"I'm Daria Morgendorffer. I love to see the first bloom of a wild rose, to smell the salt spray of an ocean breeze, to hear the laughter of little children at play. Oh no, wait, that's somebody else."

Ever feel like this? Watch Daria. She understands.

"Daria" airs throughout the week on MTV. Check listings.

High school. It was awful. Everyone was completely insensitive to you, which in turn increased your own insensitivity to the world around you. The kids at school were cooler than you, or at least tried to make you feel that they were. There was always this sneaking suspicion that you were adopted, either because your family was too weird to actually belong to you or because you had a sibling Mom always liked better. The only person who understood you was your best friend, who, although just as alienated, didn't always get you all the time. High school, in summary, served as the testing ground for your burgeoning cynicism, which served you well in the dorms at college and maybe even contributed to your sex appeal.

If this sounds at all familiar, meet Daria Morgendorffer, the heroine of MTV's "Daria," a girl for whom the above paragraph is a precis of life. "Why," you are probably asking, "do you want me to watch a show that sounds so painfully reminiscent of my own high school experiences?" Simply because, unlike real life, it's obvious that the cute and popular, the socially adept and successful, the ambitious and bourgeois are not the home team. It is Daria, symbol of the outsider in us all, who is our hero (or anti-hero, anyway).

Surrounded by a shallow world and just trying to make it to the other side of high school, Daria seems to be a stereotypical cynical, underachieving Gen-Xer. I say "seems" because Daria comes equipped with an unfortunate tendency to get straight A's and read voraciously. She's brilliant and lacks ambition. She dresses (and talks) like Janeane Garofalo; yet, she's forced to share her house with her sister Quinn, who's so cute, popular, fashionable and averse to publicly acknowledging her sibling that her friends refer to Daria as "that girl Quinn knows." Daria is cynical, but shy. She gets a rash when in close proximity to the man she loves (from afar, though not too far since he's her best friend's brother). Said best friend is one Jane Lane, sister of Penny Lane (if you don't get it, go buy Magical Mystery Tour). Jane is similarly cynical, sarcastic, and at odds with the greater social structure of Lawndale High. Low self-esteem makes her feel special. Together, Daria and Jane wile away the tedium watching "Sick, Sad World" on TV and remarking upon the ins and outs of what passes for life going on around them.

Daria and Jane know how to have fun at parties.

Examples of Lawndale life: Brittany, the perky (read: stupid) cheerleader whose voice can make you bleed from the ears; Kevin, Brittany's jock-hero boyfriend who also wouldn't break any IQ scales; Mack and Jodie, two students who fall under a Lawndale axiom that states "Only the African-American students can be brilliant, beautiful, successful, popular and well-adjusted;" the Fashion Club, consisting mainly of Quinn's friends who constantly plot and connive behind each other's backs while steadfastly swearing one unto another, "Oh, no, you're way cuter than she is;" and last but not least, Daria's nurturing parents, Jake and Helen Morgendorffer, reformed hippies who now buy whole-hog into the conspicuous consumption of career-driven American living.

"Daria," believe it or not, is a spin-off of that much-reviled MTV cartoon "Beavis and Butt-head." You may remember her from such classic episodes as "Scientific Stuff," "Sporting Goods," "Walkathon," and "Citizen Butt-head." Regardless of whether you thought "Beavis and Butt-head" was brilliant or brain dead, the quality of "Daria" belies its humble beginnings. While the animation, although slicker than "Beavis and Butt-head," is still very flat, it has a certain style. The writing makes up for any artistic shortcomings.

In short, I guess the reason to watch Daria is simply this: If you're anything like me, she will speak to your soul.

Date: December 3, 1998

Copyright © 1998 by Lisa McInnis