I have FINALLY come to terms with the fact that Daria fandom has, in effect, given up on the series. They have no drive to create anything beyond the spur-of-the-moment. Sure, there is a final rush of activity caused by the imminent arrival of "Is It College Yet?", a new "Tales from the 'Burbs" page, etc., but as soon as the series is over, Daria fandom will fall asleep again, this time not to wake up. Selah.
My greatest criticism of Daria fandom deals not with C_________ and her execrable taste in writing, nor Martin and his windbag pronouncement from Bald Mountain, but rather, that there is very little discussion of "Daria" in Daria fandom. Certainly not on the PPMB, where the main topic is "does Sailor Danielle have a boyfriend?" (Jesus, they'll delete Thomas but won't delete THAT bullshit. If I was an elf -- and I thank God that I'm not -- Sailor Danielle would be one step away from a permanent filepurge, along with Crossada.) There's no real discussion on the Crazy Board. MTV's board is a good board if you've just learned your alphabet. MTV's Chatroom should be renamed "Stupid Junior High Tricks", and #daria+'s should be renamed, "Depressives Anonymous". ("My name is Ben. "HI, BEN!!!!")
The only TRULY non-dysfunctional board is the SRMB, where nearly EVERY topic has something to do with Daria. If you read it, you'll learn two things. One, that the interest in Daria as a TV show or phenomenon has declined so much that the SRMB can go DAYS without a thread. Two, that the rhyming bullshit that plagued PPMB spread over to SRMB as well. Some people need Ritalin. If that's all the PPMB is good for, it should be nuked, and STAY nuked.
And yet, every now and then, hope springs eternal. Mr. Benard, aka "um", has created a website called "Daria By Numbers" , where he hopes to build something called "The Perfect Season". Incredible. Someone actually managed to talk about "Daria" on a "Daria" board. Stone the fucking crows.
There was much rejoicing, and Daria fans, laboring under the repressive regime of Danielle/Crossada/Wouter, actually found that at least the "Current Episodes" section of PPMB was alive with intelligent discussion. My opinion is that any discussion is good discussion. And yet, I had some disquietude regarding "Daria by Numbers".
First, that I hadn't invented it myself. That's jealousy coming out, the CINCGREENeyed monster.
Second, that I didn't think you would achieve a "Perfect Season" after it was over. For those of you who HAVEN'T read "Daria by Numbers", let me explain how it works. Mr. Benard's "Perfect Season" has thirteen episodes. Daria ran for five seasons, each of those seasons with thirteen episodes. Episodes are numbered 101 (first season, first episode) to 513 (fifth season, thirteenth episode). For our first "Perfect" episode, fandom votes on which is the best episode from 101, 201, 301, 401, and 501. For our second "Perfect" episode, the twos (102, 202...,502), and so on.
The problem with this system is that if there are less than thirteen truly elite and deserving episodes of Daria, then some of these slots are going to get shortchanged. Your perfect season will consist of many excellent episodes, a few GOOD episodes...and perhaps an average episode or two. For example, the "nines" (109, 209, 309, 409, and 509) are a singularly poor collection of episodes, and only 509, "Life in the Past Lane", can even claim average quality. The "thirteens" in particular are shortchanged. I count no less than THREE truly excellent episodes in the "thirteens", but only ONE can claim the "thirteen slot". So we're supposed to piss on the losers and claim they don't deserve a slot? Any of the two losers from the thirteens beats "Life in the Past Lane" like a red-headed Ruttheimer stepchild.
Mr. Benard, god bless him, tries to solve the problem with the addition of "wildcards", which I suppose is sort of a "Best of the Rest" category. However, his "perfect season" is getting longer and longer. Oops.
