The 2021 Recommend If You Like Rewatch Tournament – Funny TV Show Winner: Daria
I’m as surprised as you that Daria won this. I love Daria. I watched it during its initial run. I watched the Daria movie Is It College Yet? during my freshman year of college in a student cafeteria. I am the target demo for the best Beavis and Butt-Head spinoff. But I still didn’t think it had a chance of winning.
Daria barely got out of the first round, eking out a tight victory over Golden Girls. Round 2 was slightly easier, giving Derry Girls a relatively early exit (if you’re reading this because you love Daria and haven’t seen Derry Girls, you’ll most likely like Derry Girls). Round 3 was its most decisive victory over the cancelled-too-soon High Fidelity (I’m not entirely convinced everyone voting for High Fidelity knew they were voting for the 2020 Hulu TV show and not the 2000 film). It barely beat Arrested Development in the final round, winning by less than a handful of votes via Instagram and Twitter. I’m not at all upset by the outcome, just surprised. -B.W.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what to write for this article (too much time, probably), and I have come to the conclusion that you, dear voters, are wrong. That is to say that I actually think Arrested Development is a much more universally rewatchable show than Daria. Shout out to Lolo McGrath for some excellent taste, because Arrested Development is truly the epitome of rewatchable television. There’s so many hidden jokes and references that I can always find something new to laugh at, somehow the cultural criticisms feel even more poignant now than they did in 2003, and there’s a perfect quote for every situation. I suppose much of that can be said for Daria as well—in fact, Daria is probably the most quotable show out there—but ultimately what makes Daria so special to me is my deeply personal relationship to the show. And maybe it’s that specificity and relatability that makes it so rewatchable to all of you as well.
I started watching Daria in 2012, around the same time I was entering high school. That’s fifteen years after the show was first released in 1997, the year I was born. I know a lot of Daria fans feel a certain 90s nostalgia when they rewatch the show, something that I could never relate to, but to me Daria is nostalgic in a different way. It’s less about the era and more about the feeling and world view and stage of life that the show evokes for me. Like every other smart, alternative, misanthropic, doc-martin-wearing teenage girl, Daria made me feel seen in a way I hadn’t encountered before. It wasn’t just that I was entering a new school, had a penchant for writing and an artist best friend, wore round glasses, and hated everyone around me. Daria’s quick quips and biting one liners expressed my own teenage angst in a way that made things feel funny and empowering instead of earth-shattering and depressing.
It’s less about the era and more about the feeling and world view and stage of life.
In an interview with Variety, the show’s co-creator Glenn Eichler said that one of the truest statements he’s ever read about Daria is that, “If it weren’t so funny, it would be unbearably sad.” And that’s what’s part of what makes it such a feel-good, comforting show. It gives us something to laugh at and someone to laugh with. Or, to put it in Daria’s own words, the show’s droll take on the world reminds us that “There’s no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can’t be improved with pizza.” Nothing is so serious or so important or so monumental that it can’t be made better with a slice…or an episode of Daria.
By my senior year of high school, Daria had become something of an obsession. I watched and rewatched the show almost every single night. I wasted hours on Sporcle playing quizzes that tested my knowledge of every episode title (62/68) and Sick Sad World punchline (25/25). I made a set of Daria and Jane dolls.
I even ended up writing my college application essays about a line from the show: “My goal is not to wake up at 40 with the bitter realization that I’ve wasted my life in a job I hate because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens.”
I don’t remember if the quote itself made it into my final draft, but the spirit was there. I wrote about not knowing who I am or what I want or what my future will look like and being okay with that because people are complicated and ever-changing. The line really speaks to what draws me to the show. Daria embraces the complexity, contradiction, and mutability of people. The writers convincingly play with stereotype by drawing these seemingly flat caricatures and then completely subverting our expectations of them. Who would have ever expected Jane to try cheerleading, Brittany to go goth for an episode, or Daria to steal Jane’s boyfriend? By the end of the show, each character—even characters as zany as Mr. DeMartino with his bulging eye—unfolds into a very real person with flaws and fears and feelings. Through them, Lawndale becomes a fully immersive world.
Daria has been a consistent part of my life for almost ten years, which means my relationship to the show has evolved as well. I admire Quinn a lot more now than I ever did when I was first watching the show; in hindsight, she was on some real Hot Girl Shit. I’ve started to love the goofiest elements of Daria too, indulging in the sheer absurdity of Jake Morgendorffer’s outlandish anxious outbursts and the anthropomorphization of Guy Fawkes Day the same way I would swoon over Daria’s classic witty deadpans and biting social commentary. Perhaps the biggest thing that’s changed is I never thought I’d be this sappy about the show.
I’m sure Daria would roll her eyes at this article. She’d probably cringe to see me waxing poetic about Lawndale, and she would certainly have some notes about my word choice and sentence structure. Still, I can’t help but get sentimental when I realize how formative Daria really was for me. She taught me how to make sense of my feelings, how to embrace my dry sense of humor, how to grapple with unwanted to shameful desires. She taught me how to simply stop giving a fuck but also that it’s okay to care. That is to say, through all her jadedness and sarcasm, Daria taught me how to love myself. So, rewatching Daria takes me back, not to the 90s which I never really experienced, but to a time when I was learning about myself, what I wanted, who I wanted to be.
Daria is an amazing show just because it’s fucking funny and unbelievably sharp and has a kick-ass soundtrack. But there are a lot of really funny and smart shows; Arrested Development is one of them. What makes Daria an especially rewatchable show are the versions of myself I get to glance at when I rewatch it and the particular nostalgic feeling the show evokes that is somehow untethered from place and time but entirely tied to my own cosmology.
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