Looking back on “This Year’s Model” — or even finding anything relevant to say about it, regarding the plot or its characters — is difficult because this episode leaves so little impact on the viewer. After I finished watching it again in honor of its 10th anniversary, I wondered if the running time was somehow shorter compared to the rest of the Season One episodes.

“This Year’s Model” was written by Laura Kightlinger and Glenn Eichler. Even though Kightlinger would move on to write six episodes of Will and Grace, she is known more for being a comedy performer than a writer. At the time of the episode, her only writing experience was sketch comedy writing for Saturday Night Live.

She had never written a beginning-to-end television script or a screenplay, and Eichler’s co-writing credit most likely exists for one of two reasons. Either she needed Eichler’s guidance in completing her first full script, or more likely, the script needed extensive revision, to the point that Eichler deserved a writing credit. This would be the only Daria episode that Kightlinger would write.

To recall the plot: The show begins with a pointless scene in Daria’s room where Daria and Jane watch a commercial for an encyclopedia — one whose articles are written by a supermodel. (This scene could have been abandoned, as the title of the episode alone makes the subject matter clear.)

Two visitors arrive at Mr. O’Neill’s class, led in by the principal, Ms. Li. The male is Claude, and the female is Romonica DeGregory, two representatives from an agency that seems to take various names throughout the episode, all variations on “Amazon Modeling Agency.”

Brittany is very happy, figuring they must be there because of the letter she sent to them. Claude and Romonica make it clear that they are searching for modeling talent, with the winner to receive a national contract.

Daria and Jane each make the point to Ms. Li that the aims of modeling aren’t exactly aligned with the aims of education. Daria states that modeling is entirely about being judged by one’s appearance, and that a model’s popularity depends on the whims of popular fashion.

Daria and Jane finally learn that Ms. Li is more motivated by financial renumeration — the swimming pool needs bullet-proof skylights — than any educational benefits from Amazon’s arrival.

At the cafeteria, Daria and Jane find that Jodie has skipped lunch and they accuse her of being caught up in the dream of becoming a model. Jodie complains that Daria is “against everything” and that the class is voluntary. Daria retorts that by Jodie’s argument, strippers should be allowed to come to recruit at the school as well, provided attendance at stripping lessons is also voluntary.

Both Claude and Romonica show up unexpectedly at Mrs. Bennett’s class. By now, Brittany is wearing a shoulder-to-knees trenchcoat, and when Claude and Romonica take notice of Brittany, they ask her to model for them.

Brittany is wearing an haute couture dress underneath the coat and walks for the two, who silently indicate to each other that Brittany doesn’t measure up, being too busty. However, Claude and Romonica effusively compliment Brittany (“Wonderful!” “Astonishing!”) and search the room for new talent.

They center on two potential targets. Jane holds off Claude’s and Romonica’s interest by drawing them on notebook paper as two vultures circling a potential meal. When Claude focuses on Daria’s “waif-like figure” and asks her to take off her glasses, she declines, stating that she needs them to identify scam artists.

Daria shares her concerns with Helen and Jake, who know Daria feels strongly about the matter. They know because Daria has violated her “unwritten rule” (see the essay on “The Invitation”) and upset the balance of power by the mere act of telling her parents. Quinn, however, enters the room with what she thinks is good news — she’s been invited to attend Claude’s and Romonica’s modeling class!

The phone rings. Romonica is on the phone to talk with Helen. She tells Helen that Quinn has that “special something” that most other girls don’t have, and emphasizes that the classes are free.

Quinn, still thinking that she isn’t going to the class after the poor initial reception to the idea from Helen, leaps in after Helen and Romonica stop talking. She claims that Helen has always said that Quinn can be whatever she wants to be, and clearly, this is something very big for Quinn.

Helen reluctantly gives in, if only for the one class. She then swings a deal with Daria to observe the class and monitor Quinn. (The deal: Helen cannot bring up redecorating Daria’s room — the padded room of the schizophrenic relative of the previous owners — for an entire year.) As it turns out, Daria had planned on attending anyway, as there is great “potential for the total humiliation of Quinn.”

As Daria and Jane sit in the school auditorium and watch Quinn on stage, Trent shows up. Daria and Jane ask why he’s there, and Trent states — not very convincingly — that as he plans on being a rock star, he needs to get used to being around models.

