Daria

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This article is about the animated series. For St. Daria, see Saints Chrysanthus and Daria. For the name Daria, see Daria (name).
Daria
Format Animated sitcom
Created by Glenn Eichler
Susie Lewis Lynn
Starring Tracy Grandstaff
Wendy Hoopes
Julián Rebolledo
Amy Bennett
Alvaro J. Gonzalez
Country of origin  United States
No. of seasons 5
No. of episodes 65
2 TV movies (List of episodes)
Production
Running time 22 – 23 minutes (episodes), 66 – 75 minutes (TV-movies)
Broadcast
Original channel MTV
Original run March 3, 1997 – January 21, 2002
External links
IMDb profile

Daria is an American animated television series that aired from 1997 to 2002 and was created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn for MTV. The series was a spin-off of MTV's animated Beavis and Butt-head (1993-1997).

The series had a versatile storytelling premise or "engine," used well-drawn characters, made many satirical thrusts about high-school life, and was full of allusions to popular culture, especially then-current pop music. This last element, though, has made video releases problematic, despite worldwide showings and a sizable and enthusiastic fan base for the program.

Contents

History

Daria Morgendorffer's first appearances were as an occasional character in Beavis and Butt-head. When this series was in its last season, MTV representatives approached story editor Glenn Eichler, offering a spin-off series for Daria. A short 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.[1]

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 often abrasive personality became stronger.

In May 1997, Ted Drozdowski of the Boston Phoenix praised Daria for having "taken up the torch," since Beavis and Butt-head had become "reduced to self-parody of their self-parody."[2]

The series ran for five seasons with 13 episodes each, and two TV movies. The first movie, "Is It Fall Yet?", aired in 2000. MTV requested a sixth season (reports vary as to its length), but at Eichler's request this project was cut down to a second TV movie, "Is It College Yet?", which served as the series finale in January 2002.

Plot and setting

As a running television series with mostly self-contained episodes, Daria had very few running plotlines, relying mainly on a familiar established premise on which to build episode-length stories. The basic premise was that of an overtly cynical teenage girl dealing with day-to-day life in her American suburban town, Lawndale. According to show creator Glenn Eichler in an interview with fan Kara Wild, "I thought the Morgendorffers lived in 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 stereotyped personalities of all kinds, and Daria herself served as the series' observer.

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's flaws. Though Daria initially has a crush on Jane's brother Trent, her attraction remains unrequited, as she never reveals this to him. Trent, on the other hand, doesn't make it entirely clear whether or not he regards Daria only as a friend. At the end of season 3, they have a conversation that functions as an implicit acknowledgment that it wouldn't work out if they tried dating.

The dynamics among the characters change during season 4, 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 final episode of season 4. The emotional and comedic turmoil among Jane, Tom, and Daria was the centerpiece of the TV movie "Is It Fall Yet?", largely fueled the final season's stories, and was prominent in the concluding movie "Is It College Yet?".

From left to right: Jake, Helen, Quinn, Daria, and Jane

Characters

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.

Music and licensing

Daria's theme song is "You're Standing on My Neck," written and performed by all-female band Splendora.[3] 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 very recent (lending some credibility to the show's airing on 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 choices often did comment on some aspect of the preceding episode.)

Though a spectacle for its time, the use of so many songs by different recording artists has created countless licensing problems in making Daria available for home video, much like the problems for such series as WKRP in Cincinnati and The Wonder Years. As early as its 1998 and 1999 VHS releases, incidental music was replaced by no-name filler, and the end credits rolled over "You're Standing on My Neck." The same tactics were used for the bonus episodes of Daria that were featured on the DVD releases of the two TV movies.

Further complications have arisen with the market demand for "complete" editions of TV show seasons. As Daria's run spanned the period immediately before the boom of TV-on-DVD, this problem could not have been foreseen during production, and is a testament to the show's status as pre-iGeneration.

Unauthorized bootlegs circulate among collectors and are sold on some websites.

Production details

  • 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.
  • 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. She played upon this, and her similarity in appearance to Daria, when she hosted a half-hour "behind the scenes" MTV feature about the production of the show that aired during the fourth season.
  • 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."[4] ”
  • 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 punk rock 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.

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).

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. Recently, episodes dubbed in Spanish (without English subtitles) have been shown on MTV3 (MTV Tres).

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. A detailed report is available of the removal of single words to entire scenes from "Is It Fall Yet?". Some episodes were added to The N's rotation in 2005, described as "The Lost Episodes," but several others were never shown.

The rights to show Daria have been bought by many broadcasters outside the U.S. MTV Two and The Music Factory have shown it in the UK, as does the ABC in Australia (formerly on MTV as well) and YTV in Canada.

Videos and DVDs

Seven VHS tapes have been issued, all of them in PAL format, but only the first two of them in NTSC format. The first tape, titled simply Daria, includes the animatic pilot.

Two DVDs are available, of the Daria TV movies "Is It Fall Yet?" and "Is It College Yet?". Each DVD includes two episodes from the series, but these episodes have all of their music removed except for the opening theme.

The "College" DVD uses a shortened second-showing MTV version (by about seven minutes), not the originally 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.

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

A viewer campaign has been made over several years for a DVD release of every episode, uncut and with as much original music as possible. Its online petition has over 28,000 signatures. As of 22 October 2008, 4,806 people had voted for Daria at TV Shows on DVD (registration required to view), bringing the show to the top three on the list of most-wanted unreleased TV-show DVDs.

In July 2004, fan Michelle Klein-Hass reported that MTV was investigating options for a DVD release of more Daria episodes.[5] She quoted co-creator Glenn Eichler as saying: "[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."[5][6] No changes have been reported since, despite some interest from other distributors.

Books

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

References

  1. ^ Daria Frequently Asked Questions at outpost daria; accessed December 6, 2007.
  2. ^ "Eye pleasers," Boston Phoenix
  3. ^ An extended version is played in the closing credits of the Daria's Inferno video game.
  4. ^ "DVDaria Blog - Follow-up Questions with Glenn Eichler".
  5. ^ a b "Posting on alt.tv.daria, "Hold onto your hats, this is big ..."".
  6. ^ "outpost daria - Daria on DVD".

External links

Wikiquote
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Websites

Blogs, forums and news sources

Daria
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