1x01 Esteemsters

[7.6/10] A superb start to the show. Looking back, what’s striking about this opening hour is how fully formed Daria feels from the jump. You have Daria’s sardonic wit, her off-kilter family dynamic, her sense for causing droll mischief, her budding friendship with Jane, the absurd ecosystem of high school, and even good ol’ “Sick Sad World”!

Maybe it’s the fact that this is technically a spinoff. (And so far as I know, the brief mention of Highland is the only explicit connection Daria ever makes to Beavis and Butthead.) But whatever the reason, most shows take a little while to find their voice, and yet Daria seems like, well, Daria, right from the beginning.

The premise here is strong. There’s something appropriately ironic about the idea that Daria is considered to have low self-esteem, when in fact she just finds most people beyond her new like-minded friend Jane insufferable. The irony comes from the fact that in an episode about her not making new friends, she ends up finding her best frient for life in a class for people with low self-esteem.

And there’s an added irony to the fact that Daria is supposedly the one in need of help from teachers, family, and the system writ large, but in truth, Daria herself is savvy enough to know how to turn all that effort against them. The way she fools Mr. O’Neill (another character who feels very much like himself from the word go) using his own wellness doublespeak, tortures her parents with trips to a Chuck-E-Cheese knockoff and a UFO convention, and most of all, tortures her sister, Quinn, by exposing their sibling relationship, demonstrates with comical incisiveness how Daria can use the system meant to keep her in line and conforming against those who would have her fit in.

Along the way, there’s a lot of well-observed gags. Helen and Jake Morgendorffer inadvertently making their daughter feel bad for having low self-esteem is more ironic humor. The fawning nonsense of Quinn’s high school popularity is a laugh. Mr. DiMartino’s angry exhaustion with the idiocy of Kevin and Brittany, and the general unfairness of life, is outstanding. And the general satire of what it takes to “fit in”, adjust, and make friends at a new school is top notch.

On the whole, Daria breaks the trend. It’s the rare show that seems to get its characters, its world, and its comic worldview crystalized right from the first episode. But for a few “first day at a new school” bits to remind us this is a series premiere, “The Esteemers” could be placed anywhere in Daria’s run and not feel out of place. That's an achievement in and of itself, and a reminder what a great show this is, and was from the first minute.