As Brittany bemoans her fate of having to sit with the “losers” in the auditorium, Quinn, Sandi, Stacy, Tiffany, and a large red-haired girl (chosen as “a decoy” by Claude and Romonica) strut their stuff.

Quinn is very good at interpreting the directions. However, Claude and Romonica create an exercise where the girls must rub the chests of “virile” young men in a romantic way. The Three Js are called to help, and Kevin is noticed in the auditorium and asked to help as well, immediately abandoning a sobbing Brittany. The boys take off their shirts and get to work, but Ms. Li shows up and the class comes to a crashing halt.

Quinn is convinced that she’ll win the contest, but Helen is not so sure. As the school is assembled in the auditorium to hear who will win the modeling contract, a group of men dressed in army fatigues and military wear interrupt the assembly. It is General Buck Conroy from Brutal Mercenary magazine, ready to tell the assembled the joys of being a killer for hire.

When Ms. Li protests their intrusion, Conroy shows Ms. Li not only the letter she supposedly sent him, but the accompanying fee. And then the press show up. (Ba-rump-bum.)

Ms. Li can provide little defense to the press — after all, if she allowed Amazon to recruit, then why wouldn’t she allow Brutal Mercenary? Claude and Romonica are banned from school grounds.

At home, Quinn believes that she would have won the contract if all this hadn’t happened. Daria then happily points out an article in the local paper where it is announced that Amazon has signed a Lawndale student to a national contract — Kevin Thompson.

As Daria, safely in her room, destroys her copy of Brutal Mercenary magazine — indicating that she was the force behind the arrival of General Conroy and his mercenaries — Kevin is being verbally abused by Claude and Romonica during an underwear shoot. Clearly, he’s not doing very well as a model.

Part of the problem with “This Year’s Model” is that Daria and Jane — the stars of the show — are shoved off the stage, moved from a proactive role to an observing role. At the beginning of the episode they are watching television, and they will remain in this passive role almost to the very end.

Daria at least remains true to her standoffish self. Daria doesn’t like the arrival of Claude and Romonica, and has probably judged them accurately as “scam artists,” but doesn’t go out of her way to lead a massive protest. As long as she’s not involved, she’s happy, and she only observes the modeling because there’s the faint chance that her hated sister Quinn might do something foolish.

But with Daria out of the way, the episode must be carried on the back of lesser — far lesser — characters. Claude and Romonica take the stage, and they are both the stereotypes of what people in the modeling industry were thought to be like in 1997.

Both are flamboyant, both are dressed in visually arresting (or assaulting) fashions, everything is tres chic to them, they are catty, they are dishonest, and they enjoy making grand spectacles of themselves. We can only be glad that America’s Next Top Model was not on the air until 2003, or we would have been given bad imitations of Tyra Banks and Janice Dickinson.

The problem is that neither of them is very funny, either separately or together. They are a bad Saturday Night Live sketch. Daria and Jane quickly fend off these two annoyances, but we are stuck with them for the length of the episode.

With Daria’s principle of non-involvement running at full power, other, lesser characters have to fill the spaces. For example, Quinn, who by this time was still not much more than Daria’s sisterly nemesis. And of course, Kevin and Brittany, of whom the less is said the better.

A general rule of Daria episodes is: Don’t bother watching episodes, like “A Tree Grows in Lawndale,” which try to develop stereotypical characters — they never work. “This Year’s Model” not only proves the rule, it doesn’t even do much with the characters it’s given, for comedic purposes or otherwise.

Furthermore, Helen is very angry with Jake and it’s the first time we truly experience Helen’s wrath in any episode. Helen is virtually screaming at Jake — “Do you hear anything that goes on here?!?” — and Jake frankly doesn’t know how to defend himself, wanting nothing more than to be left alone.

Helen’s irritation with Jake stops being funny after a while, and when it does, you begin speculating who’s to blame for the sorry state of communication in the Morgendorffer household ... Helen or Jake?

This episode is the first sign that this shtick, taken too far, can be troublesome. It’s a good thing that the Helen/Jake dynamic is further explored in later episodes. In “This Year’s Model,” however, it’s more verbal abuse than it is humor.

