Daria: Review

10th March 2025

Daria: Review. By Christopher Patterson.

A Spinoff of Beavis and Butt-Head. It’s called Daria. That Daria

Not much of an introduction here. That’s all you need to know.

Daria would be the review. How her character is handled and developed, and where else to start than the point of her character. And how that point has been obscured from their etymological origins.

A sorrowful fact about she is that many fans took a fallacious message. That Daria is an example rather than another consequence of an entirely discourteous system. Daria clutches on her individuality to a point that leads her to act out, portraying herself as a too-ahead teen as a shell. In reality, she is too shy to open herself up, to be traditional. It’s a tragedia that can be observed as a commedia. The show recognizes the ridiculousness of how we base ourselves as a trope to avoid tropes. Yet, to someone easily influenced, what the view of another’s room appears to be is to be rather than cusping the overtone.

What made Daria adequate is what every so-called Daria will detest to tell you. She is veracious, sanctimonious, execrable, and a hypocrite.

Daria being the forward-thinking blockhead was what made the show so pristine but so impressionable. It’s so facile to consider Daria the morally correct friend in the group, but it’s nearly as uncomplicated to see she’s not. She is never as equitable as she thinks she is, but she is not as erroneous as on first viewing. She is right since everyone around her are purposeful ludicrous clichés. Even so, she is not unerring. If she conversed with an operating individual, she would be rewarded a reprimand. Which works, as she is a dazed and confused teen, as much as she would loathe that. But that’s the point.

She is a teen who is kind of right but who you kind of should not be. She is rude to everyone as she idiotically deduces she is too real for them. She is the unhelpful, reasonable person in the unreasonable room. A party pooper, but a needed one for the audience and Daria herself.

The show serves as a refreshing critique of the 90s and Daria herself. It openly peels apart 90s youth and boomer parents but also reaches for understanding in a time when comprehension and lecturing were one and the same sentence. It actively succeeded in moving towards a better future while critiquing those who do, such as Daria. While effortlessly denouncing the problems of the world, she never takes the time to comprehend how others think and ameliorate herself.

The best joke in Daria is seeing Daria be Daria. While she accurately diagnoses others, she does it in vicious ways that make no change. Seeing a problem doesn’t solve it; actively cleaning the wound does. Take Jodie, the best character in the show. While she casually spends her days actively critiquing America, Jodie spends hers knowing the obstacles and pushing through it. She feels lost like so many teens, being forced to be excellent but still making the best out of a bad situation through relationships. Yet to Daria, Jodie can be written off as someone superficial enough to join the clubs and put in the effort while ignoring everything that put Jodie in that position. This is not even mentioning she doesn’t need a reason to do the things she does. Why can’t we as humans have fun? That is the question, Daria. To put it another way, Daria is a hater, through and through. And this is so exceptional cause the writers know that.

Where it could’ve failed is if this self-awareness wasn’t present. Easily, Daria could’ve fallen prey to the white feminism that plagued the time. Rather than what we got, Daria could’ve not had the nerve to challenge Daria’s fundamentally privileged and unsupportive beliefs.

What’s incredible is that in the 90s, these writers came together and made an unfeigned uplifting show that holds up nearly thirty years later. Rather than moralizing, it’s healing. Daria makes you realize you are not so different from anyone, and we all get stuck in the positions we do for many reasons. Instead of complaining, Daria calls for fighting for what you believe in, through and through. While it can be a pleasure to critique the absurdity of corporate America, evenly enjoyable is to make friends while it lasts, and that is what Daria is. A good time.

Even though the show was more than adequate, that doesn’t exclude mediocre segments. If you take my word for it, skip the later seasons and binge the first two. While I appreciate all of Daria, it’s not hard to notice the characters wear thin. Issue: Daria, like the characters, never really matures since no one especially grows. This drawback may be the most immense virtue Daria has. Teenage angst, folks.

An unconventional and wholly absorbing facet of Daria is how it tackles teenage angst. Doesn’t smell like teen spirit, or does it? That is the question. As I see it, it re-invents angst as Daria is the socially aware teen two decades behind when that became a motif. And while that can be no more correct, I moreover disagree with seeing it fully this way. I am more comfortable assuming the show attempted to slaughter teenage angst by putting the complete reverse on screen. Rather than Angela from that so-called life, who is perceptive and a complete mess everything everywhere all at once, Daria is purely perceptive, but to an idiosyncratic stage. A trope she created, but a trope that may not fall under angst, instead maturity.

Even if the show takes time to poke holes in this self-inflicted and self-inclined mind, it’s hard to deny the show doesn’t take its jubilation in indulging her grandstanding. But wouldn’t Daria being a teen make that angst, for the spirit that lives inside alone?

Even if being a smart aleck was the new angst, this unchanging attitude does have its problems. Primarily, making the show monotonous as it goes on. Aside from her, nobody in the cast really evolves which works for a couple seasons, before becoming tiring. This makes Daria a show that tries to be stuck in-the-moment but ends up always stuck-in-the-past. But aside from the characters, why is Daria so unvaried?

It is a repetitive show since it relies too much on its premise. Daria is a know-it-all teen in a too-behind town, but what else? It’s why she can never be referred to as a trailblazer. Since the pilot is principally all it contributes. A candidly veracious teen in a fallacious town. Runs trite with time. The slight anomalies where the series breaks new terrain are a handful and rigorously inadequate.

On top of these predicaments, she is never given enough substantial conflict to deal with. The Daria of season two is the Daria of later, with just a tad more knowledge. The only exceptions are few but notable. Nonetheless, this can really make chunks of the show feel uninteresting. As if the show depends on a formula rather than reinventing itself with time.

VERDICT

Regardless of innumerable complaints, this show was an era-defining show that was better than it ever had to be. It could’ve been the forgettable 90’s angst fest taken up by what it denounces. It could’ve been an agony of nostalgia. Instead, it was a perfectly imperfect representation of a chaotic decade for TV and a shifting country. The more our country evolved, the more things started to smell like Daria spirit. If it did anything, it surely did that.

3.5/5

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