Daria

This article is about the animated series. For St. Daria, see Saints Chrysanthus and Daria. For the name Daria, see Daria (name).

Daria
File:Daria-FallDVD-Cover.jpg
Created by	Glenn Eichler Susie Lewis Lynn
Starring	Tracy Grandstaff Wendy Hoopes Julián Rebolledo Marc Thompson Alvaro J. Gonzalez
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	65 2 TV movies 1 unaired animatic pilot (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	21 – 22 minutes (episodes), 66 – 75 minutes (TV-movies)
Original release
Network	MTV
Release	March 3, 1997 – January 21, 2002

Daria was an American animated television series that ran on the cable network MTV from 1997 to 2002. Created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn, the series about a smart, acerbic, and somewhat misanthropic high school girl was a spin-off of MTV's animated Beavis and Butt-head (1993-1997).

The series was widely praised for versatile storytelling and for well-drawn characters, made many satirical thrusts about high-school life, and was full of allusions to popular culture, especially then-current pop music.

History

Daria Morgendorffer's first appearances were as an occasional character in Beavis and Butt-head, that featured two comically ignorant and vulgar teenage boys. MTV senior vice president and creative director Abby Terkuhle explained that when that show "became successful, we [...] created Daria's character because we wanted a smart female who could serve as the foil." During the final season of Beavis and Butt-head, MTV representatives approached story editor Glenn Eichler, offering a spin-off series for Daria. A five-minute pilot, "Sealed with a Kick," was created under Eichler and Beavis and Butt-head staffer Susie Lewis. MTV gave a greenlight for a full series order of 13 episodes. Eichler and Lewis became executive producers.

The first episode of Daria aired on March 3, 1997 (about nine months before Beavis and Butt-head ended its original run). Titled "Esteemsters," it featured Daria and her previously unseen family members settling into their new hometown of Lawndale (having moved from Highland, the setting for Beavis and Butt-head). Now given center stage, Daria's cynical and sardonic personality became stronger.

The series ran for five seasons, with 13 episodes each, and had two TV movies. The first movie, Is It Fall Yet?, aired in 2000. MTV planned for a six-episode sixth season, but at Eichler's request this project was cut down to a second movie, Is It College Yet?, which served as the series finale in January 2002.

Plot and setting

Daria centered on a smart, overtly cynical, upper-middle-class teenage girl, Daria Morgendorffer, dealing with day-to-day life in her American suburban town, Lawndale. Series co-creator Glenn Eichler in a 2005 interview gave the otherwise unspecified locale as "a mid-Atlantic suburb, outside somewhere like Baltimore. They could have lived in Pennsylvania near the Main Line, though."

For comedic and illustrative purposes, the show's depiction of suburban American life was a deliberately exaggerated one. Daria's hometown of Lawndale was filled with archetypes, and Daria herself served as the series' observer. In The New York Times, the protagonist was described as "a blend of Dorothy Parker, Fran Lebowitz and Janeane Garofalo, wearing Carrie Donovan's glasses. Daria Morgendorffer, 16 and cursed with a functioning brain, has the misfortune to see high school, her family and her life for exactly what they are and the temerity to comment on it."

The show follows Daria through her high school years, ending with her graduation and acceptance into college. Daria and her best friend Jane Lane share their droll observations about their school and life. Though Daria initially has a crush on Jane's brother Trent, who plays guitar in a local rock band, her attraction remains unrequited, as she never reveals this to him.

The dynamics among the characters change during season four, when Jane begins a relationship with Tom Sloane, son of one of the town's richest families. Though Daria is hesitant to accept Tom at first, she and Tom find themselves becoming closer, culminating in a kiss in the season finale. The emotional and comedic turmoil among Jane, Tom, and Daria was the centerpiece of the TV movie Is It Fall Yet?, and fueled some of the subsequent final season's stories.

