“˜Daria’ enters fifth season with full-length film

By Frazier Moore

The Associated Press

NEW YORK “”mdash; What’s with kids today? The attitude. The
lip. The wry, unforgiving, pierce-right-through-it-all world
view.

How refreshing! At least, in those who share Daria’s
prickly wit.

That’s Daria Morgendorffer, teen doyenne of the culturally
disenfranchised. Goddess of the wary sidelong glance. Brainy
rebel-without-a-cause for the year 2000.

She has been described as “˜”˜a blend of Dorothy
Parker, Fran Lebowitz and Janeane Garofalo, wearing Carrie
Donovan’s glasses.”

Or, here is Daria’s cloaked self-description, which, of
course, she voices in a guarded monotone: “˜”˜The only
people she liked were the ones in books, and she spent most of her
time in her room, convinced the world had been quietly taken over
by a race of idiot space aliens.”

Meanwhile, she stars in her own animated cartoon series on MTV
““ a fitting irony, since MTV is way too hip, too cliquish,
too fashion-slavish for Daria to ever be caught watching.

Now, after four seasons suffering high school and all that goes
with it, she has graduated from her weekly show to a feature-length
TV film. Called “˜”˜Daria: Is It Fall Yet?,”
it premiered on Sunday.

The premise: What could be worse than a three-month separation
from her institutional nemesis? Yet here she is, sprung from high
school for the summer. And at loose ends.

The Beach Boys-ish opening song outlines her misery:
“˜”˜Hey, don’t block my shade. Hold the lemonade.
And maybe, someone could turn down the sun!”

What to do? Daria volunteers, so to speak, at the OK to Cry
Corral, a touchy-feely summer camp. Not a good fit.

She has a spat with her best friend, Jane, a painter who seeks
solace at a Beats-like arts colony.

She tries to buck up her popular, brainless sister Quinn, who
not only is in jeopardy of not getting into the right party college
but also fears her popularity is waning.

And she does that thing with her face she almost never does:
Daria smiles. Once. Almost.

What’s with this kid?

“˜”˜I think our audience relates to Daria because
she’s smart, she’s direct, she says what people think
but often don’t say themselves,” explains Abby
Terkuhle, president of MTV Animation. “˜”˜And she’s
cool.”

Way cool. So cool, in fact, that even viewers woefully beyond
MTV’s core demo can relate to Daria and love her new film.
And why not? The man (man!) who created her has a graying beard and
kids 11 and 14.

How old is Glenn Eichler? “˜”˜Out of the core demo. I
think we should leave it at that, don’t
you?”

That said (or, rather, not said), he downplays the challenge of
inspiriting a 16-year-old girl in a cartoon.

“˜”˜It’s not so big a trick,” says
Eichler, who writes many of the episodes and co-wrote the movie.
“˜”˜I think articulate, disaffected people all have a
tendency to sound a little bit the same.”

Indeed, chatting with Eichler, you find him passingly similar to
Daria: deadpan, a tad sardonic, though with a few years’
extra mileage that assures him Daria is on the right track.

Of course, Daria isn’t stuck in place. She ages at the
rate of roughly one year to every two years spent on the air (not a
bad plan, unless you’re a teen and you’re Daria). And
she’s come a long way since her first guest shots on
“˜”˜Beavis and Butt-head.”

Back then, she even looked different. Sketchy in every way.
Eichler says he had a hand in her redesign. Though he doesn’t
draw.

His lack of drawing skill frees him to obsess over certain
things about her appearance. “˜”˜When she turns to the
side,” he notes, “˜”˜one eyeglass frame is
still all filled with flesh. It’s really disconcerting to
me.”

He sighs. More trouble. “˜”˜There’s a contingent
of her fan base that believes that everything we did after Season
One was a complete betrayal of the character. They want to see
Daria continue to just be detached for 29 minutes and then, in the
last minute, put down all the phonies and win the day.

“But over 65 episodes, plus the movie, I don’t think
that makes for a very realistic depiction of what an adolescent
goes through.”

What will Daria go through in the series’ fifth year?
“˜”˜I don’t know,” Eichler hedges.

But of course he knows! He’s well into production for next
season. Which, even more than before, is likely to reflect his
tenure as the father of precocious kids.

A little world-wearily, Eichler recounts an exchange between his
14-year-old son and pals, observing the world from the back seat of
his car.

“˜”˜We’re passing some sort of printing company,
and one kid says, “˜Look: ABC Color.’ Then another kid
says, “˜And yet … the sign … is in
black-and-white.”’

Hearing that, Daria might crack a (tiny) smile.