Let's get a pithy and perceptive dose of the way it was Back Near the Beginning, shall we? (Before a lot of us latched on to this fictional chick, true enough. And before some made her milieu into a Way of Life *sigh*)

From The Hartford Advocate, apparently 4 December 1997 (see comments) ...

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A Poster Girl for High-Minded Sarcasm

Daria, where have you been all my life?

By Michael Kuczkowski

When I first laid eyes on Daria Morgendorffer this summer, I tell you, it was love at first sight. I stumbled across a "Daria Marathon" on MTV one Saturday in August. Three hours straight of Daria, the network's new, literate, full-length animated series. I came in at the beginning of "Cafe Disaffecto," wherein our heroine is confronted by her touchy-feely, wet-handshake of an English teacher, who asked her how she felt about the recent theft of computers from the local cyber-cafe.

His emotions were on his sleeve. "We can't hail our friends across the globe and say, 'It's a beautiful day in the cyber-hood,'" he said. "They didn't just take a few computers. They took a symbol of our virtual community."

Great, I thought to myself, another mindless sycophant conjuring nauseating visions of world peace through Internet connections. Then Daria spoke. "Come together with the planet?" she asked, her delivery a wry, dry Jeanane Garafalo. "By staring at a screen for hours? In a room full of people you never say a word to?"

Dammit! This was good. And it got better.

The teacher, Mr. O'Neill, inspired by Daria's cynical remarks, embarked on a fund-raising project to rebuild the coffeehouse, sans computers. Threatened by her parents to begin participating in some after-school activities, Daria reticently agreed to sell chocolate bars door-to-door to support the cause, enlisting the help of her artsy and even more dour friend, Jane.

Daria: "Do it for sisterhood, or something."

Jane: "Are you nuts?"

Daria: "Then do it for the opportunity to look inside people's houses and find out what screwed up tastes they have."

Jane: "I'm bringing a Polaroid."

Daria's quest for extracurricular credit suffers a setback when she refuses to sell chocolate to a huffing, puffing hypoglycemic housewife who passes out after answering the front door. Daria salvages her efforts by delivering a rousing, anti-communist speech at the debut of the new coffeehouse, sparking the football team to riot, closing the cafe down yet again.

I was impressed. More than that, I think I was in love. Suddenly, the words popped into my head, uncontrollably. She's COOL ... he-heh.

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Hold on a sec. Did I miss something? Isn't this MTV, the network of Singled Out, Beavis and Butt-head and the Video Music Awards? Since when did they start airing a sophisticated cartoon with brains?

No one ever got rich overestimating the intelligence of MTV's core audience. After all, the movie Beavis and Butt-head Do America grossed $65 million worldwide last year. (He-heh, I said gross.) But the boys' run is over -- the show's final new episode aired last weekend. Now we're just stuck with reruns.

Enter Daria, who got her start in a supporting role on Beavis and Butt-head as the intellectual polar opposite of the show's dumbass main characters. She thought they were stupid enough to be amusing, in their own way. (Isn't that how we all feel?) They thought she was cool too, probably because she was the only female character on the show to talk to them.

Daria's story editor Glenn Eichler says Daria always seemed like more than just a supporting character. "The character on Beavis, she had a lot of back story that sort of never came out," Eichler says. "We just thought she was worth developing. We took a gamble."

So this year, Daria moved into a new town -- Lawndale -- where she attends a school filled with airheaded superficiality. There's dumb jock Kevin, the quarterback of the football team who blows off his science experiment with Daria to watch the Pigskin Channel on cable TV, and his cheerleader girlfriend Brittany. There's Quinn, Daria's younger, cuter, popular sister, who's vice president of the Fashion Club, a group dedicated to pondering immortal questions, such as: hiphuggers or skorts -- those adorable crosses between skirts and shorts?

Daria works because the lead character has deadly timing and good writing on her side. Irony is her weapon, and she wields it like an ax. "I don't have low self-esteem," she says, after flunking a psychological test at her new school. "It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else." As does Jane: "I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special."

At the same time, there is enough realism to make the show relevant -- and wildly entertaining. Daria's overachieving baby-boomer parents are frighteningly accurate. Helen is a workaholic attorney, who believes the optimum use of quality time is taking one of her daughters to a meeting with her time management consultant. Jake, Daria's lovable dad, is overstressed and clueless.

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Not all of the episodes are sure-fire hits. There's something a bit too zany in the family camping outing, in which everyone but Daria trips out on wild berries. And some of the self-absorbed supporting characters are insufferably self-absorbed. A marathon of this can quickly wear you out. Thankfully, Daria's biting sarcasm never wanes.

But soon -- next February to be exact -- there will be more Daria. And she will still be smart. Eichler and producer Susie Lewis Lynn promise a wide range of new adventures in the next season, including a paintball trip, a romantic interlude, and a journey to a wedding.

One thing is certain: it will definitely be better than the monotony of Beavis and Butt-head reruns. Ah, Daria. Where were you when I was 16?

Daria airs at 10:30 p.m. Monday on MTV, and in unpredictable, three-hour marathons on the weekends.

Copyright © 1997 New Mass. Media, Inc.