My third and most significant bone to pick is -- in what way does this deliver us a "Perfect Season"? Certainly not a CRITICALLY perfect season, but merely a "collection of most popular episodes", and one using a rather odd system at that. Furthermore, is "one fan, one vote" the way to do this? This is the main reason I didn't vote. My vote is NOT the equal of Sailor Danielle's; I claim it is definitely, intrasingently and ABSOLUTELY superior to hers, and I'm not going to letany of my good selections be canceled out by her ignorance. Perfection, as it were, is not delivered by consensus.
And now, I'm sure Mr. Benard's ears are burning. Rest assured, Mr. Benard, you have done fandom a great service and even though I disagree with the philosophy of the Perfect Season, you have chiseled out a world of intelligent discussion on a place -- PPMB -- that is infamous for a lack of it. For this, I name you the first recipient of the Order of the Green Fortress, for your service to Daria fandom. May you wear it well, and I give you an official CINCGREEN Kowtow (TM).
And now, using Mr. Benard's system, I name MY "perfect" season. Some of these slots don't really HAVE a winner; the reader will be forced to choose which is his or her favorite. More on the ranking of episodes below.
Best 01 -- "Arts 'N Crass" : Daria prepares for another battle of wits -- but what do you do when your opponents are disarmed?
Best 02 -- "The Invitation" : Daria and high-school society clash. Guess who loses?
Best 03 -- "Quinn the Brain" : When fighting your popular sister, sometimes desperate measures are called for.
Best 04 -- Either "I Don't" or "Daria Dance Party". Both episodes are better than a sharp stick in the eye, as Bun would say.
Best 05 -- "The 'F' Word" : When you're growing up, sometimes you learn that who you think you are is not who you REALLY are.
Best 06 -- Not a bad one in the bunch. You can all fight it out between "Monster", "It Happened One Nut" or "I Loathe a Parade". Most people would pick "Parade" for its Tom angle, but "Monster" and "Nut" have great lines. "Lucky Strike" is okay, and "This Year's Model" has a hilarious ending, if nothing else.
Best 07 -- "The Lab Brat" -- Quinn. Backseat Brittany. The Pigskin Channel. And mice.
Best 08 -- "The Pinch Sitter" and "Gifted" are in the same cluster, but for once, I have to differentiate -- "Pinch Sitter" is more charming, and gets the nod.
Best 09 -- "Life in the Past Lane" -- At least it's watchable, compared to its overrated sister episodes, but between you and me, it probably ranks somewhere in the twenties on an absolute ranking scale.
Best 10 -- "The Big House" -- One of the strong episodes at the end of Season One that saved the series.
Best 11 -- "See Jane Run" -- Finally, Jane gets her due.
Best 12 -- "My Night at Daria's" -- Would have been EXCELLENT if they didn't chicken out on the question at hand. "Pierce Me" and "Fire!" are also good episodes.
Best 13 -- "Dye! Dye! My Darling" or "Boxing Daria" -- One is the most powerful episode of the series, the other brings it all to a satisfying conclusion.
Before we proceed, this is NOT an official vote and Mr. Benard is instructed NOT to tally it at DBN, for the reasons given above. If he does, I'm taking his award back.
In order to decide WHICH episodes were my favorites, well...I got to watch a lot of television and enjoy a lot of fond memories. However, I had to go back to Outpost Daria just to learn which episodes belonged to which clusters.
I might have said before that one of my problems with other "Best Episode" contests that try to enumerate a best-to-worst pecking order is the following : let's say that you choose "Sappy Anniversary", "Murder, She Snored", and "Groped by an Angel" as your #1, #2, and #3 episodes. (If you did, it would be a good argument that cousins shouldn't marry.) By exactly what numeric quantity is "Sappy Anniversary" greater than "Murder, She Snored?" If you say it's entirely subjective, then I want your arguments for why #1 is better than #2, or #3, or #4, all the way on down to #65. If your answers aren't "objective", don't try to pretend they are by slapping numbers in front.
