be Jefferson..." is a highlight), but it also manages to keep the joke running the whole episode, which is a good sign for the quality of future episodes, joke-wise.
-On that same note, Helen's claim that "Bureaucracy is the price we pay for impartiality" is a quote from Stalin is dubious. I've tried to look it up online, and there certainly are some places that attribute that quote to Stalin. But I can't find any quotes that I can be confident predate this episode, so I suspect that all of them are taking Helen's word here as authoritative. But if anybody knows otherwise, please let me know.
-Honestly, I don't think Mystik Spiral is that bad.
-Did Alternapalooza really only draw 10,000 audience members? Seems a bit low.
-OK, listen everybody, once and for all: the Trojan Horse DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE ILIAD! This drives me nuts, because thanks to Daria (among others) I had always assumed that it did, and so I read that whole entire book waiting for it to show up, and was very disappointed. The fact is that the Trojan Horse is the Clone Wars of Homer; it takes place after The Iliad, but before The Odyssey. So please, tell your loved ones: Homer never wrote about the Trojan Horse. Thank you.
-The Altamont joke doesn't really work, but I do like the idea that Jake went there.
-While I never attended a faculty-DJ roller hockey game, I very much did attend a wheelchair basketball game between a team of teachers and an actual wheelchair basketball team. The teachers fell out of their wheelchairs a lot.
-Daria Timestamp Watch: Car breaking down = go find a phone. Also, we see Mr. DeMartino smoking, which would be far less likely today. Jane also suggests that Trent's band might need a "fly girl," but even at the time that was an intentionally dated reference.
-There are only a couple of places where the royalty-free music for the DVD release really messes up an episode, but the Everybody Hurts parody is absolutely one of them, just embarrassing for everybody.
-That said, check out the song list for this episode, just to be reminded that, even though it's usually not so crucial, the loss of the original music is still a serious one.
-This week in people being called the wrong name: "His name is Cliff. Oop, no wait, it's Clint. I'm not positive, but I can find out at school."
-See you next week as we close out season 1!

Daria S01xE08 The Pinch Sitter and Daria S01xE09 Too Cute

1. Thesis
Daria presents herself as a rigidly principled individual, sacrificing the cheap rewards of popularity and acceptance for the deeper satisfaction of doing what she knows to be right. For that matter, the show itself self-presents in much the same way as its title character. That this image is presented so bluntly is, I believe, one of the turnoffs for first-time viewers of this show. I certainly remember that "preachiness" was among my vague impressions of Daria, in the years before I started watching it. But neither the character or the show are what they claim to be. Daria's personal morality is largely based on laziness (a fact she doesn't even really bother to deny), and the show as a whole is constantly speaking on two levels at once, presenting a straightforward story with cartoonish characters and blunt dialogue on the surface, while allowing the characters' subtle complexities, and the realities of the actual plot developments, to suggest an entirely different moral conclusion. The cartoonishness is in fact a crucial part of the trick that Daria is playing, the dramatic gesture the street magician makes in the air so you don't see him stacking the deck. Don't be fooled.

2. Summary
Short: Quinn pesters Daria to take over her Saturday night babysitting job.
Long: Mr. DeMartino teaches a class on cults, and reminds the students that their term papers are due. Meanwhile, Quinn is attempting to pawn off her babysitting gig on a boy she's not interested in, to free herself up to date Skylar, her real target. Daria inadvertantly reveals Quinn's schemes, and that evening, Quinn attempts to convince Daria to take the gig. Daria resists, until learning that the alternative is participation in her parents' Couples' Workshop night. Helen figures out what happened, and forces Quinn to visit her time-management consultant. After a discussion of priorities, the consultant sells Quinn on a new day-planner/makeup kit, all coordinated in coral. Daria recruits Jane to help her babysit, as Quinn's date arrives and Jake has a pre-workshop martini, then heads to the Guptys, an extremely G-rated (in a Berkeley liberal kind of way) family with two children: Tricia and Tad. The Guptys give Daria a detailed schedule (including 15 minutes of flossing) and depart. Daria is uninterested in following the schedule but can't find anything else to do (even the TV only gets "The Forecast Channel"). Meanwhile, Skylar takes Quinn to Chez Pierre as she tracks her impressions in her Lifeplanner. Daria calls Jane, who is late, having been held up waiting for Trent. She arrives just in time to prove surprisingly helpful putting the kids to bed, with the help of spontaneous reinterpretations of classic children's tales. However, Jane then unlocks Sick Sad World on the TV, which attracts the kids from their room (though they are safely in bed by the time their parents return). Back at the Morgendorffers', Skylar is hurt to discover from Quinn's Teen Lifeplanner that he is only a small part of her boyfriend-related plans. In class, Mr. DeMartino compliments Daria on her paper on "deprogramming" the Guptys, who have apparently learned a very naughty word.

Too Cute
Short: Ms. Barch uses Kevin in an "experiment" to determine how a person's looks affect the behavior of others.
Long: Kevin stands on the street wearing ugly makeup, trying to greet passers-by. At Lawndale, the Fashion Club and others admire the new nose which a girl named Brooke has gotten from the popular plastic surgeon Dr. Shar; Sandy and Quinn spar over whether Quinn showed proper appreciation. At dinner, the Morgendorffers inconclusively discuss plastic surgery. In school the next day, we learn that Kevin's makeup is part of an assigned project by Ms. Barch, ostensibly to teach how attractiveness affects behavior, but mainly to take Kevin down a peg or two. Quinn, by claiming illness, manages to convince the school to let both her AND Daria leave early to go visit Dr. Shar, who recommends $6000 worth of procedures to Quinn (and even more for Daria), and gives Daria some breast implants in a box to take home. Quinn is hurt to discover that the rest of the Fashion Club all got nosejobs, but is interrupted by Brooke, who has now also had liposuction and collagen injections. At her locker, Daria advises Kevin, and shows her implants to Jane and (inadvertantly) Upchuck, who runs away. Quinn asks Daria to claim to need HGH, which Dr. Shar has agreed to charge for while secretly operating on Quinn instead. Jane suggests that Quinn take up a collection to pay for her surgery, which Quinn does, with predictably meager results. Daria finally gives in and tells Quinn that she is very attractive and doesn't need surgery, but Quinn is not impressed. However, news now breaks that Brooke has had a "nasal relapse," and, as Quinn explains at dinner, looks even less cute than before. Kevin, meanwhile, has begun accompanying his greetings with the offer of five dollars, leading to much friendlier interactions.

3. Recapitulation
The most obvious ethical gray area in these episodes is in Too Cute's treatment of plastic surgery. The episode seems like it's going to be another straightforward issue-of-the-week episode, a la This Year's Model, simply swapping plastic surgery in for modelling. But Too Cute seems much more ambivalent about its ostensible target than This Year's Model ever did, in a variety of ways. Helen, for example, may dismiss the idea of plastic surgery for Quinn, but has clearly been considering it for herself (and Daria doesn't exactly disagree with her). Brooke really does gain confidence as the episode goes along, as evidenced by both her clothing choices and her tone of voice. When Daria tries to talk Quinn out of getting plastic surgery, she doesn't attack the idea of plastic surgery, or the tyranny of physical standards of beauty or anything like that. She simply says that Quinn is already extremely beautiful and thus doesn't happen to need plastic surgery at the time. And the speech doesn't even work! The only thing that finally convinces Quinn to give up on plastic surgery is a fairly clumsy deus ex machina, in the form of Brooke's "nasal relapse." Combine that with the resolution of Kevin's plot, and the message of this episode is fairly explicit: If you don't have looks, you better have money. A sentiment that Sandy herself would hardly dispute.

So, where did this ambiguity come from? I believe the answer, at least in part, is that it was an accident. Too Cute, apart from having a clumsy resolution, definitely appears to have come in a bit short. For one thing, the B plot featuring Kevin's biology project never actually ties in with the A plot in any way. It had thematic relevance, of course, but that sort of parallel structure, while common on television, isn't actually something Daria did very often. And even with that awkward B plot, there are a few moments (the long beat after Daria says "Want to borrow my stapler?", the odd scene that's just Quinn sneaking into the girls' bathroom for a few seconds) that seem to be signs of an episode that was struggling to fill out its time slot. There is also at times an interesting and, I believe, unintended tension between the vocal characterization and the animators' characterization, particularly in the case of Dr. Shar, who is drawn as almost a monster, but whose voice work implies a savvy operator, who seems to really see herself as helping her clients. The voice actors in Daria were generally more or less unknowns (and generally remain so, check out this wiki entry for the voice of Jodi that makes her seem like D.B. Cooper), and I think that at times their naturalism pushed the writing away from the outlandish places it wanted to go.