Characters

File:Dariatitle.jpg

Left to right: Jake, Helen, Quinn, Daria, and Jane

Main article: List of characters in Daria

Daria featured a large ensemble cast. Daria Morgendorffer was the show's eponymous protagonist. Her immediate family and best friend Jane Lane all appear in nearly every episode.

Production

Many of the voice talents for Daria were recruited from among MTV staff (including Tracy Grandstaff as Daria) and from high schools and colleges in New York City. Production of each half-hour episode took ten months to a year, from concept, story, voices, and design (at MTV's New York offices), to generating the animation (at a Korean company), to post-production.

No other characters from Beavis and Butt-head made an appearance on Daria. Glenn Eichler, in an interview conducted after the series' run, explained:

B&B were very strong characters, with a very specific type of humor and very loyal fans, and of course they were instantly identifiable. I felt that referencing them in Daria, while we were trying to establish the new characters and the different type of humor, ran the risk of setting up false expectations and disappointment in the viewers - which could lead to a negative reaction to the new show and its different tone. So we steered clear of B&B in the early going, and once the new show was established, there was really no need to hearken back to the old one.

The series' only direct reference to the characters of Beavis and Butt-head was made in a promotion spot for the first cablecast episode. Daria states, in voice-over: "After leaving Highland, and those two, we moved to Lawndale."

In the TV movie Is It Fall Yet?, several celebrities provided guest voices. Talk show host Carson Daly played Quinn's summer tutor, female pop punk singer Bif Naked played Jane's art camp companion, and rock musician Dave Grohl played Jane's pretentious art camp host. The band Foo Fighters (for which Grohl is frontman) featured several songs on the series.

After the show had become popular, rumors circulated stating that actress Janeane Garofalo provided the voice for Daria. Garofalo later stated that she was flattered to be considered "cool enough" to be the voice. Garofalo later hosted a half-hour "behind the scenes" MTV feature about the production of the show that aired during the fourth season.

Satirical elements

Though the show's satirical nature was omnipresent, Daria would rarely directly reference specific facets of pop culture, such as particular TV shows or bands (apart from the musical underscore, consisting of nothing but pop songs).

After each episode, credits would roll on one half of the screen, and the other would display series characters drawn out of character (termed by fans as "alter egos"). They ranged from Tiffany as a Pokémon, to Quinn's constant followers (Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie) as the three main characters from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to Jane as the Statue of Liberty.

Nearly all the episode titles are puns of common phrases ("Pinch Sitter," on baseball's pinch hitter), TV shows or films ("It Happened One Nut," on Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night"), or other entities ("Jane's Addition," on the band Jane's Addiction).

The only TV program that Daria and Jane are shown to watch regularly is Sick, Sad World, the Daria team's spoof of sensationalist oddity programs. Usually, only a punning or gruesome commercial-break bumper for SSW is shown before Daria turns it off or other action ensues. In "Just Add Water," Daria and Jane are shown trying to watch an all-night SSW marathon. Occasionally Daria zaps from one channel to another, which are showing common TV shows. For example, a clip that tweaks the series Charlie's Angels is shown in "Murder, She Snored," before a dream sequence begins (which itself satirizes various famous series).

Music and licensing

Daria's theme song is "You're Standing on My Neck," written and performed by all-female band Splendora. The band later created original themes for the two Daria TV movies, "Turn the Sun Down" (for Is It Fall Yet?) and "College Try (Gives Me Blisters)" (for Is It College Yet?), along with some background music.

The show itself had no original score. Though elements from Splendora's theme were used on occasion, Daria's incidental music was taken from pop music songs. Most of these were contemporary (lending some credibility to the show's airing on the then music-oriented MTV), inserted over exterior shots and some scenes, with rarely any story relevance or awareness from the characters. For example, one episode depicts characters dancing to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy wit It" mere weeks after the song's release, whereas the sequence itself was designed and animated months in advance.

