Season Four

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review #400:
Season Four in Review


Partner's Complaint

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Daria and Jane have a big blow-out fight about Tom. So, Daria and Jodie partner up for a project for Mrs. Bennett's class. Brittany and Kevin are fighting over who's smarter, so she and Jane end up working together. Brittany proves (more or less) that she's a little smarter than he is, while Daria and Jodie try to obtain a loan to start up a business. They end up fighting over moral issues and Jodie calls Daria a racist. In the end, they apologize, Brittany and Kevin get back together, sort of, and Jane and Daria make up, showing that their friendship is strong enough to withstand just about anything.


Antisocial Climbers

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Daria, Jane, and the rest of the Lawndale High gang set out on an overnight camping trip. Daria's parents take this opportunity to do some serious "bonding" at a cabin not far from the High Schoolers' cabins. Mr. O'Neill has to go back to the bus to get his inhaler and sets out in a heavy snow-storm. He gets lost and Ms. Li goes off to search for him, only because he has her video camera. Meanwhile, the rest of the campers are stuck in a cabin without supplies, thanks to Quinn. Quinn gets banished from the Fashion Club, and Daria and Jane accompany Mr. DeMartino to get supplies. Mr. DeMartino gets lost in the storm and wanders into Helen and Jake's "love nest." Eventually, Quinn is welcomed back into the Fashion Club, Mack finds Li and O'Neill, the snow lets up, and Daria and Jane find DeMartino. All in a day's work.


A Tree Grows In Lawndale

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Kevin adopts a new "bad boy" image. He buys a leather jacket, sunglasses, and a motorcycle that looks more like "a very fast lawnmower." When the other guys on the team tells him to pop a wheely, he does, only to wipe out, bust his knee, and break the Tommy Sherman Memorial Tree. Afterwards, he's on crutches and he swears off football forever. Soon, the Lions are losing every game and Lawndale is proclaimed to be a "loser town." Quinn begs her parents to move, and Jake is driven over the edge by the writer of the "Lawndale Shopper." Kevin has no purpose in life and has broken up with Brittany because cheerleaders have to date jocks, and Kevin is no longer a jock. Tom suggests that Kevin make safety speeches at grade schools, and Kevin tries it. Kevin enjoys this and is popular with all the kids, but something is missing. Finally, he decides to give up his public speaking to go back to the team and to Brittany. He pulls the Lions out of their losing streak and is a hero.


Murder She Snored

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Kevin and the rest of the football team, with the exception of Mack, receive a 100 on Mr. DeMartino's history exam. DeMartino knows someone must have stolen the test and states that if the guilty party does not come forward, everyone will receive an F. That night, Daria falls asleep while watching "Charlie's Angels" and dreams that someone murdered Kevin. She is the number one suspect and must find the murderer before she herself is executed. The Fashion Club, AKA "Upchuck's Angels" are of little help to the case. Eventually, Daria figures out that Jane, Brittany, Mr. DeMartino, and Mack are all guilty. When she wakes up the next morning, she goes to school and tells Jane about her dream. Later, in history class, Kevin makes the mistake of goofing off on one of DeMartino's bad days and Mr. D goes straight for his throat. Sometimes dreams DO come true. "It can happen to you."


The F Word

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
After attending a teacher's convention, O'Neill gets a hair-brained idea to have the students fail at something to prove that failure isn't the end of the world. Brittany decides to fail at being unpopular and Kevin choses being bad at sports. Unfortunatly, they end up succeeding instead, causing Brittany to lose her spot on the cheerleading squad and Kevin to be kicked off the football team. Jane, in an attempt to fail at being conventional, inadvertantly ALSO succeeds and is asked by the rest of the cheerleaders to try out for the squad. Daria tries to get Quinn grounded and fails, but much to her dismay, her parents instead force her to accompany Quinn to the Fashion Extravaganza at the mall. The whole assignment causes grief and misery throughout the entire class, making O'Neill feel like a failure. Daria and Jane go to O'Neill's "bachelor pad" to talk some sense into him, and in doing so Daria also manages to talk O'Neill into doing her a favor...going with Quinn to the mall in her place.


I Loathe A Parade

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
When Daria is sent to the store by Jake on an emergency errand, she gets stuck in Lawndale High's homecoming parade. She's in a hurry to get home, but she runs into Tad Guptey, a seven-year-old boy that she babysat for once. He's lost his parents and asks Daria for help. Her conscience gets the better of her, and she agrees, leading him through the crowd. While searching for the Gupteys, she runs into Tom who is looking for Jane, and he joins her in their search. Daria tries hard not to be nice to Tom, but as time progresses, she actually starts having fun. When they lose Tad, the two panic and frantically start calling for him. He arrives moments later, safe and sound, with his parents and sister Tricia. Jane finds Tom and Daria together and the three are prepairing to leave to get some pizza, when Daria is splattered with paint by students having a paint fight. Tom is concerned and suggests they could stop by her house so she could change, but she declines and bails out on their pizza date. As Jane and Tom are walking away together, Tom looks back at Daria, who is standing there pathetically in the middle of the sidewalk, covered in paint.


