Daria S01xE01 Esteemsters

1. Thesis
If I claim, as I do, that Daria is one of the great TV shows, I'd better have an elevator pitch ready for why I feel that way. So here it is: Daria has some of the most realistic relationships of any high school show ever written. All of the classic relationships (teen vs. family, teen vs. adult, teen vs. teen, and teen vs. self) are explored, and the teen's world is observed with a respectful but pragmatic eye. The relationships are neither overdramatized nor underplayed, the stakes are always both real and realistic. And what's impressive about Esteemsters, the series premiere, is that the relationships that will underlie the entire series are established so deftly that the main characters all feel lived in.  Every character in Daria carries their past with them, and this is the case from the very first scene.

2. Recap

Short (This is where I’m going to simply copy and paste from the liner notes I wrote for my personal Daria DVD box set.  If you know the show, this will remind you which episode this is.  If you don’t know the show, read the Long recap instead):

It’s the first day of school for Daria and Quinn, who have just moved with their parents to Lawndale from Highland.

Long
Jake drives Daria and Quinn to their first day of school, while awkwardly encouraging Daria to make friends. Naturally, Quinn makes new friends literally the moment she steps put of the car.

Inside Lawndale High, Ms. Li informs the new students that they need to take a psychological exam, which Quinn, after being assured she will not be graded, participates in with alarming enthusiasm. Daria, on the other hand, answers only to show her disrespect for the test, its administrator (who repeatedly calls her "Dara") and psychiatric testing in general.

Mr. DiMartino introduces Daria to her history class. She correctly answers his questions about manifest destiny, which is more than any of her classmates (notably Kevin and Brittany) can do.

At dinner that evening, Quinn relates her many social successes, including her new position as vice president of the Fashion Club. Daria's parents continue to encourage her to make friends, and she continues to fend them off with ironic quips. The school calls to inform them that Daria will have to take a special self-esteem class. The class is taught by Mr. O'Neill (if reading a prepared syllabus out loud counts as “teaching”). Fellow student Jane Lane introduces herself to Daria with some dry humor, and afterwards they walk home together. Jane has taken the self-esteem class six times.

At this point, the setting and main characters have all been established, so I'll sum up the rest of the episode: Daria's family (mainly her mother) attempt to raise her self-esteem through family activities, specifically: clothes shopping, "Pizza Forest" (a thinly veiled Chuck E. Cheese), and a UFO convention. Meanwhile, Daria and Jane decide to test out of self-esteem class (a simple enough task), but are forced to be publicly congratulated for their self-esteem at a school assembly.

3. Recapitulation
Let's see how the classic relationships I mentioned are explored in this episode (I'm saving teen vs. family for part 4)

Daria's relationship with the non-familial adults in her life is one of quiet disrespect. She uses her intelligence to express her independence without being insubordinate, and without ever getting in any real trouble. And yet, she never has the angles figured out quite so much as she thinks she does. She's no Ferris Bueller. In fact, she's in many ways the anti-Ferris.  The authorities she tweaks are no more deserving than Ben Stein or Jeffrey Jones, but Daria never fundamentally denies their authority. And unlike Ferris (or Bluto, Spicoli, etc...) things rarely go quite how she plans. In this episode we see her seemingly “win” the psychological exam by exposing its pointlessness. But her only reward is attendance at a mandatory self-esteem class. And when she pulls her good student rank to force her way out of that class (a maneuver with which this writer is very familiar), she is still required to abase herself at a school assembly.

Daria's relationship with other teens is not explored as deeply in this episode (Kevin and Brittany don't offer much to relate to.) However, we do see her strike up a friendship with Jane, in a way that on both sides is almost accidental. Neither of them wants a friend (or at least they don't think they do), but the attraction they feel to a kindred mind is one they can't ignore. We also see some interesting aspects of Quinn's relationship with her peers. Particularly striking is her position at the school assembly: seated between two boys, neither of whom she appears to like, and both of whom are staged so as to be visibly invading her personal space. While in future episodes, Quinn will never again be shown in quite so subservient a position, her relationship with boys will continue to display this contradiction, that for somebody who spends so much time and energy talking about boys, she doesn't really seem to enjoy their company.

After one episode, Daria's character has already changed, which brings us to teen vs. self. Three times in this episode, Daria partakes in a "family activity" to raise her self-esteem. The first, clothes shopping, is decided upon by her mother unilaterally. The second time around, she's managed to talk her way into making the decision herself, and decides to drag her family to Pizza Forest. Not because she herself has any desire to go there, but simply to punish her family for allowing her to manipulate them. But the UFO convention is different. Daria actually wants to go there. The fact that her family won't like it is an added bonus, sure, but Daria is finally doing something for her own benefit. And this change will hold up over the course of the series (good riddance, Pizza Forest!). The irony, of course, is that Daria gains self-esteem from her pointless self-esteem class.

