10-24-00

Hail,

"See Jane Run" is sort of where this season (finally) starts to recover. We get some nice exploration of Jane's character and of Daria's as well (especially in regards to how lonely she'd be without her friend, and I particularly enjoyed the talking-to-herself scenes). Jane seems to be able to form and drop low-level friendships (perhaps acquaintances would be a better word?) fairly easily. She's also pretty good at focusing on the things she wants to, and ignoring the rest.
My only big complaint with this episode comes from Daria's "break wind" comment. Not because it's nasty; Daria is plenty nasty, and her friend is going to catch some of it from time to time, especially if Daria is feeling slighted. I'm not happy with it because it's just crude. Daria's nastiness is usually much more refined than that.

Outside of Daria's family and Jane, there aren't any major roles in this episode, although Jodie and Mack do appear, and I'm never against that. They all perform as usual, although the sort-of running gag of the Fashion Club not knowing Daria is Quinn's sister is both running thin and hard to believe, even of them. Speaking of running gags, the splits one was also a bit much.
A new teacher, and Daria's reaction to her was pretty good. This ties in to one of the other good scenes, Daria's little speech on morality at the end (and Jane's reaction to it).

Unfortunately, this episode still ignored Daria's writing, although it did have her reading, so that's not a big issue, even if it would have been a perfect time to draw attention to that again. Jane's running has been mentioned before ("The Misery Chick"), but we'll have to see if the Reset Button is used, now that she's been a track star. (Let me rephrase: I'll have to see if the Reset Button has been used, since most readers probably already know.)

Wraith