I won't insult the creators, however, by claiming that this ambiguity was entirely accidental. For one thing, we can see elements of the same issues running through The Pinch Sitter, which is a much tighter episode. Consider the Guptys. On the one hand, they are the "villain" of the piece, to the extent that Daria ends up using them as an example of a real-life cult for Mr. DeMartino's class. On the other hand, their children genuinely seem to be quite happy with their life, and even capable of thinking for themselves (or at least Tricia is). That said, there's still a bit more to the Guptys than meets the eye. They seem pretty aware that Daria is lying to them (as Quinn has been) about the reasons for their phone usage, but they don't admit as much, presumably because, like all parents, they're at times willing to leave their children in substandard hands in order to get out of the house for an evening. And they blithely, even eagerly, tell Daria that her father cried during their couples' workshop, which is about as extreme a breach of Jake's trust as they could have managed. So, when Daria teaches their children to swear, are the Guptys the victim, or the villain?

The same question could be asked of Quinn, and will continue to be posed throughout the run of the series. Is Quinn, in her relationships with boys, the victim, or the villain? She certainly seems villainous; Skylar is pretty much justified in his dismay at learning that Quinn has scheduled her breakup with him months in advance. The only way of justifying Quinn's behavior is to say, look: Quinn is extremely, almost implausibly in demand among boys. Why should she not extract the most value she can from that interest? Which is still kind of villainous reasoning. But Quinn herself always identifies as the victim (often just through her tone of voice, as in her reaction to Skylar's dismay). And there's a sense in which she's correct: there may be a ton of boys chasing after her, but none of them really have anything to offer her. Quinn's interests are fashion, gossip, and boys, and nobody that dates her is willing, or even able, to discuss any of those topics. Why shouldn't Quinn treat them as fashion accessories, if they aren't any other use to her? Skylar specifically grounded their relationship in their social positions rather than their emotional compatibility, so why should Quinn be made to feel bad just because she took him at his word?

4. Closeup
The relationship between Daria and Quinn is one of the most important relationships in the series, but you wouldn't necessarily know it to this point. The basis of their relationship is a reflexive, almost banal sibling rivalry, which doesn't reveal much about either character. Too Cute marks a bit of a turning point in that regard: for the first time, we see one of the sisters need something from the other, apart from their absence. When Quinn, on the bus ride to Dr. Shar's, says "I just need you here, okay?", it's a milestone in their relationship. Quinn has constantly, and vocally, wanted Daria elsewhere. Even earlier in this very episode, she desperately waves Daria away from approaching Brooke and the Fashion Club. And that history of avoidance is there, sitting between them on the bus, but there's something else there as well. What they both know is that this elaborate performance they have been giving, in which Quinn ostentatiously denies any relationship to Daria (apart from "au pair," or "exchange student," or "cousin or something"), while Daria just as loudly expresses her desire to see Quinn miserable, is and always has been just that: a performance. It's a performance they both need, one that allows them the space to establish their own (very different) identities. But its theatricality is also important, a subtle, maybe even subconscious signal to the other that their antipathy is situational, and not fundamental. The characters they must play (in school, at the dinner table, even alone in the upstairs hall) are and have to be opposed to each other, but by keeping it on that "character" level, they leave themselves an opening to drop the mask when necessary, and fall back on the authentic relationship which their inauthentic hatred has allowed them to maintain.

Not that anything about their relationship changes much, if at all, during this episode. Quinn does reach out to Daria, but she makes her distaste at doing so crystal clear. And when Daria does (eventually, grudgingly) give Quinn the advice and affirmation she was seeking, Quinn rejects it out of hand. Their official rivalry resumes, essentially unchanged. But at least for a moment, on that bus, we could see that the rivalry, while real, is not all there is to their relationship.

5. Bullet points!
-What class is Mr. DeMartino teaching that has a whole unit on cults?

-OUTPOST DARIA IS BACK, Y'ALL! You can finally download Daria-themed WinAmp skins again! Thanks to Kevin, aka neonhomer, for bringing it back!

-Dr. Shar's office is located in the RxPlex, which is hosting the 1997 Adjustable Bed Show. Other offices in the 'Plex include The Butt Hut, Limbs 'n' Things, and, most disturbingly, Mela-No-Mo!

-Speaking of voice work, special shout out to Wendy Hoopes, who voices Quinn, Jane, and Helen (not coincidentally, the three deepest characters in the series apart from Daria). Her vocal work in the last scene of The Pinch Sitter ("more of a blush, really") provides a level of intelligence and self-awareness to the character that simply isn't there in the writing, and lays the groundwork for future developments.

-Dr. Shar's computer's keyboard has a key labelled "Execute" that lights up when you press it. Who made this keyboard, LA Gear?

-While I'm on the subject, I have a lot of opinions about Dr. Shar, but my job requires me to work with plastic surgeons, so I'm going to leave those opinions unstated.

-The blackboard for Mr. DeMartino's Jonestown class is particularly good, including a mention of "Kool Ade," which I find especially amusing because the people at Jonestown didn't even poison themselves with Kool-Aid, they used Flavor-Aid.

-This week in people being called by the wrong name: "So hello there, Quinn, whichever one of you is Quinn," as well as Quinn calling Jamie "Johnny"

-The Gupty's house reminds me of the house of Frank Ormand, The Pretzel Wagon guy from the Simpsons (which you'd think I'd be able to find an image of on the internet, but you'll just have to take my word for it).

-Quinn and Jane always have great interactions, Quinn's "Shoo! Shoo!" and Jane's "Well, if it's an emergency..." in the scene at Daria's locker are both great lines.

-That said, let me be clear: many of the jokes in Daria are terrible. I can't defend bits like "...in another hospital. In Belgium." or the guy in Dr. Shar's waiting room. I'd love to defend them. But I can't.

-When Quinn lists her priorities, number four is school. Which yes, it's last on the list (after "bouncy hair"), but it is on the list. Worth remembering.

-I'd definitely be interested in hearing the plot of "Mr. Potty Goes To Town"

-Sandy seems to imply that The Fashion Club is limited to four members. Which is odd, but then again, that rule is never contradicted anywhere else in the series.

-Daria Timestamp Watch: Hawaii was the only state that would recognize a marriage between a dish and a spoon.

-The Fashion Club continues to be terrible at fashion. How could Quinn thinks that coral suits her? Though I like the meta-joke where Sandy accuses Quinn of wearing the same thing all the time.

-Andrea shows up in Too Cute! Andrea is like the Boba Fett of Daria: she's barely in it, but you're always glad to see her.

-My wife pointed out that Kevin's claim to have been shot at implies the existence of a concealed carry law in Lawndale.

-I think I wound up writing more about Too Cute than The Pinch Sitter, but let me be clear that The Pinch Sitter was by a clear margin the better episode, possibly the best since The Invitation.

-See you next week for two fantastic episodes, The Big House and Road Warrior. I haven't rewatched them yet, but I am excited to do so, I remember them as being better than anything we've seen so far.

-The vocabulary word for the night is "indemnification!"

Daria S01xE06 This Year's Model and S01xE07 The Lab Brat

1. Thesis
I decided in advance that I'd cover these two episodes in my next post, a decision I made with only a vague recollection of the episodes in question. And after seeing them, for a while I felt like I should cover them each in their own post. I felt this, not because either one particularly merits a standalone post, but because they're each so different, in so many ways. While This Year's Model is a solid, enjoyable example of the early "issue" episodes, The Lab Brat is probably one of the weakest episodes in the entire series, and falls into basically every trap that the show usually avoided so carefully. But while the episodes have very little in common, their lack of commonality is itself a worthy topic of consideration. In particular, I have to account for the strange fact that while This Year's Model is more effective as an episode of television, it's actually The Lab Brat that is more important in the way it moves the series. Let's figure out why.

