She moved away from Highland, Texas, the town where B and B takes place, to a town called Lawndale which is not exactly pinpointed in geography but has the feeling of being either on the East Coast or the Midwestern US. You get to meet her parents: overachieving Yuppies Helen and Jake, and Daria's sister, the airheaded and oh-so-cute-you-could-puke Quinn. Quinn, of course, becomes instantly popular. Daria is on the outside looking in once again. Daria's got one friend, though...artsy goth-grrl Jane, who is about as sarcastic a wit as Daria.
The show was co-developed by a woman, Susie Lewis Lynn, and two of the five episodes that have run so far are directed by women. I think this goes a long way in explaining why the show rings so true and real to this woman's eyes and ears. You get the feeling that some of the people who work on this show lived in Daria's skin (metaphorically of course) when they were growing up, and that kind of empathy adds to the believability of the show.
The five episodes that have aired so far are good to excellent, from Daria being mis-diagnosed as having poor self esteem and being dumped into an afterschool "self esteem-building" program where the worst psychobabble cliches are inflicted on her, to Daria surviving a rather torturous visit to the newest and biggest humongo shopping mall. Best so far has been the second episode, "The Invitation," where a socialite schoolmate, Brittany, invites Daria to a house party because Daria helped her in art class and "I can't invite any more cute girls to the party or the cheerleading squad would get angry." What happens at the party is a mile-a-minute laugh riot which I won't spoil here.
The art style here is about 180 degrees different than that of B and B: it's got bold lines where Mike Judge was sketchy, and a different and bolder color palette. The character design is great...although Daria carries a sort of mono-expression by the very nature of her character, the rest of the characters have plenty of room to be expressive...most notably the tightly-wound history teacher who makes Sam Kinison's character in the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back To School seem like a paragon of calm. The use of MTV's vast library of pop music is witty and well blended in...you don't have the awkwardness of how MTV forced music videos into Danny Antonnucci's The Brothers Grunt. It serves as both background music and as the occasional witty commentary on a scene.
The show is apparently an instant hit...after only a couple of episodes it was renewed for a second season of 26. There's quite a few left in the first season, and from what has aired so far the show the rest are very promising. One thing which baffles me, though...why isn't this show being cross-promoted and maybe even aired on Nickelodeon? There is nothing in the show which is objectionable, and in fact it would be a natural as part of Nick's Saturday night Snick block. MTV is airing it not only at 10:30 pm Mondays (the slot where they premiere new episodes) but in other earlier time slots, but still many pre-teens and teens who would be an ideal audience for this show have been shut out due to the fact that the show is on MTV. Since both MTV and Nick made such a big deal about their cooperation at the MTV/Nick/Klasky-Csupo presentation at the World Animation Celebration this year, they should make good on it by giving Daria an airing on Nickelodeon. They could very well have the same kind of crossover success, this time the other way around, that Rugrats and the first two seasons of Ren & Stimpy had.
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