As does Jane, and for the same reason: that they found each other there. The joint decision to leave self-esteem class for a new shared existence of Sick Sad World and UFO conventions is a turning point in both characters' lives. And like all the turning points we blunder through in adolescence, it goes largely unnoticed by both. After all, when you bond over a lack of interest in bonding, it can be easy to miss what's going on. That uncertainty will linger throughout the series, because a small part of each teen actually resents their new friend, for taking away the autonomy and safety that a life of solitude provides. That resentment will rear its ugly head from time to time for years to come.

4. Closeup

The first scene of the first episode, of any series, carries a big burden, which is why I chose it for this closeup. Well, that and the fact that it's just so well executed. The scene is a short one, less than a minute, and simply consists of Jake driving Daria and Quinn to school. The primary goal of this scene, of course, is to establish the basic premise: the family just moved, and Daria is starting out at a new high school. And it does that, but it also manages to show us so much more. Daria's parents worry about her, and tell her so, but do not worry about Quinn (nor are they shy about criticizing Daria in front of her sister). Neither sister respects the other, in a passive-aggressive way, but they are united in their disrespect for their father, and understandably so. He is uncertain, ineffectual, and clearly not the primary breadwinner. We learn that their mother has a demanding (and apparently well-compensated) job, as well as an active interest in her children, and that she feels no compunction about using her husband as a delivery boy for her messages to her daughters. We learn that no family member can communicate honestly with any other, and the slightly different reasons that is the case for each of them: Daria resents her parents for pushing her to fit into the system, and Quinn for doing it so effortlessly. Quinn resents Daria for her refusal to fit in, and her parents for not seeing that Daria has no intention of changing. Jake is painfully aware of his lack of authority, and has no idea how to overcome that. Some shows give themselves a full episode in their "old" setting before dropping their characters in the new. Within 30 seconds, Daria has told you everything you need to know about its main characters, where they have come from, and where they are going.

5. Bullet points!
-I'm worried I'm going to undersell the humor in this series, simply because jokes don't need much analysis. But it can be a very funny show, and is particularly strong with its comedic timing. The Sick Sad World episode we see here may be the funniest one in the entire series, and the interview with Artie (who I’m fairly sure we’ll see again) at the UFO convention makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it ("They pressed my pants. Did a nice job.")

-Both the psychologist and Mr. O'Neill fail to remember Daria's name. It occurred to me as I watched that failure to remember names is a bit of a motif on this show, I'll keep an eye on it.

-One fair criticism of this show is that some of its lines seem to want to be Statements About Life, in a way they don't quite earn. (This is often signaled with a zoom from off-center onto Daria's face.) Daria's "I have low self-esteem for everybody else" is pretty solid, but some of the lines from her parents land with a bit of a thud.

-I find myself using the word "teens" to describe the characters a lot, because neither "girls" nor "women" (nor "guys" nor "people") seems appropriate. I like to think that Daria and Jane would have understood the ironic-yet-not way in which I use the term.

-One sad aspect of the official DVD release is that essentially all of the music cues were replaced with generic royalty-free filler. This is completely understandable, as the show used contemporary tracks by big-name artists as transition music (this was back when MTV still cared about maintaining a relationship to music), but didn't negotiate any DVD rights for those tracks because nobody'd yet heard of such a thing. If you're curious, you can find out what you're missing at http://web.archive.org/web/20120512035707/http://www.outpost-daria.com/song_list_1.html, which is an archived version of a song list from the fansite Outpost Daria, which I just this moment found out went offline a few months ago. I'm really bummed out now, as I spent a lot of time on this site back in the day, and in fact it is where I downloaded the images I used on my own personal Daria box set, as well as a starting point for the recaps in my liner notes. I would really urge you to click through that link and explore the archived version of the site, both as a nostalgia trip for the internet of 10+ years ago (I'm fairly certain there are some links to Angelfire sites in there), and an introduction to what was at the time a thriving fandom community.  (See also: http://www.dariawiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Daria_fandom)

-I’ve used the word premiere, rather than pilot, in this recap, as Esteemsters is NOT the pilot episode.  The actual pilot of this episode is essentially an animated storyboard, in black and white (included in my handmade box set, but not the official one).  It’s called Sealed With A Kick, and at some point I’ll discuss it a little more when I’m looking for filler.

