Daria was, is and will always be one of the great beacons of late 90s/early 00s pop culture (in addition to Sex and the City, Dawson’s Creek, Charmed and Roswell). Even so, it has managed to remain “under the radar” and “on the fringe” enough to avoid any potential for a reboot–until, apparently, now. Leaving true Daria enthusiasts to ask, “Why god why? Is this world only vindicated by the Kevin Thompsons and Brittany Taylors of this world?” It would seem so, despite the fact that the reboot is attempting to capitalize on the wokeness of now by placing Jodie Landon in the role of “the lead character’s closest friend,” which, put in the context of the entire sentence from Nylon, is even more false: “…Daria & Jodie [yes, this is what the show will be called], the latter referring to the lead character’s closest friend on the show.” Um, no. That’s not what happened. Jane Lane, man. Jane fucking Lane was her best and only friend–everyone knows that. Except the new audience that will now be acquainted with the only edition of the show they’ve ever known. The one that has to pander to the chic mentality of “social awareness,” which Daria was already the OG white girl of possessing.
To be sure, she would be against a reboot, already reluctant enough to concede to a Where Are They Now? series of illustrations in honor of the show’s twentieth anniversary last year. What’s more, a reboot vexingly presupposes that no time at all has passed in the world of Daria (just as it does on another inevitably shitty reboot soon to hit the airwaves, Charmed). But oh, how can we get that image of her as the only writer for a late night comedy show out of our heads (especially since high school Daria would likely shudder at that notion–in fact all notions that her creators both original and supplementary have come up with as a trajectory for her life)?
Slated to be written by Grace Edwards, an alum of Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt, Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City (and likely to “service” the character of Jodie much more eagerly), it’s very clear that MTV has high hopes of this being a success for their fledgling in cool cachet network. By turning to bastions of the past that bolstered it into the “alternative” haven for youth culture that it used to be, MTV only continues to sell out, not that it can help itself when it belongs to Viacom. Still, Daria doesn’t care about your excuses for corporate whoredom–she just wants you to leave her the hell out of it. Especially if you’re not even going to dig up TV genius Glenn Eichler to help with the reimagined version. But then, being that Daria is merely an extension of himself (he did give the patron saint of angst life, after all), it only makes sense that he would want no part. Or maybe he just hasn’t been asked because he’s a white man, the ultimate adjective and noun in describing irrelevancy in entertainment these days.
To further make one cringe over how compromised the core of the protagonist and her narrative has become, the proposed summary promises, “These two smart young women take on the world, with their signature satirical voice while deconstructing popular culture, social classes, gender and race.” Whatever happened to simply indiscriminately hating everything and everyone while casually alluding to Machiavelli, Lenin or Trotsky if it so happened to fit into the conversation? Oh, and if Tracy Grandstaff isn’t doing the voice, well, that’s even more proof that there is absolutely no purpose to this dredging up of an icon that can never be made more perfect in her misery and dissatisfaction than she already was.
