Time to add some belated content. June 16, 1997 was the 10th anniversary of the airing of “Too Cute.” If you didn’t remember, you’re not alone — most people have been trying to forget “Too Cute” since it aired.

“Too Cute” was the brainchild of writer Larry Doyle. He would only end up writing one Daria episode, and it would not be the best one, by a long shot. Larry Doyle then moved on to write a few episodes of The Simpsons — not any of the really good episodes, but rather the “second half,” post-peak episodes. After his television work, he has settled on contributing to The New Yorker and Esquire and will soon have a novel made into a film.

You can find out just about everything Larry Doyle is doing here. (Oddly enough, among his many credits, he did not list “Too Cute.” I suppose even he knows it isn’t anything he’d want on his résumé.)

But first, the long and painful recap ... I’ll skip the B-plot and get to the meat and potatoes.

The second scene of “Too Cute” begins with Sandi telling a story to Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie. Sandi finishes her tale of triumph, but the boys want to hear the part about Quinn. When Sandi tells them that Quinn isn’t in the story, they ask Sandi if she could retell the story and put Quinn in it! (Cue to the look of extreme annoyance on Sandi.)

Quinn shows up, but Sandi’s not interested in speaking to Quinn. They are both distracted by hubbub regarding one of the girls at school, Brooke, who appears to have gotten a nose job of Michael-Jackson-esque proportions. The girls “oooh” and “aaah” over Brooke’s new nasal look. Brooke mentions that the nose job was performed by a Dr. Shar, who is supposedly “the best.”

Brooke asks Quinn her opinion, and Quinn says that Brooke’s nosehack is “cute.” Brooke, however, expected something superlative, and Sandi takes the chance to engineer an argument with Quinn, implying that Quinn’s remark was insincere. The argument doesn’t come to a conclusion until Sandi notices Daria and Jane nearby.

Sandi calls Daria over to get the opinion of an “average person.” Tiffany asks Daria if she thinks Brooke’s nose is cute. Brooke looks very hopeful that Daria will say something nice, but Daria’s only comment is “Don’t worry. It’ll grow out.”

Segue to the Morgendorffers at dinner. Undoubtedly, Quinn has brought up the topic of plastic surgery. Helen is against it, although she complains of a double standard, in that professional women are expected to be attractive. Jake is willing to agree with anything if it will get him out of an argument. Quinn, however, thinks her nose has “imperfections” and goes up to her room to obsessively tinker with her face.

Quinn, however, doesn’t plan on letting the matter rest. Feigning sickness, she has the school nurse call Daria out of Mrs. Barch’s class to help escort Quinn home. But Quinn doesn’t plan on going home ... she plans on seeing the esteemed Dr. Shar. She’s called Daria in for escort duty because Daria can be expected to give her honest opinion.

Quinn believes that the rest of the Fashion Club has gone to see Dr. Shar, and wonders why they went without her. (Daria can’t figure it out, since in her opinion, the Fashion Club all have noses like Quinn’s, anyhow.)

The two make it to Dr. Shar’s office and arrive just as the doctor is giving some advice to a patient who claims she can’t breathe through her nose. (The advice is for the patient to breathe through her mouth.) Dr. Shar is ...

... well, she’s a plastic surgery disaster. Bleached hair, permanent tan, cheekbones that could cut through an aluminum can, lips meant for a cow, artificial rackage. She speaks with the accent of a Southern belle and has the eternally sunny attitude to match.

Quinn asks Dr. Shar if she needs a nose job, but Dr. Shar won’t hear of it. “Oh, honey, I wouldn’t touch it ... it would be a crime against nature, and an ethics violation Dr. Shar just doesn’t need right now!”

Instead, Dr. Shar gives Quinn a hard-sell on new cheekbones. With the aid of some computer modeling, Dr. Shar shows that Quinn could be “too cute!” for just six thousand dollars. (The finished result looks absolutely nothing like Quinn, and more in line with the trainwreck Dr. Shar represents.)

Daria makes some cynical comments, and Dr. Shar proposes to give Daria a turn. Despite Daria’s protests, Daria’s picture is mapped into the computer model, Dr. Shar makes the supposed “improvements,” and we finally see that with twenty thousand dollars, Daria can be transformed into ... Quinn.