2 Summary
Short: Ms. Li announces that two talent scouts from the Amazon Modeling Agency are to visit Lawndale High to look for potential models.
Long: We learn that Daria's bedroom walls are padded because the previous resident was a schizophrenic; Daria worries that her mother will forcibly redecorate. At Lawndale, Ms. Li announces that the Amazon Modeling Agency will be holding tryouts at their school. The representatives (Claude and the delightfully named Romonica) show up during economics class to gush over all the students (and Mrs. Bennett). Daria complains about this to her (sympathetic) parents, immediately before Quinn announces that she has been accepted into modeling class. After a negotiation between Helen and Romonica (who is getting a Brazilian wax at the time), Helen agrees to let Quinn attend, but insists that Daria observe, in exchange for an embargo on redecorating her room. Brittany is kicked out of the class, causing her great distress, particularly when some male students (including, at Claude's insistence, Kevin) participate in a rather intimate pretend photo shoot, which involves the boys (reluctantly) taking off their shirts. Ms. Li happens by and angrily breaks up the class. At the next day's assembly, before she can announce the winner of the modeling contract, a representative of a mercenary solider outfit marches on stage, claiming to have been invited by Ms. Li. The press follows in his wake. The next day at breakfast, as Quinn laments her lost opportunity, Daria reads that the contract was awarded to Kevin. He, however, is miserable at his first photo shoot, as Romonica and Claude both regret their choice.

The Lab Brat
Short: Ms. Barch pairs up the students for experiments involving the conditioning of a mouse.

Long: Ms. Barch, Lawndale's biology teacher, gives an explanation of operant conditioning centered around her ex-husband, who recently divorced her after 22 years of marriage. The students are paired up rather vindictively; Daria is paired with Kevin, and Upchuck with Brittany. Their project: to train a mouse to run through a maze, using their choice of positive or negative reinforcement. The cable TV is broken at Kevin's house, so he asks to work on the project at Daria's, where he is transfixed by "The Pigskin Channel", leaving Daria to work on the maze in peace. Meanwhile, Helen is encouraging Daria to make friends with Kevin, since he's so popular, while Quinn attempts to date him for the same reasons (Jake just likes having another man around the house). Meanwhile, Upchuck has revealed that through "accidental" telephotography, he has evidence that Brittany (while broken up with Kevin for a week) spent some intimate moments in the back seat of a rival QB's car. He uses this leverage to extract menial labor from Brittany, adding to the frustration she already feels at Daria "stealing" her boyfriend. As Kevin's time with Daria makes her even more popular, Brittany, in desperation, steals Daria and Kevin's lab mouse, returning it only when Daria promises to "return" Kevin. Unfortunately, Brittany's younger brother tortured the mouse while it was in their house, but Daria rescues the situation by explaining to Ms. Barch that this was a textbook example of negative reinforcement, and gets an A. Kevin, however, gets a D, while Upchuck and Brittany receive an F, as Ms. Barch demands that Brittany, not Upchuck, explain their experiment to her. The next day Kevin approaches Daria to invite... Quinn to an upcoming party.

3. Recapitulation
These episodes, among other dichotomies, embody the two approaches that a show with Daria's goals and setting could take: Issue of the Week vs. Relationship Drama.

This Year's Model is emphatically in the first category. It's easy to forget now in this "Golden Age of Television," but issue-of-the-week shows were still a staple of television programming at the time (the year Daria premiered, the Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series went to Law & Order!). And there's no doubt that this sort of thing was in Daria's DNA; the MTV generation grew up with Very Special Episodes, and I say this as somebody that vividly remembers, not just watching, but eagerly anticipating Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. Really, all of Daria up to this point had been at least borderline Very Special, and you could easily see the production staff, at this point in the run, regarding This Year's Model as to some extent their masterwork, the specimen type of a Daria episode, to point out to future writers.

And yet, in the very next episode, all of that is cast aside in favor of relationship drama. Now, it goes without saying that relationship drama transcends generations (but then, so does issue-of-the-week, q.v. South Park). But it was nonetheless more than usually at the forefront when Daria premiered, at least in its target demo: Dawson's Creek, Party of Five, Beverly Hills 90210, and Felicity were all currently on the air. In fact, Daria was seen by some at MTV as a successor to My So-Called Life, according to some interviews. (Note: I originally wrote that I'd found that information in a specific interview, which I linked to. But somehow the link information got lost in a copy/paste somewhere, and I haven't recovered it. So I guess just Google it and hope for the best.) The Lab Brat has no "political" interests, no broader issues that it wants to explore. The closest it gets is Ms. Barch's rants about her ex-husband, which are essentially ignored by every other character. The dramas are all interpersonal, centered around things like the competition for Kevin's (and Quinn's) affections, the fluctuations of Daria's popularity, Upchuck's attempts to sow discord, etc. It's a different episode from any that were made thus far, and also, as I said, one of the worst.

And yet. It's not a coincidence that the characters (Romonica and Claude) introduced in TYM are never seen again, while the character of Ms. Barch, introduced in TLB, becomes a recurring character (completely eclipsing Mrs. Bennett, by the way). The fact is that TLB is both an unpleasant slog AND a breath of fresh air. We needed to see Daria fighting for herself, and not her principles. In the course of these two episodes, Daria makes a crucial transition from observer to participant. And so of course TLB is an unpleasant episode, because, after all, Daria had been holding herself back from the world for reasons which were perfectly understandable! In TYM, Daria could still keep her distance and negotiate from power. She extracts a concession from her mother for nothing, and then spends much of the episode literally sitting in the audience, watching others suffer, and only acting in secret (nobody ever discovers who recruited the mercenary on Lawndale's behalf). In TLB, those barriers are broken down, and Daria is forced into the lives of Kevin, Brittany, Upchuck, and Quinn; heck, even the J's want to talk to her. Daria can no longer afford to stand aloof from them. Her grade is on the line, and even her own home and family are being invaded and corrupted by those she despises. Meanwhile Jane, who has been observing from a safe distance since long before she met Daria, shows no particular inclination to get her own hands dirty. Daria actually suffers in this episode, instead of theatrically declaring herself to be suffering. The difference is palpable.

And so ultimately, the value of The Lab Brat, for all its many flaws, is that it finally puts the focus of the show squarely on, well, Daria. Despite the fact that the show is named for her, and is told from her perspective, she is a difficult character to get to know, by her own design. The barriers she's put up are as resistant to her own self-exploration as they are to outsiders (remember what she chose to write about at the coffee house. It wasn't exactly Song Of Myself). And so the show, in its early going, found itself talking about Daria's surroundings; it might as well have been called Lawndale High, or The Morgendorffers. But with The Lab Brat, the show found a way, however ugly, to break through and force its central character to acknowledge herself a part of the world. Of course, she's still good old monotone, impervious Daria, and rightly so. But the stakes have been raised, and that's never a bad thing.

4. Closeup

Ok, all that said: The Lab Brat, important though it may be, is also just plain bad, for reasons I've been struggling to pin down. In the end, I guess it just boils down to inconsistency. The episode's universe and motivations are inconsistent both within the episode, and in the context of the larger series.

Take Helen, for example. In TYM, she deals assertively with Daria, Quinn, and Romonica, maintaining a consistent and mature view of modelling as a career, and an appropriate (and therefore limited) trust in Quinn's ability to navigate it. True, she is outmaneuvered by Daria on the subject of redecorating her room, but not egregiously so. In TLB, on the other hand, Daria makes fun of her to her face while Helen remains oblivious. Moreover, she is delighted by the idea that Daria will be spending time with Kevin.

Now, this could just be written off as a young series finding its way, and the Daria-Helen relationship is definitely one that grows and changes as the series goes on. But even at this point, it's bizarre to see Helen treating "QB" as a desirable rank. If she did, it's hard to see why she married Jake, a third-string punter if ever there was one. And ignoring Daria's mockery is even more inexplicable. She may be false with her children, but she is always present in their conversations. Indeed, the very same scene has Daria saying "Do you really believe that?" to which Helen responds "Believe? In what sense?" Which is insincere, yes, but hardly oblivious.

Another inconsistency, and one that I confess annoys me more than it might annoy others, is the handling of The Pigskin Channel. Now, The Pigskin Channel is clearly a knockoff of ESPN Classic (at the time still known as Classic Sports Network). The show describes itself as airing "Classic football games 24 hours a day -- every day, all this month." Which is fine as far as it goes (although, "all this month"? What the hell are they planning to air NEXT month?). The problem is that, for the rest of the episode, Kevin (and Jake) behave as if the show is airing live games. It's not just that the level of Kevin's investment makes no sense for somebody watching years-old games (even those featuring "his team"). But Kevin also specifically suggests that the games are live; when Daria tries to tell him there's a problem he says "The game got cancelled?" followed by "They're running the game opposite the..." Which, even if the game WAS live, makes absolutely no sense. First of all, barring a 9/11 level catastrophe, football games do not get cancelled. Second, what could think the game is running opposite? If it's something that he'd rather watch, then he would already know about it, and would just go ahead and watch that instead.