As a side note, Trent’s arrival at Lawndale High is a bit unsettling. Why is he there? The natural conclusion is that he’s there to look at the cute high school girls — although Quinn and her Fashion Club peers are freshmen, and Trent is in his early twenties.

Not that it’s a sin to look at pretty girls, but you wonder if Trent’s interest in Daria is due to the fact that he can’t pick up girls his own age. If Trent is to be the boy that Daria develops a crush on, wouldn’t someone as smart as Daria be asking herself some questions?

Even Trent seems embarrassed to be there. Maybe he read the script.

The ending is unsatisfying. Really, if Daria detests Quinn so much, it should be a win-win situation — either Quinn loses the competition and is crushed, or wins it and is out of Daria’s hair. But Daria somehow acts as the deus ex machina, finally bringing an end to Claude’s and Romonica’s reign of ... uh ... inconvenience.

Why does Daria have all this concern now? One could argue that she was really worried about Quinn falling under the influence of these two dimwits, but nothing in the episode conveys that.

It also leaves a bunch of unanswered questions, as Hermes Conrad might say ...

• Did Daria spend her own money? That fee looked like a check. It must be a money order, because where would Daria get an anonymous check?

• Did Daria need to steal official LHS stationery?

• Is copying Ms. Li’s name a crime?

• Didn’t General Conroy have any suspicions? Why would he show up unannounced without at least doing some basic reconnaissance? Did Daria call him up pretending to be Ms. Li? Did ...

Oh, forget it. None of these unanswered questions are worth asking, or answering. “This Year’s Model” was one of the first real bumps on the road, right next to “College Bored.”

It was just a episode with broadly sketched characters, none of whom can draw a laugh, while Daria sits in the background, somewhere, reading. Clearly, this episode needed more Daria. Thankfully, the next two episodes of Daria would be among the funniest.

Random thoughts:

• When I talked my essay over with my wife, she gave me a different perspective. As to whether or not Amazon was on the up and up, she said, “Of course Amazon is a scam!”

She compared Amazon to the Barbizon Modeling School. There are still Barbizon agencies at various places in the United States. Their old slogan was “Be a model, or just look like one!” One used to find their advertisements in Seventeen, Glamour, or Mademoiselle.

If you could somehow afford their classes, that was where they got you hooked. The classes were expensive, and then you could pay for a special class in how to apply makeup, and then pay for portfolio pictures, etc., etc.

However, Barbizon was not a modeling agency. They couldn’t place you on a runway, either in Milan, or for that matter, in Macon. Young deluded kids pay thousands of dollars and have nothing to show for it. This is why my wife concluded that Daria went out of her way, not only to reveal Ms. Li’s own “mercenary” behavior, but also to strike back at a place like Amazon/Barbizon.

My argument is that I doubt a lot of the young people watching in the late 1990s, or even in the 2000s on The N, would even know who or what Barbizon is. This is the problem when twenty- and thirty-somethings are trying to write a show for high school teens.

• Even though being a model was just one of many of Brittany’s most important dreams ever, at least she put enough thought in it to come up with a model name, “Blue.” Last Wednesday, the models of America’s Next Top Model were asked to come up with a new name for themselves as a challenge. (See: Twiggy.) Unfortunately, none of them picked “Blue.”

• A pattern is evident in Daria’s and Jane’s confrontations with authority. Daria will devastatingly point out the flaws in the opposition's argument, while Jane will bring up other related points that might paint a shocking picture. Daria likes unsettling authority, but Jane likes watching it squirm.

• When the Fashion Club is holding hands in this episode, waiting in anticipation of learning who will get the contract, Tiffany is missing. Did she fall short?

• Stacy finally gets a name, as Romonica calls her by name in the auditorium. Sandi was first named as a character in the previous episode, “Malled.” Tiffany still doesn’t have a name, but will have one by the end of the first season.

• The only good lines of the episode:

Quinn: You don’t get it. I’m writing a poem about what a great model I’d be. I’m going to recite it for Claude and Romonica. (clears throat) “A model’s what I’d like to be / Looking good comes naturally / Da da da da, da da, me.”

(Jane refers to Brittany’s characterization of the observers as losers, and Kevin is called to the auditorium floor by Claude and Romonica, abandoning a distraught Brittany)
Jane: Don’t be sad. He’s with the winners now.

Labels: Eichler, Essays, Kightlinger, This Year's Model