Of Human Bonding

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Jake is flying to a conference and Helen is supposed to go with him. Unfortunately, Helen gets called in to work and has to cancel. Quinn has invited the entire Fashion Club to the house for a sleepover. Daria, faced with spending an entire weekend with the fashion fiends, decides to attend the conference with her dad in Helen's place. At the conference, they run into Jodie's parents and Jake gets to meet his idol, Terry Barry Barlow, who turns out to be a real jerk and ignores him most of the time. When he finally does take an interest in Jake and Daria, he invites them to go ballooning with him. Jake, who is afraid of flying, isn't so sure but decides he must face his fears. The balloon is accidently released with only Jake inside and Daria watches from the ground as the balloon crashes into a tree. Later, after a trip to the hospital, Jake tells Daria that he finally overcame his fear of heights and offers to spend some quality time with her...at the Museum of Medical Oddities. Ewwww! Meanwhile, back at the Morgendorffer's, Sandi has offered to give Helen a makeover, much to the dismay of Quinn. Helen, in a round-about way, asks the girls what she should do about her flat relationship. It's obvious there's some problems in the marriage. Quinn and Sandi have a fight (but what else is new?) and each has a dream that the other one has cut off all her hair as she slept. The next morning the girls wake up looking tired and disheveled, after an obviously restless night.


Psycho Therapy

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
The Morgendorffers go to a weekend retreat provided for by Helen's law firm. It's one of those "spa for the soul" kinda places where they try to get you to express your true feelings and all that touchy-feely crap. Helen and Jake end up fighting pretty bad in an ill-fated role-playing session. Helen makes fun of Jake for being so clueless and blaming his father for everything, while Jake teases Helen about how she works all the time and just pretends to care about the family. This revelation hits Helen pretty hard, and she gets really upset. Daria ends up talking to Helen and helps her to feel better about the whole thing (and Helen reveals that she has a very deep respect for Daria that she doesn't have for Quinn). During all of this, Daria is keeping tabs on what Jane's up to by means of "Jane Cam," a website Jane set up so that everyone can view her every move, 24 hours a day. There are several really funny scenes involving Jane Cam, helping to balance out the seriousness of the rest of the episode.


Mart Of Darkness

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Jane and Tom have a fight, and Jane is forced to go to Payday, the new warehouse store, with Daria to get "art supplies." Quinn, the Fashion Club, Kevin, Brittany, and others are all attending a barbecue at Kevin's house. Kevin and Brittany are sent to the same store to get barbecue sauce while Mr. O'Neill stays behind and tries to talk to Mr. Thompson about Kevin's acedemic performance. The Fashion Club all end up at the store as well because Quinn forgot to buy sunscreen. Mr. DeMartino is also there, and goes completely nuts when the food sample stations open. He ends up fighting with Mrs. Johannson over the free cheese logs. Tom, Trent and Jesse go together to the store to help find Jane (and to buy a few things). While Jane and Daria are looking for the art supplies, they run into (or rather chase down) a sales girl, who turns out to be Andrea. In the end, we find out that Jane's "art supplies" are actually gummy bears that she was going to melt down and use on a sculpture. Tom had accidently eaten them all, and that's why they had that big fight at the beginning. Finally, Jane and Daria find what they need and are about to leave, when the electricity goes out and they're all stuck in the store, in the dark.


Legends Of The Mall

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Quinn and the FC are stranded without a ride and are forced to walk home at night. Jake was supposed to pick them up, but the car won't start, so he resorts to catching a ride with Trent. Jane and Daria tag along. The Fashion Club ends up walking through an old, scary neighborhood. Stacy tells them all a ghost story about "The Rattling Girl Of Lawndale," who was the most popular girl at Lawndale until she lost too much weight. When she danced, her bones rattled, and everyone laughed at her, but she wasn't finished. She haunted all the popular girls so that they couldn't sleep, and they all became unpopular. Then, as Trent is driving through the woods, he tells Jake and the girls the story of "Metal Mouth," a metal-shop teacher that went insane when he ground his teeth down to nothing. He made a pair of steel dentures (which unfortunately picked up radio stations) and devoted the rest of his life to hunting down all the idiots of Lawndale High. Finally, Jane tells a story about "The House Of Bad Grades," where a really smart girl was accidently entombed in her family's fallout shelter. The girl, angry that she would never leave Lawndale, haunted every child that lived there since, and made them get bad grades. Then, Jake finds Quinn and they all end up back home. When Helen comes home she says that on her way home, the radio started playing by itself and the car was making a metallic, grinding noise. Then, it shows a shot of the passenger door on her car and there on the doorhandle, is a pair of steel dentures.


