Five Reasons Daria Should Come Back Instead of Beavis and Butthead

[Ubiquitous]

By EJ Dickson

With a flood of '90s nostalgia enveloping us all, it only makes sense
that Beavis and Butthead is returning to MTV with new episodes starting
October 27th. One of the best things to come out of Beavis and Butthead
was Daria, a spin-off starring one of its supporting characters. The
star of the show was Daria Morgendorffer, a bookish underachiever with a
nihilistic worldview and a wit as dry as a Triscuit. Accompanied by her
BFF/fellow partner-in-contempt Jane Lane, and fueled by reruns of her
favorite TV show, Sick Sad World, Daria was the Clinton-era heir
apparent to Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club, if Sheedy had
foregone the prom-queen makeover and run away to San Francisco to join a
queercore band and sell earrings made of tampons.

It's been nearly a decade since Daria ended, and, with the protests
against economic inequity raging, the GOP debates resembling an
undergrad performance art piece, and Dancing with the Stars in its
thirteenth season, the world has never seemed sicker and sadder. Which
is why — with all due respect to Beavis and Butthead — now is a perfect
time for Daria to return to television. Here, we outline the top five
reasons why Daria should come back to MTV in lieu of Beavis and
Butthead. Cue the ironic "la la la las."

1. TV needs more strong female characters.

Unless you count the sexy bunnies on the recently axed Playboy Club, the
sexy stewardesses on Pan Am, or the sexy elderly nymphomaniac
housekeepers on American Horror Story, this fall season suffers from a
profound lack of non-sexy, non-deranged, non-Whitney Cummings female
characters. Young female characters in this vein are in particularly
short supply; most of them, like Liz Lemon on 30 Rock or Britta on
Community, are already all grown-up.

The paucity of strong teenage-girl characters was also apparent when
Daria premiered in 1997. If they didn't play volleyball, dance atop a
piano, or dissolve into plasma when socially humiliated, teen girls in
the '90s were usually plagued by crippling anxiety and low self-esteem
(case in point: Full House's D.J. Tanner, who spent entire episodes
agonizing over where to sit in the cafeteria and how to make her bangs
look as unflattering as humanly possible). Daria did not suffer from
D.J. Tanner syndrome. Throughout the series, her character was defined
by the mantra articulated in the pilot episode: "I don't have low
self-esteem — I just have low self-esteem for everyone else." Like the
ferocious honey badger, Daria doesn't care about her social status
because Daria doesn't give a shit, which is a lesson that outcasts on
shows like MTV's Awkward should take to heart.

2. TV is already crawling with Beavises and Buttheads.

With the success of Jackass, Tosh.0, and movies like Dude, Where's My
Car (essentially a live-action B&B for handsomes), the influence of the
original Beavis and Butthead on film and TV can't really be understated.
In the '90s, Beavis and Butthead's hormonal sensibilities established a
permanent foothold in mainstream culture, and while that show's intent
was satirical, many of its descendants aren't nearly as smart about
being dumb. (Not to say that dumb guys aren't funny, but some variety
would be nice.)

3. Daria was smart.

Much like Freaks and Geeks, Daria was a show for teenagers that
respected the intelligence of its viewers (who at that point had been
raised on a steady diet of Fruitopia and Total Request Live). Unlike
Beavis and Butthead, which was both about making stupid seem smart and
smart seem stupid, Daria never took pot shots at the smart kids, who on
the former show were sometimes the butt of the joke when B&B themselves
weren't.

Daria also didn't prize its heroine's snark over other kinds of
intelligence. It celebrated academic achievement (as was the case with
Mack and Jodie, two ambitious and popular classmates of Daria's) just as
much as it applauded a less obvious intellectual curiosity (as
exemplified by Daria's sister Quinn, who turned out to be a pretty
insightful chick in the last few seasons).

4. It had sex appeal.

With his tousled hair, abundance of piercings, and frontman status as
the lead singer of Mystik Spiral, Jane's enigmatic brother Trent was the
Jordan Catalano to Daria's Angela Chase. He was the pretty, air-headed,
vaguely damaged bad boy that Daria secretly dreamed of getting to second
base with, and teenage girls who watched the show felt the same way. If
you were the kind of girl who was a little offbeat and not embarrassed
to admit to crushing on a cartoon character, you had a huge crush on
Trent; he was to us what Donny Osmond was to closeted Mormon adolescents
in 1973.

And although her sex appeal was never really the point, Daria herself
was something of a hipster pinup as well. Her "look" consisted of
basically everything you can imagine a cute barista/Etsy user/aspiring
Suicide Girl wearing today: the boots, the glasses, the army jacket, and
especially the "I have no interest in that thing between your legs that
you claim is a penis" smirk. It was enough to attract the attention of
sensitive love interest Tom Sloane in the fourth season, as well as
countless fan boys outside the show's fictional universe.

5. It would be timely.

Daria captured the spirit of its times. From the spot-on Fashion Club
trends to the awesome soundtrack (featuring consummate '90s artists
Beck, Garbage, and Portishead, among others), the animated cels in an
episode of Daria dripped with angsty teen spirit. But although the show
is noteworthy for its pitch-perfect, '90s sensibilities, there's no
reason the creators of Daria couldn't update the show to the present
day. Imagine Daria and Jane lampooning trust-fund-baby protestors at
Occupy Wall Street, or taking aim at the Snooki/Ronnie dynamic on Jersey
Shore. There's an endless parade of public figures who are primed and
ready for our withering contempt, and they're making more noise than
ever before. Who better than Daria, Jane, and Mystik Spiral to voice our
frustrations?

--
"They have “empathy tables” at the NYC OccuTard encampment. That’s
where you go to get a hug after a fellow OccuTard takes a dump on your
sleeping spot."

[Brian Gregory [UK]]

"Dennis M" <denn...@dennism3.invalid> wrote in message
news:dennism3-ya0240800...@news.datemas.de...

> >One of the best things to come out of Beavis and Butthead
>>was Daria, a spin-off starring one of its supporting characters.
>

> yawn...not nearly as entertaining as B&B

Watching paint dry is more entertaining than Beavis and Butthead.

--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)
n...@bgdsv.co.uk
To email me remove the letter vee.

[Ubiquitous]

In article <FYSdnY8quf64myrT...@giganews.com>,
n...@bgdsv.co.uk wrote:

>"Dennis M" <denn...@dennism3.invalid> wrote:

>> >One of the best things to come out of Beavis and Butthead
>>>was Daria, a spin-off starring one of its supporting characters.
>>
>> yawn...not nearly as entertaining as B&B
>
>Watching paint dry is more entertaining than Beavis and Butthead.

I am wondering if Mike Judge is running out of ideas already for the
new eps.


--
It's now time for healing, and for fixing the damage the Democrats did
to America.