Instead, I chose five "clusters". Excellent Episodes. Good Episodes. Average Episodes. Bad Episodes. And Worthless Episodes. All subjective categories, for one man's "Excellent" is another woman's "Worthless". As the type moved across the screen, some episodes were hard to put into a category, and, being flexible, I let these episodes straddle across two categories.
My final tally :
10 Excellent Episodes
3 Good/Excellent Episodes
8 Good Episodes
2 Average/Good Episodes
19 Average Episodes
5 Bad/Average Episode
12 Bad Episodes
1 Almost Worthless Episode, and
5 Worthless Episodes
Any way you slice it, it's 65 Episodes. We could also say "1 Average/Good Movie".
What's surprising is that there are 23 Bad/Average or worse episodes. If I were to pick a random tape and shove it in the VCR, the chances are better than one out of three it would have been a waste of thirty minutes. If you don't think "Average" episodes are worth watching, the numbers become almost two out of three. In short, despite the cries of the hoi polloi, a lot of Daria episodes would be better off turned into N'Sync music videos.
However, this bizarro non-bell curve has some interesting results. First, Average episodes dominate the distribution, as they should. Second, there are a high number of Excellent episodes, which is why Daria was such a damn good series. Hell, if you fudge the numbers and count Good/Excellent episodes as "Excellent", then you get thirteen A class episodes. Mr. Benard, there's your perfect season, right there.
You might ask, "Okay, CINCGREEN, which season of Daria was the "Most Perfect Season"? If you define it as "season with the highest number of excellent episodes", it was Season Two, which had no less than four episodes make my top ten. If you define it as "season with the least number of episodes that truly sucked sausage", once again, Season Two, with not a Worthless Episode in the bunch.
Which brings us to look at the Season Two range:
4 Excellent
1 Good/Excellent
1 Good
4 Average
1 Bad/Average, and
2 Bad Episodes.
Not bad. Maybe I need to rethink my opinion about Season Two. When you look at the quality of each of the episodes, the subjective category system works rather well.
Which brings me to what I call "The Forgotten Episodes". Most Daria fans know most of the episodes, however there were two Season Three episodes that I had forgotten. I could barely remember watching them, although I did. Furthermore, I don't think I've ever seen either of these episodes referred to by quotes, or in fan fiction, or in anything.
Oh "Just Add Water" or "The Lawndale File", where are you now? "Water" received -- and deserved -- zero votes. As for the five people who voted for "The Lawndale File", it just goes to show one thing -- you should actually WATCH the episodes before voting. And, in Rancour's case, you should let your high wear off first.
"But CINCGREEN", you whine, "I hear a lot of shit about 'categories', but I want to know EXACTLY which episodes you put in WHICH category." And I answer, "No, because I might want to write another essay. You think I'm going to put my Cliff Notes on the web for all to see?" Original content ain't easy.
"Okay then...do you agree with the selections of (PPMB) fandom?" No. Not at all. There are a few real clunkers, but other than that, the majority of selections are surprisingly...average. Average, average, AVERAGE. Most of those episodes named "perfect" left no real impression on me. My theory is that a really GOOD episode should challenge the viewer -- but some viewers don't like to be challenged. Most of the really GOOD episodes are Daria are undoubtedly some of the ones that really turn people off for one ignorant reason or another -- as a result, the tapioca episodes like "Speedtrapped!" get voted to the top. And "Speedtrapped!" ain't the only example.
But I digress. The only remaining question is, "which two-hour animated Daria movie is the best?" And we'll find that one out in nine days. Along with the answers to other important questions.
CINCGREEN, 12 January 2002
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P. S. It appears that I was mistaken. It appears that a young man known only to God and country as "A. J." was the originator of the idea behind "Daria by Numbers" -- Mr. Benard merely put it up on the Internet to last until server breakdown. As a result, there are now TWO members of the Order of the Green Fortress. Mr. A. J. and Mr. Benard, enjoy your stay at Fortress CINCGREEN.
CINCGREEN, 16 January 2002
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