Before moving away to do bigger and better things my good friend Lucy was generous enough to burn me dvd's with all the episodes of Daria on it (including the movies). So first I'd just like to publically thank Lucy for giving me such a wonderful gift (even though I'm certain she doesn't read my blogs anymore). Anyway so Daria is a cartoon series that MTV ran in the 90's as a spin off series to Bevis and Butthead. Daria is one of those curious shows that truely divides people in two. It's like avocado or anchovies. You either think it's the one of the greatest and most beautiful things in existance and it makes your life worth living or you think it is disgusting filth that you have nothing but absolute contempt for. I fall into the first group. I loved this show as a young adolescent and having come back to it I am able to appreciate it on much more complex levels than I ever could as a noobish child.
For those who've never seen Daria it's a show about a teenager called Daria and her life at school as she deals with a slightly disfunctional family, moronic and shallow peers and corrupted and downright mental teachers. Accompanying her through all this is her best friend Jane Lane and the dry and sarcastic witicism the two frequently exchange. It sounds like nothing much and many people have called it just that but really there's a complex soul to the show that makes it one of the most believable depictions of highschool life on the TV. Well developed characters and some truely sharp writing have helped to make this show shine. That and its soundtrack is brimming with 90's alternative music and the like. It's pretty much got it all really. There were times where I laughed so hard and times that I really felt a warm and fuzzy connection with the characters. Especially in the later episodes Daria herself comes across as a very sympathetic character. There's a touch of heart amoungst the black humour and satire that is capable of making you feel for the characters. Now after all that the show does have a few niggles. There is the odd episode in which the writers find themselves straying a little too far from home and into some very rough patches indeed. I found the musical episode to be particularly discomforting. But on the whole the show is pretty rock solid and deserves to be checked out, even if you don't end up liking it.
Now onto one other gripe I have that's not so much with the show itself as it is with the whole fucking world. I watched every episode of this show on windows media player in avi format that had been transferred from VHS at some point. It wasn't exactly a blu-ray type experience. Now the reason I had to do this is because Daria is one of those shows that has proven itself rather difficult to get released as a DVD set. There are many horrible legal and buisiness-like reasons for this such as all the copyrighted music it uses and shit like that and I gotta say it's fucked up. Here we have a fucking work of art and people can't even fucking buy the show because the world is a fucking red tape, greedy-ass, capitolist wasteland full of people who would rather squeeze every penny than contribute anything to better the world.
So just to sum up the general thrust of this here review. Daria is a brilliantly realised and executed show that never quite got the recognition it deserved and the human race is shit for both failing to recognise it's magnificance and holding it back from a DVD release with all sorts of greedy legal bullshit.
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