-Speaking of which: one area in which I’m shamefully ignorant (for a Daria blogger) is the show’s Beavis And Butthead heritage (which seems more prominent in the pilot). I’ve never seen a full episode of B&B, and the few partial bits I’ve seen include no more than a few seconds of Daria.  But I will go back and learn about it, and share my knowledge with you, the reading public.

-Seriously, you guys, I'm super excited about this project, and I hope you are, too!

You're Standing On My Neck

1. Thesis

So. I'm going to be writing a series of recaps of the complete series of Daria, the animated MTV show from the tail end of the 20th century. For many of you, no explanation of this fact is needed. In fact, for Daria fans, the only thing that needs explaining is why nobody has done this sort of thing before. But for any readers who do not already recognize the brilliance of Daria, perhaps a word of explanation is needed as to why these posts are worth your time.

Simply put: it is my belief that Daria is the greatest animated series of all time. Full stop. Now, this is partly a matter of definition. I would probably agree that, say, seasons 4-8 of The Simpsons are better than the 5 seasons of Daria. But taken as a whole, all seasons included, and in particular with regard to serialization and depth of character, Daria stands alone. And it is my aim in this series to win over the skeptics, educate the unaware, vindicate the believers, and ultimately do my small part to help prevent this magnificent achievement from sinking into undeserved obscurity.

2. Recap

These posts, in length and aim, are more-or-less modeled after the AV Club style of television recapping (despite my abiding dislike of Todd VanDerWerff). That said, in order to keep my ramblings in some kind of shape, I'm limiting myself to the format seen in this and all subsequent posts. This section is intended for a straightforward recap of the events in the episode(s) being covered. As this is just an introductory post, I considered sketching out the overall story of the show from start to finish. But that would be spoiler-y, and while I'm not going to worry too much about spoiling a show that's been off the air for over a decade, there are a few developments in later seasons that are worth seeing fresh, if at all possible.

So, what I'll do instead is sketch out the basic setup of the show. If you've seen more than a few episodes of the show, you already know all this, and can skip to section 3., but I'd like to get the characters introduced now, so when I get to the actual episodes I can just say, i.e., "Jake," rather than "Jake (Daria's father)." Without further ado:

Daria takes place in the fictional town of Lawndale, an upper-class suburb. The show centers around the Morgendorffers: Helen and Jake, their older daughter Daria, and their younger daughter Quinn. Daria is a stereotypical 90's character: sarcastic, intelligent but unambitious, cynical, misunderstood. Quinn is bubbly and popular, and spends all her time thinking about fashion and boys. Helen is a workaholic lawyer, who tries to drive her kids hard but is too busy driving herself even harder. Jake is a self-employed "consultant," and not a very successful one, haunted by memories of a brutal childhood.

Jane Lane is Daria's best (and only) friend. The two meet in the first episode, and bond immediately. Jane is an artist, more cynical even than Daria, but also more socially adept. Her parents are ineffectual when they aren't absent, and she is usually alone at home with her older brother Trent, who is unemployed, and has no particular interests beyond his band Mystic Spiral.

Most of the show takes place at Lawndale High, the faculty and students of which are, with a few exceptions, extremely broad caricatures of various kinds of incompetence (though as will be seen, there is far more subtlety at Lawndale High than meets the eye). A few of the most important characters are:

Ms. Li: The wildly authoritarian principal, delusionally committed to her bizarre visions for the school.

Mr. DiMartino: History teacher, whose disgust with the stupidity of his students has led to permanently bugged out eyes. The most grotesque character design on the show.

Mr. O'Neill: English teacher. Sensitive, empathetic, arguably the only faculty member who truly cares about the interests of his students, Daria in particular. Unfortunately, he is also the most ineffectual character in the show.

Kevin and Brittany: QB of the football team and head cheerleader, a couple. Dumb.

Jodie and Mack: Among the very few more-or-less normal students at Lawndale, Jodie and Mack are also its only two African-American students. While we see very little in the way of overt discrimination, their skin color is never quite ignored.

The Fashion Club: Quinn's primary friends, the club consists of her, Sandy (the president), Stacy, and Tiffany. All four exist in a universe in which the Fashion Club is the central institution in the school, if not the world. This opinion is shared by nobody.