The issues go on. Even by the low standards of Lawndale society, the angst generated by lab partnerships is bizarre. OK, take as given the subhuman intelligence of Kevin, Brittany, and the J's, but I still cannot believe that Kevin's visits to Daria's house would be so generally misconstrued. And the final nail in the episode's coffin is the icky Upchuck/Brittany subplot, which somehow manages to be more upsetting than the (multiple!) instances of Quinn being hit on by grown men through the course of the series. Again: none of these things are completely irreconcilable with the rest of the series, and any individual issue is no more noteworthy than, say, the still-in-progress voice characterization of Tiffany. But taken as a whole, they represent a serious challenge to the quality of the show. Fortunately, as the existence of this blog post proves, these shortcomings were far more the exception than the rule.

5. Bullet points!

-You can learn some fascinating (and eerily prescient) facts about The Pigskin Channel at the Daria Wiki

-The Lab Brat may also suffer in comparison to This Year's Model simply because the latter, as I was surprised to find out, was co-written by Laura Kightlinger, one of my favorite (at the time this aired, and to this day) standup comedians. Check out The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, a show you'll be surprised to realize you've never heard of.

-Fun fact about Ms. Barch (who I will definitely be writing more about in future): the actor that did her voice also voiced Tiffany. Which is startling already, and even more so for those of you who are familiar with the finalized voice of Tiffany. Possibly the two most contrasting voices in the show.

-The Lab Brat (particularly the Upchuck nonsense) is clear proof that Eichler was correct that they hadn't really fully articulated The Eichler Principle yet.

-This week in incorrect names: Mr. O'Neill calls Brittany "Normandy." Geography joke!

-That said, the principle is quite apparent in This Year's Model. Note that the only models who are made uncomfortable in the episode are the male models. Indeed, the tag on the episode is Kevin being sexualized, objectified, and criticized by representatives of the beauty-industrial complex.

-Daria Timestamp Watch: Brittany has a pager

-In The Lab Brat, Brittany wants to see "the new Whitney Houston movie." Ironically, the last movie that could reasonably be called a "Whitney Houston movie," The Preacher's Wife, came out a good four months before this episode aired. That's presumably the one she's referring to, and it might well still have been in theatres (I don't know how things worked back then), but it's still interesting to realize that, by the time this episode aired, there would be no more "new Whitney Houston movies" for anyone.

-The Lab Brat does have an absolutely fabulous glimpse into Young Jake ("They didn't call it self-love then, Kevin. They called it self-abuse.")

-Kevin, Upchuck, and Jake all request two ice cubes in their soda

-Sick Sad World stories: An encyclopedia written by a model, the Malibu Primate Diet (also a Daria Timestamp Watch there), and "the phone sex/EMS dispatcher." Worth noting that sex work is as sensationalized now as it was back in 1997 (if not more so!)

-Brittany tries to describe the mouse bite on her hand as the fault of a "faulty eyelash curler." Fun fact about me: I was at least 18 years old, if not older, when a female cousin of mine, while going through her purse, happened to pull out an eyelash curler, and I didn't have the faintest idea of what it could be. 

-I really love the phone conversation between Helen and Romonica. Not because of the Brazilian wax that's taking place (though that is amusing), but just to hear two confident women who are used to winning arguments go at each other. The exchange: "Please, call me Helen. What can I do for you, Monica?" followed by "Please, call me Romonica" is just exquisite.

-My phone now has "Romonica" in its autocorrect dictionary. As best I can tell, the most prominent Romonica apart from the fictional Daria character is Romonica Harris, who claims to have dated Michael Jackson for five years, and to have been engaged to him.

-Well, that's it for this week! Join me next week, as we meet the Guptys in Pinch Sitter, and dive farther into the psyche of Ms. Barch in Too Cute.

Daria S01xE04 Cafe Disaffecto and S01xE05 Malled

1. Thesis
I've put a few entries in the bullet points of my previous posts tagged "Daria Timestamp Watch" (or some such, I may not have been consistent). Like any other work of art, Daria is a product of the specific time in which it was made. And while it isn't particularly topical compared to, say, South Park, its setting does tend to put a bit more focus on the show's temporal location. After all, it's a high school show, and we all have a tendency to anchor our cultural tastes, our standards of propriety, and just our general idea of what "normal" means in our high school years. This is the time when we first truly encounter the world - not as the amorphous series of tasks, rules, and mysteries which a child must navigate, but as a coherent, independent entity with which we must define our relationship.

Which is an elaborate way of saying that the two episodes I'm discussing today are about an internet cafe and a mall, respectively. And while there are still plenty of internet cafes and malls around (if you go looking for them), it has been years since either had a place in society like that shown in these two stories. So the questions I have are, first: what about these episodes remains timeless, and what does not? And second: Can I discuss all this without turning into "Buzzfeed's 17 Raddest Things About 1997"? We’ll find out!

2. Recap (Café Disaffecto)
Short: Lawndale's cyber café, alt.lawndale.com, is vandalized

Long: Mr. O’Neill’s class is studying Shakespeare, to Kevin's dismay. However, Mr. O'Neill is more interested in the fact that the town's cybercafe has been robbed (or is it the school's cybercafe? It's never really made clear). The students are indifferent, but Mr. O'Neill misinterprets a statement of Daria's as a recommendation that the cybercafe be replaced with an actual coffee house.

At dinner that night, Helen hassles Daria about getting some extracurriculars for her college application, and threatens to send her to music camp. Cornered, Daria goes to Mr. O'Neill and volunteers to fundraise for the coffeehouse, and convinces Jane to join her by promising the opportunity to see the inside of strangers' houses. Kevin and Brittany inadvertently solicit Mr. DiMartino for funds, while Quinn, unsurprisingly, proves herself to be a masterful fundraiser. Daria and Jane, on the other hand, find themselves forced to refuse an offer from Mrs. Johannsen, a morbidly obese woman who, before trying to buy their chocolate bars, informs them that her doctor has forbidden her to have chocolate, and then passes out. Ms. Li (not valuing human life above Lawndale fundraising), is displeased, and forces Daria to read some of her work at the coffeehouse in order to gain extracurricular credit.

At the coffeehouse, we see an array of acts: a scruffy (and seemingly in his late 30s) punk guitarist, a scene from Romeo and Juliet starring Brittany (and whatever-the-opposite-of-starring-is Kevin), and a bitter poem by Andrea, a Goth-ish Lawndale student. Finally, Daria steps to the stage, and reads her new short story: a hardboiled right-wing Cold War thriller featuring the deaths of either 21 or 22 Communists. It is a huge hit, and next morning Jake reads in the paper that it sparked an anti-Communist riot. That night, the coffeehouse is robbed again.

Malled
Short: Quinn has discovered what amounts to the Holy Grail of shopping: the Mall of the Millennium

Long: Quinn wants to go to The Mall of the Millennium, a new "super mall" 100 miles from Lawndale. Her parents refuse, but Mrs. Bennett, Daria's economics teacher, decides to take the class on a field trip to that very mall (she was inspired a stray remark of Daria's). The class (which conveniently includes all the main characters we've met so far), takes the long drive out to the mall. Mrs. Bennett finds herself a bit overwhelmed by the size of the mall, but is distracted by the "Fuzzy Wuzzy Wee-Bit" (Beanie Babies. They're Beanie Babies) Shop. The students then gather for a "presentation" which turns out to be a thinly veiled, uncompensated focus group. The mall executives atone for their deception by handing out gift certificates to random stores.

Mrs. Bennett (belatedly) assigns the students actual tasks, and they all split up. The members of the Fashion Club (who are not in the economics class, but have cut class to go to the mall) decide to offer a makeover to a random teen, and choose Daria, mortifying Quinn. Daria extracts favors from Quinn to refuse the makeover, then accompanies Jane to Scissors Wizard (for which she has a gift certificate). However, Scissors Wizard is not the scissors store Jane was hoping for, but rather a hair salon. They then proceed to Daria's store, the Doo Dad Shop, where Daria is the 10,000th customer (she's not thrilled). Daria and Jane catch a ride home with the Fashion Club. Next morning, their parents announce that they've decided to treat them to an outing to… the Mall of the Millennium.

