10-28-00

Hail,

And a new season is dawning. Oh what a joy, the show isn't totally dead.

What did I think of Daria!? Well, it pulled off the whole musical bit far better than I expected. I'm not usually a musical fan (outside of Muppet movies), so I wasn't particularly expecting much, but it was actually pretty good. No character development this episode, but the occasional lighthearted shows are fine, providing they don't harm the characters any, and this didn't.
The songs were actually fairly memorable. There were some nice touches in the episode as well, such as Quinn's little duet with her mirror. A Disney staple, yes, but too fitting to the character to be left out.
I do have a small problem with one song, however. It's nothing that would be important left by itself, but it fits one of the worst trends of the show, and one that had a big part in driving me off during second season. The song, of course, is Manly, and the trend is male-bashing. That's something that could really use some toning down still, and I don't expect to be solved until we finally get Tom.
Other than that, this made for a fun episode. Like I said, I'm not a big musical fan, so if anyone out there has recognized the musicals they've played off of here, let me know. My only other real complaint about this episode is its timing. Going by MTV's numbering scheme, this should have shown as the seventh episode of the season rather than the first. This doesn't quite strike me as a good episode to use as the season opener, it fits much better as the middle-of-the-season-break episode it was apparently originally meant to be.

Wraith