Second Look: Daria ‘College Bored’/’Cafe Disaffecto’ – A Beautiful Day In The Cyberhood

‘College Bored’ (originally aired 3/17/97)

Daria was a show about high school – so it may seem a little odd that the third episode of show spends most of its time on the campus of Middleton College (the Morgendorffer parents’ alum). But ‘College Bored’ is less about college itself, and more about how high schoolers view what they’ve been told are “the best years of their life” – and by the same token, how the generation before them views the college years long behind them.

It all begins when Daria’s parents send her and Quinn to an SAT prep course, because nobody has a satisfying life without going to a “decent college”, of course (or so at least we’re told). And although the classroom scenes serve as bookends to Daria and Quinn’s college experience, it also presents us with some hilarious little bits about the other Lawndale High kids in the class, first by showing us their college fantasies, and then later reflecting on their actual experience:

– Kevin’s fantasy is my favorite. He wont’ even accept his first dream: he arrives on campus, and all the other football players are bigger than him, a little display of the insecurity buried underneath the popular jock mask he wears. After adjusting his fantasy so he’s the biggest dude around, we get another little glimpse into the psyche of the star quarterback: he starts dating another girl, which pisses Brittany off to no ends.

– The payoff to Kevin’s little fantasy of ditching Brittany comes in her fantasy, where she walks down a graduation runway in her cap and gown and watches Kevin get hauled off by police. It points out a very ironic bit about their relationship: being the star quarterback and head cheerleader, societal cliches demand that the two are a couple. It’s fun because they’re both young, hot, and popular – but deep down, the two hate each other, and college is their dream escape from their “suffering”.

– We don’t get to see Mack’s fantasy – but he’s smart enough to point out that he’s a star athlete, so chances are he’s going to get a shitty education at a popular school. “Can I get my money back now?”

– Jane’s plan kind of embodies what an upper-middle class white family’s biggest fear would be for their high schooler: they take the money they’ve saved up for their education, and blow it on a long-shot career or a bohemian lifestyle. Jane wants both: her dream is to take her parent’s money and spend it on a fancy art space in New York, where everyone will dote over her artistic skills and fabulous real estate.

– Daria’s fantasy reveals two key components of Daria’s character: that she’s a little arrogant at times about her intelligence (something we’ve seen plenty of already), and that she’s got some deep-seeded insecurities and regrets that even she can’t ignore sometimes. In her fantasy, she’s asked by a college professor to go from freshman student to graduate-level professor, all so the teacher can have her dorm room to have sex with more attractive undergrads. Daria may snark about the hot girls and popular life every day, but it’s because there is a tiny part of it that wants it for herself, for someone to see her for something else besides a brain and a speed bump on the way into a hot girl’s pants. It’s not something she vocalizes much – but these are dreams, and sometimes even they can be a little depressing at times.

– And of course, Quinn, who thinks college is sharing a dorm room with three hot guys who fight over her.

The college visit itself is pretty predictable for Daria and Quinn (Daria starts selling term papers, and Quinn gets confused for a sorority pledge, eventually being named Keg Queen) – but the focus there is actually shifted towards the parents, as they both get reminders that they aren’t quite as young as they once were. A frat nerd asks Helen for her underwear, because it would be “big enough to see from the flagpole”, and Jake gets a reality slap when he finds out how much money there really is in the college industry. It’s a simple, cliched message about parents coming to terms with their age and letting memories stay memories, but Jake and Helen are so committed to their reminiscent ways, it manages to make a pair of parents who lose their children endearing characters.

In the end, Daria gives up her college business (part because she was getting burned out, and part because Helen won’t let her keep the money she made) and Quinn gets accepted to Manatee College (which has a $20,000 tuition, and no classes). The big revelation about their college experiences is actually kept really light: while sharing pizza with Jane, Daria realizes that even high school has its high points (she sees her sister on a bad date with their college prep course teacher) – so labeling something in the future “the best years of your life” is really just a silly idea.

Other thoughts/observations:

– Jake’s solution: “Maybe we only send one to college… and Quinn to beauty school.”

– Brittany spent time with a poetry group at her visit: “they cared about my feelings, and thoughts… and stuff.”

– Kevin: “Are we going to need to know this, or is this just personal advice or something?”

– Jane: “Does this mean these are the best years of our lives?” Daria: “I hope not.”

– the Morgendorffer’s visit a family friend, who read SAT books to their three-year old daughter. You’ve got to start early to get them into a good school!