3. Recapitulation
You know, now that I look at these episodes, I realize that what really stands out is that, while the internet cafe and mall settings do identify Daria's time period, it is in a strictly negative sense. Daria takes place in a post-mall, pre-internet world. In Café Disaffecto, the internet cafe is destroyed in the first few seconds of the episode, and not visibly mourned by anyone (even Mr. O'Neill only seems to like the idea of an internet cafe). And in Malled, all the sympathetic characters hate malls, and the Mall of the Millennium* itself is portrayed as a virtual dystopia. This was a very brief period in pop culture history; Mallrats came out just two years before Daria premiered, and Napster was released just two years later. But in Daria’s universe, ALL gatherings of people, whether on the internet or IRL, are suspect. Integrity can only be found in individuals, and individual relationships. Just look at the credits: they consist almost entirely of Daria excusing herself, Bartleby-like, from participating in crowd activities. This was the Golden Age of Slacking, where the cultural ideal was a person who (with the unique clarity of youth) had not only seen through society's hypocrisy, but also resigned themselves to its inevitability. You can't change the system, you can only withhold your participation.

In fact, the action in each episode is kicked off by the exact same scenario: Daria struggles to avoid participating in classroom discussion, and when she reluctantly speaks up, is not only punished by being forced into extracurricular activities, but is told that it was her own idea. Daria finds herself forced to patronize an old-fashioned coffeehouse and an ultra-modern megamall, both testaments in different ways to an idea she has rejected, the idea that two heads are better than one, that collaboration and community bring out the best of all of us. This pro-community viewpoint is as old as history, and to be honest, it has been overwhelmingly dominant (for every Emerson or Rousseau, there are a dozen Twains and Voltaires). But while Mr. O'Neill would see an enormous difference between the philosophical interchange of the coffee house and the economic interchange of the mall, Daria herself sees all intercourse as fundamentally weakening, a dilution of the pure indvidual spirit into the indistinguishable and amoral morass of public opinion. To what extent is this a factor of the time period, and to what extent is this just normal adolescent solipsism, Holden Caulfield Syndrome? Since I was a solipsistic adolescent myself at this time (I am, very roughly, 3 years older than Daria, but between the show's production schedule and my own somewhat arrested development, we were essentially peers), I'm unable to say. I can only say that Daria and I were of the same mind at this time, and we had no trouble finding validation for our beliefs.

*or, as history will refer to it, the Willennium

4. Closeup
The focus group scene in Malled is interesting as an example of the era's political atmosphere, and in how it positions Daria in its Teen Comedy genre. But I think what's most interesting about it is the relationships, specifically between Jodie, Daria, and Jane. The strength of Daria, even in mediocre episodes like this one, is the deep understanding of its characters and their relationships, and we can see this in the different, yet complementary ways that the three take down the mall executives. To recap:

• Jane is the first to speak, and is to an extent the Id to Daria's Ego and Jodie's Superego. She obstructs the executives (by providing absurd answers to their questions) not to advance any cause per se, but just because she's read the room, and she knows that she can get away with it. (In many episodes, Jane's anti-authoritarian lines will be delivered in aside, to Daria, but here she speaks directly to the executives.)
• With the ice broken, Jodie poses the question: “Do you think our demographic can really be addressed by middle-aged middle managers telling us what's fun to buy?” <As an aside, whoever transcribed this for Outpost Daria inserted a stage direction at this point: (the executives are silent; they obviously never expected to deal with a kid in possession of a functioning brain)>
• Daria then points out that they should be getting paid, and while the grownups splutter, points out to Jane that the wall is a two-way mirror.
• Jane turns out the lights (announcing out loud that she's doing so), revealing the other side of the mirror.
• Jodie obliquely threatens to start a media scandal. When the executives offer her a coupon, Jane non-obliquely responds “Don't insult her.”
• When the executives offer a $10 merchandise coupon, Jane bids them up again.
• When the price is met, Daria says that there's a principle at stake. Jodie says that there isn't, and Jane doesn't even bother to say anything as she heads off to grab her coupon.

These characters are fundamentally very similar. They're all three intelligent, not super-popular but comfortable in their position, obedient but unafraid. And yet there is no point in this scene where any one of them could be swapped for any of the others:

Jane is the amoral one: she talks back to amuse herself, she turns out the lights to amuse herself, she takes whatever fee she can negotiate, and she feels no responsibility towards Daria.

Jodie is the realist. She knows her advantages and her weaknesses, and those of her opponents. She doesn't talk back to amuse herself, she does it to gain a strategic advantage. She knows that her media threat is largely a bluff; these executives have their own strings to pull and would have a decent chance at hushing up any fuss she managed to stir up. So she takes what she can get, cashes in, and moves on.

Daria is the moralist. She doesn’t want money; she knows her parents have more than enough, and she already has enough guilt over her subconscious refusal to examine the source of her own financial well-being. She just wants to not be contributing to the system any more than she has to. But as it turns out, you have to contribute a lot. That’s why it's the system.


5. Bullet Points!

-I can state from personal experience that high school English teachers of the late '90s fucking LOVED the idea of coffee houses. (And now that I'm in my mid-thirties, I agree with them.)

-Café Disaffecto is the first script since the premiere credited to Glenn Eichler.

-Related point: I feel bad for cramming in Café Disaffecto in with Malled, when Café Disaffecto is the vastly superior episode

-I feel like this show (like most in the genre) oversells the intelligence of teens, but I don't think that it undersells the intelligence of adults. Mrs. Bennett takes 20 or 30 teenagers to a giant mall, by herself, and doesn't even have much of an idea of how they can actually learn anything once they got there, and everybody signed off on this. And yet, that scenario, particularly for the time period, seems perfectly plausible to me.

-Although, DID everybody sign off? Malled has a LOT of plot holes: the Morgendorffers are apparently unaware that Daria took a trip to the Mall of the Millennium, even though they must surely have signed a permission slip for it. The mall is clearly identified as being 100 miles away, even though that clearly means that the economics class must have missed all their other classes for the day, which seems like a lot for Mrs. Bennett to pull off on a whim. And is the Fashion Club really all cutting all their classes for the day to spend two hours driving each way to the mall? And how can Daria and Jane skip out on the bus ride home without Mrs. Bennett noticing? Daria isn't overly concerned with plausibility, but this episode is more than usually problematic

-I love that the Mall of the Millennium describes itself as “the world's second or third largest mall.”

-Related to my discussion of sexual harrassment in my last post: Upchuck cops a feel from Brittany, which is definitely a case of the character not being fully developed yet.

-But what's endearing about Upchuck is his non-discrimination. He also makes a pass at Mrs. Bennett, although she doesn't notice.

-Daria Timestamp Watch: beyond the mall/internet cafe aspects, there are a couple very dated references: specifically Fuzzy Wuzzy Wee Bits/Beanie Babies, and "Animal Maulings on home video", a clear reference to When Animals Attack! My favorite sentence from the Wikipedia entry on Beanie Babies: "In 1998, English authorities seized more than 6000 [counterfeit] Princesses and Britanniae." They Latinized the plural of Britannia!

-Jodie and Mack are both politically aware, but in a faintly resigned sense, as when Jodie asks Mack whether they would be damaging "Dr. King's memory" by moving to the back of the school bus to evade Kevin and Brittany (who are getting MUCH more intimate than would have been allowed in any school bus I've ever been on).

-Where does Upchuck get his winning ways? Well, his dad asked Upchuck to buy him bikinis for his secretary.

-Tiffany's voice is still all wrong, Stacey's is only slightly off.

-Has any store every actually awarded anything to, or even acknowledged, their lucky 10,000th customer? It's a reasonably common trope, but I've never once heard of it happening in real life.

-One of my favorite things about the Fashion Club is that their fashion tips are always, like, insane. Mandarin collar? Skort set?!

-OK, fine, here are the 17 Raddest things about 1997*:

17.) The last scene of Con Air

16.) Gwen Stefani doing pushups

15.) The Palm Pilot. Fun fact: I have actually written software designed to interface with a Palm Pilot.

14.) Dancing Baby

13.) The Fifth Element. I stand by it.

12.) Jamiroquai's hat

11.) The fact that somehow, for some reason, more people cared about Princess Di's death than any other death in human history before or since

10.) Lillith Fair (top-grossing festival of the year!)

9.) My last day of high school, when me and Ben and some other classmates went out in the woods and burned our school uniforms.

