Daria S1 E6 - This Year’s Model

The world of modelling has hit Lawndale High like two galaxies colliding and the resulting extinction level event is threatening to take the students with it. In less dramatic language, a team of talents scouts arrive at the school to ferret out fresh faces and some of the students take to this opportunity like ducks to water. However, this proves to be more of a problem than a possibility when these scouts put some of their scouted students in situations they’re not comfortable without so much as a second thought.

Cards on the table, I have NEVER understood modelling. I know I, being a girl, was supposed to aspire to be like them but I never really understood it. I definitely take Daria’s view on them. It always looked like you were starving yourself for an ever-changing word that was impossible to please and the only lasting mark you would leave on the world was that you’d give the next generation an eating disorder. With the rise of A.I., I’m honestly amazed they’ve haven’t created mannequins that can pose and walk. Then I remember who usually wants to see rail thin supermodels strutting down runways and I just face palm. I know that a lot of views have changed in the modern day, and my own opinion is somewhat more malleable, but I still don’t understand the hype behind it all.

In what is becoming a very helpful trend for the episodes, the opening scene sets up the main conflict of the episode. In this case, a supermodel is advertising an encyclopaedia that you can pick and choose the letters you want. As if to ask “Why be smart when you can be beautiful?” We also get what I think is our first view of Daria’s room, with padded walls as the only evidence of the previous occupant.

“I wish there’d been a schizophrenic shut-in living in our house before we moved in. Course, we’ve got Trent there now. That’s almost the same thing.”

Leave it to Jane to have the best line in the episode.

The scouts don’t waste time as soon as they arrive at the school and neither do students like Brittany, who is clearly been preparing for this moment her entire life. As vapid as she can appear to be, we see more of her layers with her quick thinking, preparedness and goals in life. Honestly, it’s quite refreshing to see a character like her not being arm candy or a meal girl but someone with depth. It’s gradual but still, really noticeable if you’re paying attention. We also get a crumb of development from Kevin. He’s got some insecurities about taking off his football uniform, which he’s seen in almost constantly and from his daydreams in a previous episode, he’s pretty self-conscious about being seen as scrawny or small.

A downside to this episode and unfortunately proof of its age is the many, unwise jokes made about eating disorders, especially bulimia. Nowadays, a lot of these wouldn’t fly and they don’t in later episodes where it becomes a core issue but still, it seems the writers were too comfortable being flippant about an issue that claimed roughly 243 deaths in 1997 when this episode came out. Thankfully, Helen and Jake actually agree with Daria’s view on this, putting their feet down when Quinn is selected to be a model. You can see Helen trying to urge Quinn away from this line of work, but it falls on deaf ears until Quinn is later tasked with putting her hands on a boy’s chest, something I thinks both of them are too young and far from mentally mature enough for. As for the pair running this class, these two are truly deranged. For the ‘class’, they have some of the most out of pocket prompts for the girls to focus on and they don’t seem to give a solid damn about anyone’s comfort