Dr. Shar tells Daria that she thinks Daria is giving up on herself. She gives Daria a box and tells her to open it when she has free time. On the return bus ride, Quinn bemoans that it will cost six thousand dollars to “fix” her, while Daria finds out that the gift Dr. Shar gave her was a pair of “Pre-Implant Temporary Bust Augmentations — For Evaluation Purposes Only.” In short ... practice boobs.

Quinn returns to school only to find that the Fashion Club are all wearing bandages over their noses — they’ve obviously been to see Dr. Shar. Sandi sarcastically claims that the reason the Fashion Club excluded Quinn was that Quinn was obviously not “shallow” — implying that Quinn considers herself better than her peers — and therefore wouldn’t need the company of supposedly shallow people like the Fashion Club.

The four girls then take notice of the arriving Brooke. It seems that Brooke has had another visit with Dr. Shar, who had performed liposuction to Brooke’s waist and added collagen to her lips. Brooke has now become “super cute.” When Brooke asks if she can join the Fashion Club, Sandi exclaims to Brooke that they might have an opening ... soon.

Jane and Daria meet at Daria’s locker. Jane asks Daria, “Show me your boobs,” but finds the plastic implants rather unimpressive. Upchuck walks by and asks what’s in the box. Daria lets him handle the “merchandise” and then tells him that the plastic sacs are breast implants. Upchuck is skeeved out and flees the scene.

Quinn then tells Daria that she has a plan. Daria will tell her parents that Dr. Shar said she needs human growth hormone. Helen and Jake will pay for the hormone therapy, but instead, Dr. Shar will take the money and perform surgery on Quinn.

Daria declines, leaving Quinn to figure out how to raise the money. Quinn attempts to raise the money by asking for donations, but her attempts are in vain — no one is going to pay six thousand dollars for Quinn’s plastic surgery.

Daria finally tells her sister that Quinn doesn’t need any kind of plastic surgery. “You’ve got the kind of looks that make other girls mentally ill. So stop it. You don’t need any plastic surgery. You’re perfect.” Quinn’s response: “Why do I bother talking to you?”

However, the Fashion Club girls come running by, hanging onto their bandages. As we learn later at the Morgendorffer dinner table, Brooke had a “nasal relapse” — her new nose caved in and all the collagen in her lips moved down to her lower lip, according to the Lawndale High School rumor hotline.

Brooke now looks “less cute than she did before,” and it doesn’t appear that Brooke will be joining the Fashion Club any time soon. Daria dryly states that everyone must be very upset about it. Quinn affirms that the Fashion Club is like a “built-in support group” for each other, and everything is back to normal.

There’s probably more than one Daria fan who has “Too Cute” listed on his or her “ten worst episodes” list. I can name several major flaws off the top of my head rather quickly:

• Poor art direction. Particularly in the backgrounds, which become particularly lazy when Daria and Quinn walk through the RxPlex. The backgrounds look as if they’ve been drawn by a particularly talented sixth grader. (Who knows, maybe the regular animators took a break and some middle schooler got into the studio?)

• Uninteresting new characters. Dr. Shar has to do a lot of heavy lifting in this episode, but she’s about as interesting as Claude and Romanica — more of an over-the-top stereotype than any kind of fascinating character. Shar’s appearance, in particular, is more appropriate for a horror movie than a comedy, and you wonder why Quinn (or anyone) would ever want to have her do plastic surgery. (I’d be afraid of ending up with extra parts.)

Part of the work to make Dr. Shar shine as a character has to be done by the voice actor, and Tracy Lee Bell gives it her all. One could almost imagine Shar as a Southern sorority girl before her med school days, as Bell gives her a genteel Southern accent. I thought Bell did fine work. She, however, suffered from the curse of “Too Cute,” as her only other known voice work anywhere else to date was for the episode “Lucky Strike.”

• A dumb B-plot. The B-plot wasn’t mentioned in the recap because it didn’t deserve a mention. Under the direction of Mrs. Barch, Kevin is required to wear prosthetic makeup to give him a horrible appearance. He then surveys the reactions of passers-by, and they are obviously horrified. Aside from moving Mrs. Barch one notch up the man-hating-harridan scale, this plot is a real time-waster.