That'll do for now; there are certainly many more characters worth discussing, but we'll cover them as they come up. What's left is to describe the basic format of the show. The ostensible format of the show could be stated in one sentence as: Daria goes to a high school filled with idiots, and endeavors to maintain her autonomy and independent point of view, with the help of her friend Jane and her own superior intellect. Now, this is the basic setup for a million "school stories," whether they be TV shows, books, movies, or whatever (for example, it's more or less the setup for The Catcher In The Rye). I'm pretty sure that that's all MTV ever asked it to be, and if it was just that, then it wouldn't be much more than a piece of 90s nostalgia, only memorable for me and whatever generation it is I'm supposed to be part of. But beneath that surface, and without ever undermining it, the creators of this show managed to create something entirely different. And that difference is what I'm here to explore.

3. Closeup

This space is reserved for a specific element (usually a single scene) in each episode that I want to examine in more detail. Since there's no episode for this recap, I'll focus on the one common element in every Daria episode: the opening credits sequence. And a fine credits sequence it is! In fact, watching it just now made me realize that I really didn't need to go through all that in the 2. Recap section, since the opening credits tell you basically everything you need to know about the show. It's a simple concept: a series of scenes in which Daria is surrounded by people completely wrapped up in some artificial endeavor (sporting event, high school romance, a wedding), and is herself completely unmoved by them. (Note: YouTube doesn't appear to have a clip of just the credits, but I did find this live-action version of them, which is pretty impressive.) But while simple, the sequence is nonetheless skillfully handled, particularly in the way it subtly undermines the audience's sympathy for the lead character. After all, ostentatiously reading a newspaper at a wedding, and standing by while your classmates get injured in volleyball, aren't really admirable things to do. So right away we're told, in a way that could easily be overlooked, that while the show is called Daria, it's never quite entirely on her side. And finally, the theme song itself, "You're Standing On My Neck" by Splendora, is just such a perfectly 90s alternative-ish song. It wouldn't feel the slightest bit out of place on, say, a They Might Be Giants album, and it hails from that brief moment in time when women fronting rock bands seemed like it might be just, like, a normal thing. And the combination of upbeat melody with the deadpan delivery of the title line is as good a way as any of summarizing the way that I (and many like me) felt at that specific time in history. It's not that I thought that anything was wrong, per se. It's just that, somehow, I couldn't breathe.

4. Recapitulation

In this segment I intend to try and pull together the ways in which the facts recounted in sections 2. and 3. demonstrate my thesis. With no episode, there's not much to go on yet, so instead I'll simply give you a final warning: don't let this show fool you. The show will always seem to be telling you how it feels (and thus how you should feel) about its characters, and it will do so in blunt, almost artless ways. But this is a lie. It doesn't actually want you to feel the way it's telling you to feel. Like Daria herself, and like every intelligent, cynical, disaffected adolescent (of any age), the image it is projecting is one that it desperately wants you to see through. It puts up the artifice so that it doesn't have to waste time explaining itself to people who don't or won't understand. But for those with the eyes to see, the truth is right in front of us, pleading to be understood.

5. Bullet points!

-This space is reserved for random thoughts that don't fit in sections 1-4. Here goes!

-How big a Daria fan am I? I own 2 editions of the complete series on DVD, despite the fact that only one was ever released. Years before the official version came out, I made one myself, spending hours in the early years of BitTorrent pulling together every episode (including the unaired pilot), burning them all onto DVDs, compiling, printing out, and assembling an episode guide, and packaging the whole thing in a DVD case resembling a high school locker, with cover art printed out and taped on. It is, in certain ways, superior to the official release.

-As far as watching it legally at this point, the options I'm aware of are Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and the DVDs.  I would strongly urge you to utilize one of those legal methods. Yes, some of your money will go to monstrous MTV executives. But some of it will end up in the pockets of the people who made the show, and they deserve all the money they can get.

-How big a Daria fan am I? My wife and I went to a Halloween party dressed as Daria and Trent respectively (a friend came as Jane). Our costumes were the BOMB (for example, they were better than those in the live-action video I linked above), someday maybe I'll put a picture on here.

-I do have to point out that, while I'll be going through the series chronologically, the series really doesn't cross the line from "very good" to "classic" until around Season 3. So, for the first two seasons in particular, I will sometimes be covering multiple episodes per post, since they don't all necessarily merit an in-depth analysis.

-How big a Daria fan am I? I'm doing this series because I tried on numerous occasions to write a single post explaining why I'm such a huge fan of Daria, and abandoned every draft after it was thousands of words long and still hadn't come close to saying everything I wanted.

-If anybody reading this has any feedback, or just has their own deep thoughts about Daria that none of their friends understand, I would passionately love to hear from you. Hit me up at cynicaljerk@gmail.com, I'm ready to talk Daria with anyone, any time.