8.) The Bittersweet Symphony video

7.) Jackie Brown

6.) MMMBop. It’s been 16 years, and you’re still going to have that song stuck on your head now that I've mentioned it.

5.) How do you like them apples?

4.) I get knocked down! But I get up again! Na na na na gonna keep me down!

3.) Oh my God! You killed Kenny! You bastards!

2.) OK Computer. It's a cliche for a reason.

1.) Daria, obviously!

Daria S01xE03 College Bored

1. Thesis
The Eichler Principle, as explained in my last post, is that Daria takes place in an alternate universe, where women are stronger than men. This naturally leads to a lot of subtle ramifications, and one of the more fascinating is the show’s treatment of sexual harassment.

It's not as if such harassment doesn't exist in Daria. Quite the contrary: a fair percentage of Daria’s male characters are creeps who regularly attempt to sexually coerce women. In fact, if you just look at the peripheral, single-episode male characters, damn near all of them meet that description. The difference is that, in Daria’s universe, men are simply unable to coerce women. Women are perfectly capable of fending off unwanted advances, and both sides know it. Women are insulted by creeps, sure, but never scared by them.

2. Recap
Short: Helen and Jake insist that the girls take a college prep class

Long: The Morgendorffers visit the home of some friends of Helen and Jake, who have already begun prepping their 3-year old daughter for college admissions. Stunned, the parents insist that the girls take a college prep course, which turns out to include an assignment to go on a campus visit. Helen and Jake decide to take the girls to their alma mater, Middleton College. There, the family gets split up when Helen and Jake suddenly run off to see Jake's old dorm room.

Both Helen and Jake make various efforts to fit in with the college kids, with results ranging from “awkward” to “breathtakingly inappropriate.” Helen gets asked for her panties by a frat pledge, and is initially flattered, until she finds out that she was chosen because her panties are big enough to be seen from a distance, when flown from a frat house flagpole. Jake, meanwhile, goes to the bursar's office and is stunned when he learns the cost of tuition.

Daria and Quinn, along with the tour guide, visit fraternity row (at Quinn's insistence). There, Quinn is mistaken for a Theta pledge, and plays along without hesitation. Daria heads back to the tour guide's dorm room, where she discovers that the guide is paying big money for mail-order term papers, and offers to do better work for her at a lower rate. Word spreads, and she spends the afternoon helping college students with their homework (and cracking wise, of course). The tour guide suggests they go to a party, where they find that Quinn has been elected “Keg Queen.” Meanwhile, Helen and Jake have enlisted the campus police to find their daughters. They arrive at the party, and all four are immediately kicked off campus.

The next day at the college prep class, the students recount their various experiences. Back home, Daria's paid homework scheme gets busted. As Jane and Daria discuss recent events at the pizza place, Quinn turns down the amorous advances of their college prep teacher.

3. Recapitulation
Sexual harassment is all over this episode. The most jarring example is the college prep teacher's pursuit of Quinn. This is not the first example, nor is it remotely the last, of someone behaving toward Quinn in a way that seems like it should result in a firing at the very least, if not jail time and a life on the sex offender registry. He asks Quinn to meet him outside of school to discuss (I swear I'm not making this up) a “making out scholarship.” And Quinn’s parents don't object! (Granted, this is partly because it's not entirely clear at the time whether it's a joke, and the conversation quickly moves on. But still.) This leads to the tag on the episode, when Quinn throws a drink in the teacher's face upon learning his real intentions. If the viewer was dismayed by the lack of concern from Quinn's family (her parents may have been oblivious, but Daria knew perfectly well what that teacher was up to), we now see that the family wasn't concerned because they simply didn't need to be. Quinn, who is no more than 15, finds herself out alone with an adult man who is pursuing her sexually, and what does she do when she realizes this? Does she get scared? Does she run away screaming? Does she stay quiet and try and find a non-confrontational way to disengage? Nope. She throws a drink in the creep's face, and storms off without looking back.

The theme continues throughout the episode. Quinn and Daria's college fantasies both involve creepy or threatening men, and Helen looks back nostalgically at being catcalled during her college days. In all this, there is exactly one character that is threatened by another's advances, and that character is a man. Specifically, Helen takes a break from searching for her missing daughter (!) to aggressively flirt with a freshman in a desperate attempt to recapture her youth. He grows increasingly flustered, before abruptly running away, which is exactly what Quinn does not do in the same scenario. Now, to be clear, this theme is not emphasized or underlined in the episode, the way I might make it sound. In fact, according to Glenn Eichler, this was all still subconscious on the writers' part. All these encounters are just written as gags, and frankly, not all of them quite work on that level (the show is still finding its comedic voice a bit). Whatever themes are present are the ones that are inherent in the characters from the beginning. But when you step back for a second, and consider a world where women can intimidate men, but men can NOT intimidate women… well, you start wanting to write dozens of blog posts to try and explain what a strange and extraordinary thing it is.



4. Closeup
In the college prep class, the students are invited to fantasize about what they expect out of college, and the results are, naturally, revealing:

Kevin simply imagines himself wearing his football uniform on a college campus, until the actual football team walks by, all significantly bigger than he is. He quickly restarts his fantasy, this time imagining himself suitably tall and strong. A beautiful woman walks up and thanks him for some flowers, which he says his high school girlfriend sent to him. Next, Brittany fantasizes about being named Miss College; as she is walking down the runway, Kevin desperately proposes marriage from the crowd, but is hauled away by security. It's funny: before starting this project, I had remembered Kevin and Brittany's underlying hatred for each other as something that slowly developed throughout the series, but clearly I was wrong, it's there from the beginning. I'd also note that football is the only thing Kevin is any good at, and yet he doesn't have the body to make even a college team, let alone play professionally. And what's worse, he knows it. Which is pretty sad, when you think about it, though for better or worse, thinking about it is the one thing Kevin will never do.

Jane's college fantasy is to skip college, spend the money on a New York loft, and pursue her art career. Jane has no interest in school, either for education or social life, and her only dream is to leave everything behind.

Quinn imagines finding herself assigned to a room with three male roommates: one extremely muscular man wearing nothing but a towel, one preppie, and one cowboy. Upon meeting her, all three immediately decide to fight each other for the right to date her. Really, they don’t even decide to fight, it's simply taken as a given. This is the second time in the first three episodes that we've seen Quinn smiling beatifically at men fighting over her (her interest in cowboys will also be revisited). And getting back to my theme here, I have to emphasize that the three men are just massively larger than Quinn; she isn't aged up at all in her fantasy, and the scene is staged so that we see the three men looming over Quinn, whose back is facing the camera. And this is her fantasy, not because she has a thing for danger, but because it simply doesn't seem dangerous to her. And the same applies in real life: she has no problem convincing three large men not to play drinking games at a frat party, which you have to admit is impressive.

Finally, Daria imagines herself being invited to transfer to graduate school, in her first week, to teach on their Paris campus. Which, even for an adolescent fantasy, is rather unrealistic (compare to Jane's fantasy, which is at least not laughably implausible). Of course, Daria immediately undercuts her own fantasy: it turns out the professor only wants her transferred in order to use her apartment to bang “the more attractive students.” When Daria said “I have low esteem for everybody else,” in the premiere, this is exactly what she meant. She believes that, even if she reaches the absolute pinnacle of intellectual development and achievement, she will still be seen as nothing more than an obstruction, blocking everyone's view of the attractive women.

5. Bullet Points!
-The episode establishes the show's setting with a bit more precision. Middleton was established in 1776 (and the tour guide describes it as having been “a colonial religious college,” which, if it was founded in 1776, it wasn't colonial for very long). Thus, the college (and Lawndale) must be somewhere on the East Coast. For a long time I was under the impression that this show was set in California, primarily because the weather always seems to be so nice.

-I loved the scene in the bursar's office, where the bursar steers Jake to the Mafia for a student loan (“They sell candy. And make loans. Oh, and haul trash. They got a variety of interests.”). Which again, unsubtle, but I would point out that college financial aid departments really do work this way.

-Speaking of scams that are still quite relevant: Quinn gets accepted to a fake “college” that is in fact basically a time share in Florida.

-I wasn’t kidding about the show's interest in status anxiety in my last post. Helen and Jake are clearly very intimidated by their friends, and uncomfortable about the fact that their friends' house is clearly much nicer than theirs.

