2x01 Arts 'N Crass

[8.3/10] It’s so fun to return to Daria. It’s been a while for me, but I like how this episode not only works as a satire of turn-of-the-millennia forced positivity, but shows Helen supporting and defending her daughter despite always wanting her to fit in, participate, and be more a model high school student than she is.

The notion of Daria and Jane entering a state-wide art competition after being leaned on by their teachers, only to present something subversive rather than beautiful, makes for a strong premise. The conflict points are natural, and it’s interesting seeing the contrast between the school’s nominal goal to encourage self-expression when it could benefit the famed Lawndale High versus how it reacts when that self-expression is unpleasant to contemplate and reflects something realer and, if you’ll pardon the expression, harder to swallow.

I also enjoy the various running gags in here. Brittany’s inability to make the cautionary nature of her art clear through imagery alone, leading her to resort to a big Ghostbusters-esque “Don’t” symbol through her paintings is a funny concept to begin with. It’s topped and escalated by Daria and Jane taking the same approach to vandalizing their own piece of art perverted by “the system.”

Likewise, the calls to Jane’s house going unanswered is a funny two-hit bit. Helen’s comments to her secretary about the various demands on her time and stock answers to calls from her daughters’ school are quite amusing. Mr. O’Neil having to psyche himself up to call Daria and Jane’s parents is a great bit of character comedy. And Jake’s desperation to do some consulting after he loses a client got a big laugh out of me.

But this is actually a big win of an episode for Daria’s parents. For one thing, Jake manages to get in a good save, drawing a legitimate comparison between his pasta dish and Daria’s art that not only shows him paying attention, but supports Daria when she could really use it. Likewise, for all her efforts to encourage Daria to straighten up and fly right, when Ms. Li calls Helen to try to punish Daria for her “vandalism”, Helen sticks up for her daughter’s right to self-expression and threatens the school into submission. It’s a nice vindication of why Helen’s one of the show’s best and most complicated characters.

Overall, this is a hell of a way to kick off the show’s second season, and it’s a rightfully iconic episode for the show.