Groped By An Angel

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
After a chandolier almost falls on her, Quinn becomes convinced that she has a guardian angel watching over her. She flaunts this fact around Sandi, of course, claiming the angel helped her find a lost earring and other really trivial stuff. Daria gets really sick of hearing about it all. Then, Brittany has a party at her house. Mystik Spiral is performing, and all the popular and unpopular of LHS are there (including Daria and Jane). Quinn accidently spills soda on her new jeans, and while trying to dry them off, she leans on some of the band's sound equipment, causing the volume to be pushed way up. The loud noise breaks a very expensive crystal bullhorn Mr. Taylor had bought for Brittany to celebrate her C- average. Quinn is completely humiliated and is upset that her angel left her. Daria, though she doesn't believe in angels, tells Quinn that she can believe whatever makes her feel good, and that maybe her angel is just focusing on more important things. For once, Daria actually HELPS Quinn, and Helen is very proud of the way she handled the situation.


Fire!

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Jake accidently catches the kitchen on fire and the Morgendorffers are forced to move to a hotel for a few weeks. After learning she has to share a room with Quinn, Daria decides to stay at Jane's instead. With Daria gone, Quinn and her friends are free to hang out by the pool. Bobby, a hotel bellboy, asks Quinn out and keeps giving her and the FC expensive gifts, like updating them to the Presidential Suite. Sandi tries to scare Quinn by convincing her that Bobby is a stalker, and Quinn gets paranoid. In the end, they find out that Bobby was charging everything to Quinn's parents only to break into the computer later and delete the charges. Meanwhile, at Casa Lane, Jane and Tom aren't getting along so well, and having Daria there is making things worse, mainly because Tom spends alot of time talking to Daria. Jane is obviously getting very jealous, and Trent picks up on what's going on. He tells Daria that "guys can always tell when other guys are into someone." He also tells her that she may not mean for any of this to happen, but she shouldn't pretend she doesn't know what's going on. Trent shows that he's not near as oblivious as he appears to be. Daria and Jane eventually have a fight about Tom, in which Daria tells Jane that she has no interest in Tom and Jane reveals how insecure she is about her relationship with Tom. Finally, they make up, but in the end, Daria keeps thinking about what Trent said, about Tom being "into her." It's obvious that she's got alot of mixed feelings about the whole "Tom issue" and she doesn't know what to do.


Dye! Dye! My Darling!

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Episode Summary:
Jane decides to dye her hair to resemble the stripes of a tiger, and she forces Daria to help her. Daria really screws up Jane's hair, and Jane accuses her of doing it on purpose to take Tom away from her. She throws Daria out of her house and doesn't show up at school the next day. Daria tries to call Jane, but she won't answer. Finally, when Daria does talk to Jane, Jane starts asking Daria what's going on between her and Tom. Daria STILL claims that there's nothing going on, she's not interested in him, and she does not want to date him. They make up (more or less) and Daria goes home, only to find Tom parked in front of her house. Daria gets into Tom's car, and he tells her that they need to talk about "their situation." She gets mad and tries to leave, but Tom goes on to explain that he and Jane have just gotten bored with each other and that their problems had nothing to do with Daria. Then, Tom kisses her. She doesn't resist and is angry with herself afterwards, but when Tom kisses her the second time, Daria definitely kisses back. Then, Daria freaks out and runs into the house. The next day at school, Jane runs into Daria in the halls, and Daria blurts out "I kissed your boyfriend." Jane says nothing, then turns and runs off down the hall. She shows up later at Tom's house, and is FURIOUS! She's screaming at him "How could you! How could SHE!" Then, after she calms down, they talk things out, deciding to break up, not because of Daria, but because the relationship wasn't going anywhere. Then, a much calmer Jane ends up at Daria's house. They talk for awhile, and Daria asks if they're still friends. Jane says that they're friends that can't stand the sight of each other. The episode ends with Daria lying on her bed and the phone ringing. She picks up the phone, expecting it to be for Quinn...but it's Tom.


MOVIE:
Is It Fall Yet?

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review

Movie Summary:
It's the end of another year at Lawndale High, and Daria and Jane are still fighting after their big blow-out over Tom. While most of her fellow students are getting summer jobs, Daria gets forced into spending her summer as a counselor at the OK to Cry Corral, a summer camp for sensitive kids. Daria identifies with Link, one of the children at the camp who reminds her a lot of herself. She struggles to reach out to him while also dealing with some resentment towards Tom due to his family's wealth and social status. Jane escapes Lawndale to spend her summer at an artist colony. There, she makes friends with Alison, a fellow artist who turns out to be bisexual and makes the moves on Jane. During her time away, she is finally able to get over her anger towards Daria, and the two eventually make up. Meanwhile, Quinn gets a tutor for the summer. She's reluctant at first, but over time she learns quite a bit and finds herself strangely attracted to her tutor, David. She lets him know how she feels, but he turns her down, and she's heartbroken. Daria has a talk with her about it, and in the process of making Quinn feel better, she comes to a realization about why she's been so distant with Tom.

Movie Script:
A complete script of the Daria movie.
Submitted by Black Mantha.