-Though note also that the house, while fancier, seems much less comfortable than the Morgendorffers’; it actually reminded me of nothing so much as a room Hildi might have designed on Trading Spaces (does anybody know where you can find old Trading Spaces online? I would SO get drunk and watch a random Hildi episode right now.)

-”Daria is more of a late bloomer, socially. And there's nothing wrong with that, is there, honey?” Shudder. Why do parents talk about their kids in front of them like this? Will I do it if and when I have kids myself?

-The chalkboard in the college prep course identifies the course name as “Push Comes To Love.” Chalkboards in Daria are fun to keep an eye on. They don’t tend to have joke-jokes on them the way that, say, The Simpsons writes jokes for background signs. But thought goes into them nonetheless, and they're reasonably close to what classroom chalkboards actually look like, semi-organized and free associated.

-Daria Timestamp Watch: Daria takes place in the very early stages of the internet. One of the geeks is writing an erotic letter to a female inmate he met on the internet. (“I think she's female”). And yet, just across campus, other college students are still getting term papers delivered via snail mail.

-As somebody who's done some flyering on college campuses in my time, I appreciated the bit where Helen puts up a flyer of her missing daughters, turns away for a second, and turns back to find the entire bulletin board covered with a fresh batch of flyers.

-When Jake learns about Daria's paper-writing scam, he simply compliments her on her savvy in demanding payment in cash. It falls to Helen to actually shut it down.

-In case there was any doubt which side of the Kevin-Brittany relationship the show's sympathy is with: in their college visits, Kevin gets stripped naked and covered in molasses, while Brittany takes part in a poetry circle, with people who express interest in her thoughts and feelings.

-Boy, Middleton sure doesn't hold its tour guides to a very high standard, do they?

-Best lines: “I don't stop you from reading, don't stop me from this.”

-”She’s God's problem now, kid.”

-”…or is this, like, personal advice or something?” (a rare zinger from Kevin)

-”Quinn… go… to beauty… school.”

-See you next time, with my first two-episode recap!

Daria S01xE02 The Invitation

1. Thesis
Daria isn't particularly "about" anything, in the way that, say, Deadwood is about the self-organizing nature of society, or Entourage is about how awesome bros are, or Top Of The Lake is about the effects of sexualized violence (note: that last example is in here solely as a gratuitous reason to recommend Top Of The Lake. Go, watch it). In fact, as I've mentioned, the weakest parts of Daria tend to be those that try to Make A Statement. But while Daria may not be about any single thing, there are many different subjects it is interested in, and one of those is class distinctions.

This might, on the face of it, seem like an odd claim to make. Daria is hardly The Wire, and Lawndale doesn't exactly encompass the full range of the human condition. By design, Daria is exploring the issues of a very narrow slice of society, and one that is, by global and historical standards, exceptionally privileged and exceptionally well off. But while the range is narrow, it IS a range, and both the show and the characters within it are exquisitely attuned to the distinctions between them.

Brittany-centric episodes such as this one tend to provide good examples of this phenomenon. Of the families we see in the course of the series, Brittany's is among the most well-off, and it's a sign of how seriously this show takes class distinctions that I am so confident in that claim (I can go further and state that exactly two characters in the series, one we've met already and one we haven't, come from richer families than Brittany's.  But we'll get to them in their due course). A lot of shows want to see the suburbs as "little boxes on the hillside," a bunch of identical cookie cutter lives like those on Kamazotz. But Daria knows that every community, every peer group, and every clique is always ordered, on a variety of dimensions. And even when the rankings are ignored for politeness' sake, they are never completely forgotten.

2. Recap
Short: When Daria helps Brittany with an assignment in art class, Brittany thanks her by inviting her -- "just this once" -- to her upcoming party.

Long: The episode centers around a party at Brittany's to which Daria receives the eponymous invitation. This surprising turn of events takes place after Daria helps Brittany learn perspective in art class (via an extended metaphor involving Cashman's department store). This connection, along with a shared distaste for pudding skin, inspires Brittany to invite Daria to her party, explaining that Daria is fortunately not attractive enough to be threatening to the other cheerleaders. While perusing Jane's sketchbook of "life drawings" (i.e., nudes), Daria discloses her invitation, and Jane easily convinces her that they should go, despite her claimed reluctance.

Quinn, needless to say, is also invited to the party. Her three suitors, Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie (hereafter referred to as the J's), all ask to escort her, and she accepts all three, as she is not ready to tie herself down to a single boyfriend. She is horrified to learn that Daria is also attending, and runs to her parents, who, unsurprisingly, fail to sympathize, even encouraging Daria (after Quinn has stormed off) to "keep an eye" on her sister at the party.

As the party begins, Brittany worries being judged for not having a Jacuzzi (Kevin is unhelpful). Daria and Jane arrive at the gate of Crewe Neck ("Private And Proud"), having gotten a ride from Trent. Jane is not on the list, but gains entry by distracting the guard with her life drawings. Inside, as Quinn hides from Daria, Charles Ruttheimer, known to all as "Upchuck," swoops in to offer them a tour of the house, including the laundry room, d/b/a the "makeout room", before finally admitting he only got invited by helping Britney in biology. A nameless girl (who I believe pops up in a couple future episodes, and may even get a name at some point) explains to Sandy and Tiffany which students are popular and why (they are baffled by Daria's lack of makeup). Two lame guys hit on Daria and Jane; Daria delivers a devastating retort which they are too dumb to understand. Jane, on the other hand, winds up sneaking off to the makeout room with one of them. Meanwhile, the security guard, overcome by the life drawings, runs off to find Jane, leading to a massive influx of hooligans into Crewe Neck. The J's, after Quinn declines to choose between them, fall to fighting, delighting Quinn. The party (now including a sheepish security guard) is broken up by the police, while Daria and Jane pose as security at the gate and harass incoming residents. Quinn, stranded by the now-unconscious J's, finds them there, and they find themselves forced to accept a ride home from Upchuck.

3. Recapitulation
Class (the economic variety) is a subject that high school students are just starting to discover. Don't get me wrong: that peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is right, it is all about class, and kids understand that from very early on, at least in a vague sort of way. But it is only in adolescence that we learn that things that really shouldn't make a difference, really do make a difference: class, race, religion, gender. We aren't born caring about any of these, and most of us are told by our parents that we shouldn't care about at least some of them. But by age 14 or so, we care about all of them. We have no choice.

Thus Lawndale. Britney's alpha-cheerleader status, we now know, is not based exclusively on her cheering ability, or the fact that she's dating the QB. It is also based on her family's position as residents of Crewe Neck. A community whose official motto, again, is "Private And Proud." Not the subtlest joke in the world, granted. But subtlety isn't what Daria does. I realize that statement contradicts some of what I've said so far, but I think that gets at what I'm trying to uncover here. Daria manages to achieve the effects of subtlety without actually employing it. It replaces subtlety with precision. When you look at this episode's treatment of class, there isn't much subtlety on display.  Brittany's fears about not having a Jacuzzi, the entitled way in which the neighborhood resident who ultimately breaks up the party rants at the (empty) security booth, the character design on the residents who Daria and Jane stop at the entrance: all these things make it plainly obvious that the show has no sympathy whatever for the society at Crewe Neck.

And yet there are unexpected layers within that society as well. Brittany's concern about being judged for her lack of a Jacuzzi is ridiculous, sure. But it is also sincere. When Jodie jokingly asks where the Jacuzzi is, Brittany is genuinely mortified. She doesn't want the Jacuzzi for herself, and she doesn't feel that she should be judged for not having one. She just knows that she will be. Similarly, the residents that Daria and Jane harass at the gate (each of whom is only on screen for a second or two) are noticeably distinguished from the complaining neighbor and even from each other. The first (almost certainly a mother herself) calls them out as fakes, and while she's justifiably annoyed, she's annoyed in a less hostile way than the complainer. The second is more concerned with his status than the third, but both of them actually play along with Daria and Jane, even though it seems clear that they aren't duped, or at least not completely.

It is this careful, precise characterization that allows Daria to get away with such unsubtle jokes as "Private and Proud." Nobody denies that Brittany is a ridiculous caricature, but she is a very specific ridiculous caricature, and that is what makes her fascinating.

4. Closeup
Charles "Upchuck" Ruttheimer is one of two new characters (along with the art teacher Ms. Defoe) we meet in this episode. I'll get to Ms. Defoe eventually, but I'd like to take a moment to explore the significance of Upchuck in the Daria universe. Specifically, the fact that Upchuck embodies a concept I will continually reference, which I'll call the Eichler Principle. The name stems from this interview (contains spoilers!) with Daria showrunner, creator, and chief writer Glenn Eichler.