• A crappy ending. The A-plot — Quinn’s struggle with the threat to her popularity — comes to a screeching halt with a deus ex machina of the worst kind. Brooke’s surgery goes wrong and she’s no longer cute. Even though Quinn figures that the Fashion Club should at least send Brooke flowers, Quinn appears more relieved than concerned. In fact, Quinn comes off more conceited than ever, and nothing really changes.

• Daria on the sidelines. Daria is given nothing to do. Jane is given even less to do, and Jane’s work in this episode is primarily to react to Daria as narrator.

Daria follows Quinn to Dr. Shar’s for the ostensible reason that Daria will tell Quinn the God’s-honest truth. However, when Daria makes a personal sacrifice and tells Quinn that she’s beautiful (by high-school standards) ... Quinn rebuffs her. It only makes Daria seem even more ineffectual.

• An unlikable main character. In this case, the main character is Quinn. This is Season One Quinn, the stupid Quinn, the fashion-and-popularity obsessed Quinn, the “Daria-is-my-cousin” Quinn. The only good way this episode could end is if Quinn gets her comeuppance from Daria. (They finally get it right in “Monster.”)

However, it appears we’re supposed to sympathize with Quinn. Sandi treats Quinn rather badly ... but wouldn’t you think Quinn deserves it, looking at just the last eight episodes? Quinn treats Daria badly too, blowing off her advice. Furthermore, Quinn’s desperate attempt to raise money for surgery just makes her look dumb. Compared to the theoretically more insightful Quinn, the post-“IIFY” Quinn, the post-“Lucky Strike” Quinn, this one is an embarrassment.

If we’re not supposed to sympathize with Quinn, we still get no reward, because Daria doesn’t do anything to right the situation. Only God sets things right in the end with a nasal relapse, so Quinn never learns anything.

My wife had one comment about this episode — which she had never seen since it first aired. “Boy, this is bad.” There’s really nothing else to say. No. There is. I’ll say it again. “Boy, is this bad.”

“Too Cute” will be known for one good thing: the emergence of “Evil Sandi.” The Sandi Griffin of the other episodes — of “Esteemsters,” “The Invitation,” “Malled” — wasn’t much more than a contemporary of Quinn. The Fashion Club were just a bunch of indistinguishable girls who hung around Quinn.

Larry Doyle, whether on his own or under Eichler’s direction, finally gives Sandi some personality, turning her into what would be called a “mean girl,” a person who uses her popularity to make other people’s lives miserable. It works, because many of us knew girls just like that in high school.

The show needed Evil Sandi. Not only is there a plot device that can be used to make life more difficult for the super-popular Quinn, but Evil Sandi is the first sign that the Fashion Club will be given personalities of their own (Two-Faced Tiffany and Neurotic Stacy). The only drawback would be that fan-fiction writers would make Sandi truly evil, evil at levels of cartoon supervillainy. (Maybe the fanfic character should be called “Evil Sand[h]i.”)

The argument could be made that Daria is neither as attractive nor as busty as fans would like to make her out to be, if one argues from this episode. A man in Dr. Shar’s waiting room thinks that Daria is in dire need of plastic surgery. Furthermore, Dr. Shar gives Daria some take-home bust implants, implying that Daria might be a bit underdeveloped. The remark about “human growth hormone” implies that Daria is short for her age.

And what kind of surgery did the Fashion Club members get from Dr. Shar? Are they wearing bandages over surgery, or just to hide their noses? I can’t figure that out.

Only a few good lines in this one:

Guy (complaining to receptionist at Dr. Shar’s): Hey, wait! We were here first! (sees Daria) Oh, whoa! Emergency! I understand!

Tiffany: It’s Brooke’s new nose. Isn’t it cute?
(Brooke looks hopeful, waiting for Daria’s response)
Daria: Don’t worry ... it’ll grow out.

Daria: You don’t need surgery, Quinn. (sighs) I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, and I’ll deny I ever said it, but there’s nothing wrong with you. Physically.

Jane: Oh, Daria. Don’t be shy. Show me your boobs.
(Daria shows Jane the box containing the silicone implants.)
Jane: Hmm. Why did I think this would be more interesting?

Labels: Doyle, Essays, Too Cute