For those that didn't watch the show during its 1997 to 2002 run, or don't remember the details, the series is a spin-off from Beavis and Butt-Head and has Daria, a secondary character, move away with her family to the town of Lawnsdale. The series follows her high school career all the way until the series finale movie where she decides on a college to attend. During her time at Lawndale High, she makes a habit of using sarcasm and her monotonal voice to point out absurdities in everything from cliques, to extra-curricular activities, teachers, teenage life and school in general.
Upon moving to Lawndale, Daria's sister Quinn quickly joins the in-crowd and becomes a member of the Fashion Club. Meanwhile, the only person on campus who seems to identify with our heroine is another social outcast, Jane. Jane is an artist who dabbles in many mediums, and for most of the series, Daria ends up having an unspoken crush on Jane's older brother Trent, (a musician for the band Mystik Spiral [sic]).
Other kids at Lawndale include the head cheerleader Brittany and star quarterback Kevin, both of whom are pretty dim-witted, and many jokes are made at their expense. There is also the creepy kid known as Chuck, the outgoing, smart and driven Jodie (who is pushed more by her parents than is healthy), Jodie's boyfriend Mack and the rest of the Fashion Club. But the antics of Daria aren't restricted to school life. Daria and Quinn's parents also add a lot to the series. Their mother is a workaholic lawyer, while their dad is a self-employed consultant who never seems to know exactly what is going on. A combination of Daria's home life, school life and her quirky observations about the two are what Daria is all about, and while there are quite a few topics discussed that might date the series, a lot of it seems to apply even today, some seven years later.
The series has a pretty steady feel as each episode is really independent of the others, that is until the end of Season Three when a new character, Tom, is thrown into the mix. Tom starts off as Jane's boyfriend, but it becomes obvious really fast that he has more in common with Daria than Jane, and the inevitable love-triangle really brings a new dynamic into the series that breaks it away from its episodic nature. While a lot of the observational humor is still there, a lot of it is focused on high school relationships, both romantic and friendly. When these events start to come to a head, the show's first TV-movie, "Is It Fall Yet?" occurs and most of the trauma involving the three characters get resolved during the summer break film.
What's a shame is that this movie didn't fall in-line on the discs. Instead, when it came time to watch the film, I had to pop in the last disc, dig around in the special features menu a bit and then start the film. If the movie happened after the series (like "Is It College Yet?"), or no actual consequences came out of the feature, it wouldn't have been as much of an issue. Quite frankly, if I didn't know that the movie was supposed to happen where it did and go hunting for it, I could very well have gone on to the start of Season Five and felt completely lost. It just seems like a poor decision when the movie could very well have been placed at the end of that particular disc and following episodes pushed off to the next discs.
Quite frankly though, that's pretty much my only complaint about Daria: The Complete Series. The other special features include a music video of one of Mystik Spiral's songs, "Freakin Friends," the footage used from Daria and Jane's hosting of an MTV Top Ten Countdown for best animated music videos and even the original pilot "Sealed With a Kick" which feels more like animated storyboards and only last five minutes or so. There were two other special features that I enjoyed the most though. One was the "Daria Day" introductions in front of select episodes. These were brief animated introductions where Jane and Daria explain what episode is about to come on, and these were done during a pair of Daria marathon events MTV had in 1998 and 1997. The other fun featurette was cast interviews done very recently as the people involved in making the series talk about what it was like all those years ago.
I will admit it, I've always liked Daria more than Beavis and Butt-Head. For some reason, I always enjoyed the stark monotone observational and hilarious humor the show presents. I will also admit that I didn't have the chance to watch the last season or two during the show's original run, so the ability to pick up the entire series in one reasonably priced package just seems like a good deal. Existing fans of the show should definitely pick up the series, and quite frankly, pretty much any teenager (outcast or not) should enjoy this show. Not only does it give an accurate view of high school life, but it actually gets a few messages across as well.