At this point I should probably make it clear that there's a very real chance that these posts would not exist without this interview. Certainly I loved the show, or I would never have found the interview in the first place.. But this was what really drove home to me the way in which Daria was not just a great series, but a special one. So this series is hereby dedicated to Kara Wild, the interviewer (and one of the forces that pushed MTV to finally release the show on DVD).

In any case, I have no doubt that I'll come back to this interview again, but the exchange I want to discuss here is this one:

KW: It seems as though with few exceptions, the men of Lawndale are weak while the women hold positions of power. Was that coincidental, a comment on American society, or did you have a specific agenda?
GE: None of the above... I noticed that phenomenon myself after we were into the series for a year or two. It wasn't by design, but it wasn't exactly coincidental, because I realized there was something about the women being more powerful than the men that gave the series a unique setting -- almost as if it were a slightly alternate universe. I think in episodic TV, strong male characters tend to overwhelm strong female characters, as a reflection of the balance of power in the real world and in the writing rooms. (Maybe that's why so many shows with young female protagonists place them in fatherless households.) Somehow that balance got reversed in Daria.

So the Eichler Principle can be stated as "Strong women, to be strong, must be surrounded by weak men" (as the context makes clear, this is a reflection of our patriarchical society, not an endorsement of it). Daria makes use of this principle constantly, dating back to the very first scene of the series, in which Jake is ignored by his daughters while failing to convey a message from his wife. It's interesting to me that, according to Glenn, this was an accident, and you can see the show feeling its way through that concept in these first few episodes. The boys hitting on Quinn in the assembly in Esteemsters, and the boys who hit on Daria and Jane in this episode, are both significantly more aggressive than any of the regular male characters turn out to be.

Which brings us back to Upchuck. We see Daria and Jane get hit on twice in this episode, and both times by fairly annoying people. But there's a reason that Upchuck becomes a recurring character, and the other two do not. Note Daria and Jane's body language, and tone of voice, in each situation. It would perhaps be going too far to say that they are threatened by the two guys, but certainly the situation forces them into an even more defensive stance than usual. With Upchuck, however, the tone is very different, even though his approach isn't all that dissimilar. Certainly they don't like him (how could they?). But he is manifestly not a threat to them. When he puts his arm on Jane's shoulder, she has no hesitation in pulling it off, and when she does, he doesn't resist, or even pout or make a comment about it. They then have no concerns about going off alone with him on a "tour" of the house, even though he's made it nauseatingly clear that he is attempting to seduce them. Because Upchuck's redeeming quality is that he really would never hurt anyone. He has convinced himself that his skeezy lothario schtick is going to get him some sexy ladies eventually, and he holds to that belief no matter how often it's disproven. But, much like Brittany, he exhibits his privilege through fear, not entitlement. The smooth talking ladies' man he is continuously acting out is a shield, to protect his true self from rejection.

5. Bullet Points!
-I said Brittany was "fascinating" up above, and I'm totally not kidding. In fact, she may be my favorite peripheral character in the series. Which is impressive, given that (along with Kevin) she was easily my least favorite character when I first started watching.

-Quick shoutout to the animators for Jane's facial expression as Daria introduces her to Brittany (12:15 into the episode, if you have the DVD). Words can't do it justice, and I don't know how to make .gifs (I should try and learn!). But it's fantastic.

-I said in the first recap that I'd be keeping an eye out for "forgetting people's names" as a recurring theme in this series, and so far it's paying off big time. Jamie is called the wrong name twice by Quinn, and in what will be a running gag, Kevin persists in referring to Mack as "Mack Daddy," despite his repeated objections. Which is a cutting statement about race relations in our society, disguised as just another silly joke about Kevin's stupidity. I'll write more about this name thing as events warrant.

-When explaining to the J's why she can't take just one of them, Quinn explains that choosing a boyfriend right away would be "like eating the first pancake off the stove. You have to feed one to the dog." My favorite thing about this statement is that future events will make clear that, to Quinn, this is an entirely abstract proverb. The Morgendorffer's don't (and never did) have a dog, and none of them ever cook breakfast. Which is also in keeping with the fact that Quinn has constructed an imaginary, socially acceptable family for herself, which she attempts to pass off to all her peers.

-Another shout out to the animators: as Quinn is picking out an outfit for the party, watch how she rolls the skirt up. As somebody who went to a Catholic school, where the girls' only fashion option was how high to roll the pleated skirt, that moment really stuck out for me.

-Daria airs on LOGO occasionally, check your local listings. Daria only addresses homosexuality once (IIRC) in its entire run, but the channel still seems like a good fit to me.

-Time Capsule Watch: The security guard at Crewe Neck is bribed with Jane's nude sketches. Today he would have, literally, an infinite amount of nudity at his disposal, assuming he had a smartphone. As you read this, I would bet there are hundreds if not thousands of security guards sitting in their booths, looking at naked women.

-Speaking of: the bit where Daria says that one of Jane's models "bursts" out of the plane, and Jane says, "I think she had her bursts done" cracks me up every time. The joke is just OK, but Wendy Hoopes' delivery sells it.

-The dinner table negotiations about who will go to Brittany's party, and under what conditions, are a recurring setup in Daria. Daria and Quinn are constantly negotiating with their parents (like almost all teens), and those negotiations almost always involve cold hard cash (which is less universal). But one of the things that struck me this time was that Helen loves negotiating with her kids. Not just because she loves negotiating (though she does, she's a lawyer). But because she truly believes that teaching her kids negotiation skills is the one of the most important things she can pass on as a mother.

-In those same negotiations, Helen says that she's glad that Daria is expanding her circle of friends. To which Quinn replies, "Maybe now she'll have two." Which even Daria has to recognize is a pretty sweet burn. Don't sleep on Quinn, is what I'm saying.

-Jane's dominant position in the relationship is established already, more clearly than I remembered it. When Daria says that she isn't going to the party "...unless YOU want to?", it is clear that both parties agree that Jane makes the decisions, and that Daria is happy with this. And it is also the case that, both now and in the future, Jane is mean to Daria. She mocks her for her awkwardness around Trent (who Daria has a crush on, although oddly, that hasn't really been made clear yet). And worst of all, she goes off and makes out with a boy. And listen, I have been in that exact situation: in high school, too intimidated by the opposite sex to actually do anything with them, and ditched by your friend to go make out... it's crushing. Like, I'm having flashbacks to a couple specific incidents right now. I can't even talk about it, let's move on.

-A bit of an odd moment, when Trent is dropping them off, and Jane asks if he'd like to crash the party. Trent replies, "A high school party? Don't you think I'm a little mature for that?" Which is staged as a joke, in that they've just been discussing that Trent has been sleeping all day. But clearly he really is too mature for a high school party, as some future episodes will make even more clear. The joke really falls flat, if it's even a joke.

-Continuity Watch: There are a few things in this episode that don't quite match up with what we'll learn later. There's the Trent joke I just mentioned, though I don't think that's a continuity problem so much as a line that doesn't quite work. There's the fact that we see a few non-white characters in background shots, despite the fact that Jodie and Mack will later assert that they are the only black students at Lawndale High (which could be pretty easily retconned). But the worst continuity problem in this episode, and maybe the series, is Tiffany's voice. She sounds... normal! Tiffany will set into the most stylized voice work in the whole show (which is saying a lot), a droning monotone devoid of human emotion. But the couple lines she has here sound just like anybody else, and it's stunningly jarring for anybody familiar with the character she later becomes. There are certainly other characters whose vocal work changes over the course of the series, but that's the only one, at least so far, that is simply completely incompatible with the "real" version of the character.

-Great lines in this episode include Quinn (to the J's) "You deserve a really great girlfriend. <Beat> Well, three, actually," as well as her delivery of "Stop fighting over me! This is horrible!" (that line is another sign of how great Quinn is). But my favorite line by far is almost the last line of the episode, and it's one I'd completely forgotten about until this re-watch. As Upchuck drives the girls home, he continues to give a tour guide spiel, similar to the one he gave of Brittany's house, which I'll quote here:
To your left, the home of the town Director of Public Works, built on unstable ground. To your right, a flattened squirrel. Straight ahead, the future!

-My point being, I've been saying "Straight ahead, the future!" to myself every time I've felt down these past few days, and it helps every time. I recommend you do the same. See you next week!