DR. BELCH
06-05-2001, 12:24 PM
"Life In the Past Lane"
The title is taken from the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane". It surely makes you lose your mind.
I actually had to watch this one twice because it was such an odd episode. The storyline reminded me a bit of "See Jane Run", in which Jane falls for a track runner named Evan and loses her sense of identity. Here Jane's new beau is a man who lives and dresses in 40's-era clothes and still remembers carbon paper and cloth typewriter ribbons. Jane talks about how stylish he is i nthe classical sense and how he has a love of art and music. "And he likes girls!" she finishes at Daria's expected rebuttal.
Like Evan said, "I guess you can be born in the '80s and still stuck in the '50s."
Jane goes so far losing herself she actually changes her whole wardrobe ("Things were so much easier when I just had one outcit.") and starts dressing like Donna Reed. She comes back to herself when Nathan criticizes her sense of style ("You do know you're wearing 40's shoes with a 50's dress? I don't think you're ready to try mixing eras yet")--which isn't really hers, if you get right down to it--and at the way he calls her friends losers. Jane has an odd way of either falling for jerks or becoming bored with the right ones--except for Tom, you've swear all her lovers grow on some mythical a**hole tree deep in the rainforest.
In the subplot, Upchuck develops a love of prestidigitation--presumably to rake in a few bucks from the rubes and to get chicks. When Staciy becomes obsessed with a trick involving a torn-up ten-dollar bill, she agrees to become Upshucks assistant in a magic act. THe query is, does she ahve feelings for him or does she just want to wear the sequinny outfit (DYN that Tiffany is transfixed by its shinyness as well? ). For a moment it looks like she frigged up and locked Upchuck in a steamer trunk and he'd never get out ("Optimist," Daria says), but as the staff works to get him out, he mysteriously does a Houdini and appears i nthe rear of the auditorium .Now...one must wonder if Stacy really does have feelings for Upshuck, because no self-respecting fashion plate would dare ruin her mascara crying for a guy she doesn't care about.... http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/otn/sad/11zcry.gif
Fav line: Nathan refers to Daria's look as "Catholic schoolgirl meets King's Row London, circa 1983". I knew[i] it had to have a name....
Watch for the bit where Nathan turns up at Jane's house dressed as Jim Carrey in [i]THe Mask and his conversation with Trent: "The sixties are over." "The forties were over first." As both men say, real fashion never goes out of style...and as for me, I was grunge before grunge was cool.
Brittany is worried about Upchuck reading her mind. Talk about light reading material....
DYN that Ms. Barch takes the opportunity to vent her personal anger as she kicks the trunk containing Upchuck?
DYN that Li still runs Lawndale High like a tinpot dictator (microchips in the gym equipment, subliminal messages in the morning announcements)? After the "Fizz Ed" fiasco you think she'd have learned her lesson...
The Fashion Clubbers realize that crying has some social benefits. Funny, I thought that was an inborn instinct with women.... http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/otn/wink/Selbstironie.gif
"Aunt Nauseum"
Daria's worthless cousin Erin is divorcing her husband (cf. "I Don't") ,and her mother Rita has finnagled Helen into handling the precedings. Jake wants to be as far away from the house as possible, so he goes into hiding at a local biker bar and works out a complicated series of telephone signals with Daria (so complicated he can't even keep them straight--"The eagle has landed." That's means she's gone...or is that pigeons? Or condors?")
It gets even more complicated when Rita ends up staying at the house, Erin is in Switzerland with her grandmother and not even participating in the arrangements, Erin's husband flies up to arrange a reconciliation, and Daria has to call in her Aunt Amy to referee the fight. Unfortunately all three sisters fall to bickering, and it's up to Quinn and Daria to settle it by playing the parts of the aunts and outlining the nature of their disputes. Helen thinks that Rita is a mama's girl and an irresponsible brat who gave birth to an even worse brat; Erin thinks Helen has a stick so far up her butt she can taste wood, and both think Amy is a bookworm who sat on her moral high horse in her room "reading crazy Russian novels" and thought she was too good for the both of them.