Some story points were built around specific songs, such as in "Legends of the Mall," where Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" became a major plot point for a fantasy sequence. The ending credits also featured a licensed song on all but a few occasions. These often commented on some aspect of the preceding episode.

For the 1998 and 1999 VHS releases of some Daria episodes, incidental music was replaced, and the end credits rolled over "You're Standing on My Neck." The same was done for the bonus episodes included on the DVD releases of the two TV movies.

Airing information

Daria was first shown on MTV in the United States. Reruns were carried from 2002 to 2006 on the teen-oriented cable channel The N. Episodes were later shown dubbed in Spanish, without English subtitles, on MTV3 (MTV Tres). Many episodes and clips were shown on YouTube until 2008 when Viacom removed majority of the shows and movies being downloaded on YouTube as part of the lawsuit, though some clips are still on the website.

Many American Daria fans have reported that The N's reruns were edited for content, often making remaining portions confusing, or removing much of the satirizing, subplots, and subtext. Some episodes were added to The N's rotation in 2005, described as "The Lost Episodes," but several others were never shown.

Outside the U.S., Daria has been shown on canal+ in France, on MTV Two and The Music Factory in the UK; the ABC in Australia (formerly on MTV as well); HOT Cable network in Israel, YTV and Télétoon in Canada and MTV Russia in Russia.

Reception

Daria received a host of positive reviews during its run. John J. O'Connor of The New York Times wrote of the series' premiere, "With this new series, Daria triumphantly gets the last laugh. [...] Daria is an indispensable blast of fresh air. I think I'm in love."

G.J. Donnelly of TV Guide, writing about the series' finale, lamented, "I already miss that monotone. I already miss those boots. [...] [E]ven at its most far-fetched, this animated film approaches the teenage experience much more realistically than shows like Dawson's Creek." On the same occasion, Emily Nussbaum wrote at Slate.com that "the show is biting the dust without ever getting the credit it deserved: for social satire, witty writing, and most of all, for a truly original main character. [The finale is] a bit of a classic: a sharply funny exploration of social class most teen films would render, well, cartoonish."

Home video

Seven VHS videocassettes have been issued, all in PAL format, with the first two also in NTSC format. The first tape, titled simply Daria, includes the first three episodes of season one followed by the five-minute animatic pilot. The second volume, Daria disenfranchised, continues with episodes 4 through 7.

The Daria TV movies Is It Fall Yet? and Is It College Yet? are the sole two authorized DVD releases as of 2009. Each DVD also includes two episodes from the series, from seasons 4 and 5 respectively, with licensed music removed. The latter disc uses a second-showing MTV version that was shortened by approximately seven minutes, rather than the original cablecast version. It does, however, include a short clip of a Daria appearance on Beavis and Butt-head, accessed as a hidden "Easter egg" on the opening menu (by cycling among menu choices until the highlighting disappears).

These DVDs were ostensibly coded for Region One (North America), but found by purchasers to be region-free.

In July 2004, co-creator Glenn Eichler said of possible DVD releases, "[T]here's no distributor and no release date but what there is, is very strong interest from MTV in putting Daria out, and steady activity toward making that a reality".

Books

• The Daria Database by Peggy Nicoll; MTV 1998 ISBN 0-671-02596-1
• The Daria Diaries by Anne Bernstein; MTV 1998 ISBN 0-671-01709-8

These books, by two of the most prolific writers of Daria episodes, have comedic and satirical material based upon the show as aired, but (apart from character guides in Diaries) are not reference works.

Games

• Daria's Sick Sad Life Planner; Pearson Software, 1999
• Daria's Inferno; Pearson Software, 2000, later distributed by Simon & Schuster Interactive

External links

• Daria Webring << Previous site in the ring | Next site in the ring >> al
• Official site at MTV (no longer updated or maintained)
• The Daria Fandom Blog II
• Daria Flipbook
• Daria at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Daria (1997-2001 TV-series) at IMDb