March 08, 2001

Hail,

Quick update today. The cat's finally out of the bag, and it has been confrimed that season 5 is the last season of Daria. There will be another movie to follow this season (see the new issue of Toon magazine for details), but that's it. Daria has enough episodes to be syndicated (just barely, for animation), so it may appear on other channels, but I wouldn't count on it just yet.

Here's a quote from Glenn Eichler on the subject:

"I talked it over with Abby Terkuhle, president of MTV Animation, and we decided to do another movie after the end of Season Five to wrap up high school and send the characters off to college. And that'll be it. We love our fans and we don't want to betray either their high expectations for "Daria" or our own, so we've decided to go out with our standards if not our brain cells intact."

Thanks to Michelle Klein-Hass for the news.

Wraith

March 03, 2001

Hail,

A couple of tidbits for appetizers. Next week's episode is titled "Camp Fear", in which Daria (and, it seems, Quinn) attend a summer-camp reunion. Not that promising a start (who holds summer-camp reunions? And wouldn't the reunion be during the summer?), but the clip up on MTV shows that Quinn and Daria get a ride there with Jane and Trent in the Tank, so it's got possibilities.
The episode after that is titled "The Story of D", in which Daria tries to get something published (she already has been published, mind).

On to the episode. "Fat Like Me" is really the first Fashion Club focused episode we've had. "Too Cute" was more of a Quinn episode, and their other major appearances have been more ensemble pieces. It worked pretty well, coming in as the best episode so far this season.

It seems like there will be a lot of continuity problems this season. This is another episode that takes place over a span of weeks, so they're either overlapping the episodes (note the kitchen calendar saying March 12, again; either this is an animation error or they are overlapping) or just plain ignoring it. Several weeks after "Sappy Anniversary" is pushing the end of the school year, and with Daria a senior that isn't going to work well.

Mr. DeMartino seems to be right back to his old self. There's no surprise to this, his little summer inspiration couldn't have lasted long in the face of Kevin and Brittany. He had a lot more fun running around with the little kids than he does trying to teach high school history, maybe he should consider a different teaching position.

Jake's little rant(s) about rare meat was the most pointless thread through this episode. There didn't really seem to be any reason for it, and it's even stranger because he kept ordering hamburgers. Hamburgers you wouldn't want rare anyway, the grinding process means the bacteria get mixed up all the way through the patty, so it needs to be cooked thoroughly. If he was ordering steak this would have made more sense, but how many places that deliver serve steak? Of course, there are those third-party meal delivery services... Anyway, this didn't really seem to have a place this episode.

Jane and Daria... someone call Gambler's Anonymous. Jane lost $120 to Daria in this one episode. Intervention time? These two weren't the main focus this episode, so it'll be fairly short. They both manipulate Quinn to try to win the bet; understandable. Jane's little talk with Brittany definitely had shades of "Dye! Dye! My Darling!", and that missing six months of continuity is making itself felt. We need a real Daria and Jane focused episode to clear this up.

The majority of the action was the Fashion Club, so the rest of the Rambling is focused on them. Starting with Tiffany... what is wrong with that girl? She's changed a lot from first season, and for the worse. She's getting a lot of good lines (but not intentional ones), but it's like she had a lobotomy somewhere along the way. The early Tiffany was politically conniving, playing Sandi against Quinn and vice versa. The new Tiffany can't even dominate Stacy, and she seems to have become a total narcissist. Tiffany has to have suffered the most devolution of any character on the show, and I really don't expect any explanations for it.

This was definitely Stacy's finest episode. She vented some of that suppressed rage we've seen hints of before, and actually disagreed with Sandi by the end of the episode. Tiffany may be more self-absorbed, but Stacy seems a lot more fashion-aware at this point. She actually talks fashion while Tiffany is little more than "Do I look good in..." and "Does this make me look fat?" Stacy even did a respectable job as Fashion Club President, hampered mostly by having no one else in the club other than Tiffany, and being alone with Tiffany would try anyone's patience. There was some excellent animation done for her, as well, with the little lip quiver during Quinn's resignation speech. Stacy's imitation of Tiffany was one of the best lines of the episode, too.
While both Stacy and Tiffany seem to like Quinn more than Sandi as President, Stacy seems to really want to be close friends with Quinn. She's obviously desperate for any approval, but she seems to be seeking it more from Quinn than anyone else right now (even after Quinn does things like leave her on permanent hold).

Sandi is just as nasty as ever, and doesn't really change her attitude much by the end. There are some differences; she kind of relaxes the weight requirement, and she doesn't override everyone else about the eyelashes, and she's not seated in a dominant position in the last scene like she was in the first. However, they can be attributed to her loss of face as much as any change on her part. The way she guilts Quinn into resigning with her is just mean (and typical Sandi), and all her gushing about Quinn being her true friend came off as melodramatic and a poor act. At the end of the episode she's clearly worried about her waning power, and I can't see her relationship with Quinn changing much after what happened.
In the end, she feels a little bit of sympathy for the slightly chubby, having been there, but that's as far as it goes. She's definitely been knocked down a peg, but she hasn't changed. (And she wasn't ever fat, except by super-model standards. The cult of appearance was handled with a lot more bite in "Too Cute.")

Quinn, Quinn, Quinn... she is incredibly easy to manipulated, isn't she? Amazing she's lasted this long against her dates and Sandi. She is not showing any aftereffects from her summer tutoring (Nefer-what?). She seems to have some honor, concerned as she was with keeping her word, but then again it might just have been fear over Sandi's reaction if she hadn't kept it. Quinn certainly never seemed to act out of true friendship, but her early comment about missing Sandi the past few weeks did seem sincere, and she did drop Stacy like a hot potato when Sandi called. Quinn seems to be almost totally oblivious to Stacy's feelings about her, and would probably find Stacy to be an actual friend if she ever tried to befriend her.

And Brooke (of "Too Cute") makes a cameo. Her nose-job seems to have been repaired. It makes me wonder what part of the FC guidelines she doesn't meet anymore, since Stacy and Quinn think there's no one else at the school that meets them.
Over all a pretty good episode.

Wraith