If Amy is the adult Daria, that makes Quinn the junior Rita, which makes the role-playing exercise all the more hilarious and revealing. They both show how immature their mom and aunts are and air some personal grievances to boot.
Here we see that Quinn actually does respect Daria a lot more than she likes to let on, as well as being a little jealous of her, what with having Tom in her life...and speaking of him, he feels a bit neglected becaue Daria repeatedly brushes him off while she tries to keep her family from self-destructing. She admits to Amy that between her parents' constant argung, emotional aloofness, and jockeying for dominance, as well as her cousin's failed marriage at 24, she doesn't feel comfortable getting into a relationship of her own.
In the end we even see the girls share a common interest--Gone With the Wind and promise one another to never become like Helen, Amy, and Rita, always at each other's throats and fighting 40-year-old wars (BTW, note Helen lets that treference to her age pass, it being among family; anyone else would be merecillessly censured).
Meanwhile, the Fashion Clubbers have their own rift--both Stacy and Tiffany have bought the same blue polka-dot dress. Sandi plays judge and listens to both sides of the story (Stacy has a good point about her shoulder incongruity, but Tiffany is such a dim bulb she hasn't even prepared an argument). In the end Stacy inadvertantly riins Tiffany's dress with grape soda and altruistically offers hers up to amke up for it (though it wouldn't fit because she has a more generous frame than Tiffany). Her heart's in the right place but her head sure isn't--she hugs Tiffany and ends up ruining both dresses! Dumb little c--*...
One would think Helen would bar Jake from the kitchen--there was the disasterous penne a la pesto with the oxidized sauce, the time he set the kitchen on fire warming milk, the infamous kitchen sink stew, and the peanut sauce from a couple of episodes ago...and now a Civil War cookbook? Little wonder the South lost.
DYN that Quinn mispronounces the word "hermit"?
I have to wonder...do sisters actually bicker as viciously as the Barksdale girls? http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/otn/wink/voldar02.gif
The title is taken from the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane". It surely makes you lose your mind.
I actually had to watch this one twice because it was such an odd episode. The storyline reminded me a bit of "See Jane Run", in which Jane falls for a track runner named Evan and loses her sense of identity. Here Jane's new beau is a man who lives and dresses in 40's-era clothes and still remembers carbon paper and cloth typewriter ribbons. Jane talks about how stylish he is i nthe classical sense and how he has a love of art and music. "And he likes girls!" she finishes at Daria's expected rebuttal.
Like Evan said, "I guess you can be born in the '80s and still stuck in the '50s."
Jane goes so far losing herself she actually changes her whole wardrobe ("Things were so much easier when I just had one outcit.") and starts dressing like Donna Reed. She comes back to herself when Nathan criticizes her sense of style ("You do know you're wearing 40's shoes with a 50's dress? I don't think you're ready to try mixing eras yet")--which isn't really hers, if you get right down to it--and at the way he calls her friends losers. Jane has an odd way of either falling for jerks or becoming bored with the right ones--except for Tom, you've swear all her lovers grow on some mythical a**hole tree deep in the rainforest.
In the subplot, Upchuck develops a love of prestidigitation--presumably to rake in a few bucks from the rubes and to get chicks. When Staciy becomes obsessed with a trick involving a torn-up ten-dollar bill, she agrees to become Upshucks assistant in a magic act. THe query is, does she ahve feelings for him or does she just want to wear the sequinny outfit (DYN that Tiffany is transfixed by its shinyness as well? ). For a moment it looks like she frigged up and locked Upchuck in a steamer trunk and he'd never get out ("Optimist," Daria says), but as the staff works to get him out, he mysteriously does a Houdini and appears i nthe rear of the auditorium .Now...one must wonder if Stacy really does have feelings for Upshuck, because no self-respecting fashion plate would dare ruin her mascara crying for a guy she doesn't care about.... http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/otn/sad/11zcry.gif
Fav line: Nathan refers to Daria's look as "Catholic schoolgirl meets King's Row London, circa 1983". I knew[i] it had to have a name....