‘Cafe Disaffecto’ (originally aired 3/24/97)

On the surface, ‘Cafe Disaffecto’ appears to be a very light episode; when the cybercafe (remember those things) in Lawndale gets destroyed, the school decides to raise money for a new one. Simple, concise, and broad enough to wring a lot of laughs out of – which ‘Disaffecto’ certainly does, splitting up the students for their own little adventures in high school fundraising. But there’s a couple of underlying themes in the episode I find really fascinating, chief among them the manipulation of high school students by adults.

As parents and teachers, Jake, Helen, and Mr. O’Neill are all pushing Daria and company into situations for their own personal benefit: Helen manipulates Daria into taking on an extracurricular activity with the threat of music camp, and Mr. O’Neill forces his students to raise money for a cybercafe because of his own personal feelings of alienation from society. Although everyone’s intentions are good, ‘Disaffecto’ calls them out for the inherent selfishness of every act – just look at Jake, who is too busy checking on his prize daughter (Daria, who sits and reads the paper with him every day, one of my favorite little sights on the show) face too shoved into the news to even realize that Quinn’s been talking to him (at the end of the scene, we hear him say off screen “Where’s Quinn?”).

O’Neill gets the brunt of it, however – his complete inability to teach (or even learn his student’s names) makes him a much more insufferable – and potentially damaging – presence than Daria’s parents, who are really just trying to be parents. O’Neill’s a manipulator, but his acts are more malicious than the faceless people stealing shit from the coffeehouses: he isn’t trying to provide any kind of real benefit to these kids by having them sell candy bars to morbidly obese people and magazines to other teachers (Kevin and Brittany’s scene at Mr. DeMartino’s door is fucking hilarious… why is he holding a frozen chicken in chef garb the whole time?), he’s just trying to feed his own insecurities, and get kids to prescribe to his vapid ideas.

And as her revenge, Daria decides to do the same: after being pushed (once again) into reading something at the new cafe, she writes a spy story about a woman named Melody Powers who got topless and killed a shitload of Russian and Chinese communists, in order to spurn a riot at the new shop and get it destroyed, having her cake (extra credit) and eating it, too (getting back at her mom and Mr. O’Neill). Her riot causes the people of the town to hunt down a Russian embassy to stone, which sends the school in a stupor, closing Cafe Lawndale forever (which itself gets robbed at the end, a hilarious topper to the episode).

Ultimately, the episode exposes the drawbacks to adults having selfish intentions (just look at Mrs. Johansen, who collapses in a hypoglycemic episode trying to find her purse) – all it causes when said intentions are forced upon teens is chaos, who either reject the identities being formed for them (Daria pointing out what an idiot Mr. O’Neill is with his symbolic interpretations of events) or are so selfish themselves, they completely miss the point (Kevin and Brittany with both Mr. DeMartino’s speech, and Romeo & Juliet). Teens will be teens, and trying to force them into certain boxes will only lead to hellish conclusions.

Other thoughts/observations:

– the public school system is so desperate, they’re willing to sell $200 worth of chocolate bars to a woman who’ll die from eating them all. That, and another set of adults using means to serve their own ends.

– Mr. O’Neill mentions a paper Daria wrote about being a high school misfit and never fitting in – which she doesn’t want to share with the school; “I name names.” It also marks the first time O’Neill would compare his younger self to Daria, which is always nice and creepy.

– There’s a great point made by Daria about the shift from colleges looking at credentials for new students, to looking at savings account balances. I saw this myself in college, where in my five years I could literally see the bar for acceptance being lowered, both in the classroom and in the campus culture.

– Jane: “I don’t have friends. I walk alone.”

– ‘Cafe Disaffecto’ is often credited as the only episode without a Sick, Sad World appearance. This is not true: there’s no episode shown, but the logo is visible on the back of the Arts section of Daria’s newspaper.

– fun fact: apparently the seating chart Mr. O’Neill looks at sent the budding fan-fiction world into a frenzy, and is the springboard for many alternate-universe Daria adventures (including a story where Daria is retarded, and another where Jane is Spider-Girl and wrestles Mrs. Johanson, aka The Blob). As one of the earliest fan-fic communities on the internet, Daria is a show with quite a lengthy (and often weird) history with the genre.

– Kevin brings the Hamlet skull to the Romeo & Juliet performance because it looks kind of cool.

– one career Quinn’s got locked down already: salesperson.

– Daria, commenting on her mother’s skills of manipulation: “You’re good. When you put your mind to it, you’re very, very good.”

– Kevin, on Shakespeare’s writing style: “He’s like a total chick writer.”

– the three types of holiday wrapping paper Brittany has for sale: religious, festive, and montel-domitational. Kevin corrects her: “That’s non-dominational, babe.”

‘Bored’ – B+

‘Cafe Disaffecto’ – A