Watch for the bit where Nathan turns up at Jane's house dressed as Jim Carrey in [i]THe Mask and his conversation with Trent: "The sixties are over." "The forties were over first." As both men say, real fashion never goes out of style...and as for me, I was grunge before grunge was cool.
Brittany is worried about Upchuck reading her mind. Talk about light reading material....
DYN that Ms. Barch takes the opportunity to vent her personal anger as she kicks the trunk containing Upchuck?
DYN that Li still runs Lawndale High like a tinpot dictator (microchips in the gym equipment, subliminal messages in the morning announcements)? After the "Fizz Ed" fiasco you think she'd have learned her lesson...
The Fashion Clubbers realize that crying has some social benefits. Funny, I thought that was an inborn instinct with women.... http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/otn/wink/Selbstironie.gif
"Aunt Nauseum"
Daria's worthless cousin Erin is divorcing her husband (cf. "I Don't") ,and her mother Rita has finnagled Helen into handling the precedings. Jake wants to be as far away from the house as possible, so he goes into hiding at a local biker bar and works out a complicated series of telephone signals with Daria (so complicated he can't even keep them straight--"The eagle has landed." That's means she's gone...or is that pigeons? Or condors?")
It gets even more complicated when Rita ends up staying at the house, Erin is in Switzerland with her grandmother and not even participating in the arrangements, Erin's husband flies up to arrange a reconciliation, and Daria has to call in her Aunt Amy to referee the fight. Unfortunately all three sisters fall to bickering, and it's up to Quinn and Daria to settle it by playing the parts of the aunts and outlining the nature of their disputes. Helen thinks that Rita is a mama's girl and an irresponsible brat who gave birth to an even worse brat; Erin thinks Helen has a stick so far up her butt she can taste wood, and both think Amy is a bookworm who sat on her moral high horse in her room "reading crazy Russian novels" and thought she was too good for the both of them.
If Amy is the adult Daria, that makes Quinn the junior Rita, which makes the role-playing exercise all the more hilarious and revealing. They both show how immature their mom and aunts are and air some personal grievances to boot.
Here we see that Quinn actually does respect Daria a lot more than she likes to let on, as well as being a little jealous of her, what with having Tom in her life...and speaking of him, he feels a bit neglected becaue Daria repeatedly brushes him off while she tries to keep her family from self-destructing. She admits to Amy that between her parents' constant argung, emotional aloofness, and jockeying for dominance, as well as her cousin's failed marriage at 24, she doesn't feel comfortable getting into a relationship of her own.
In the end we even see the girls share a common interest--Gone With the Wind and promise one another to never become like Helen, Amy, and Rita, always at each other's throats and fighting 40-year-old wars (BTW, note Helen lets that treference to her age pass, it being among family; anyone else would be merecillessly censured).
Meanwhile, the Fashion Clubbers have their own rift--both Stacy and Tiffany have bought the same blue polka-dot dress. Sandi plays judge and listens to both sides of the story (Stacy has a good point about her shoulder incongruity, but Tiffany is such a dim bulb she hasn't even prepared an argument). In the end Stacy inadvertantly riins Tiffany's dress with grape soda and altruistically offers hers up to amke up for it (though it wouldn't fit because she has a more generous frame than Tiffany). Her heart's in the right place but her head sure isn't--she hugs Tiffany and ends up ruining both dresses! Dumb little c--*...
One would think Helen would bar Jake from the kitchen--there was the disasterous penne a la pesto with the oxidized sauce, the time he set the kitchen on fire warming milk, the infamous kitchen sink stew, and the peanut sauce from a couple of episodes ago...and now a Civil War cookbook? Little wonder the South lost.
DYN that Quinn mispronounces the word "hermit"?
I have to wonder...do sisters actually bicker as viciously as the Barksdale girls? http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/otn/wink/voldar02.gif