Mike's Delayed Reaction Review-#207 (2-20), "The New Kid"

Mike's Delayed Reaction Review-#207 (2-20), "The New Kid"

MDRR #207 (2-20)

A Question of Ethics - A lot of unethical things happened in this episode and most of them involved the yearbook. Mr. DiMartino really shouldn't have taken pages away from sports and clubs- he should have added more pages and upped the price. By the same token, Miss Barch shouldn't have kicked his ass to get the pages back. Ted's parents had no real business telling Jake and Helen how to raise their daughter and Daria had no right to give Ted gum (he did take it, though- who is at fault there?).

Defender of the Sword (nothing to do with virtual reality) - Ted may have been quirky but his 'involvement' with Daria caused her to act very defensively. At first, this behavior may have been justified to get Jake, Helen and Quinn off her back but they must have been worse than we were led to believe. This is evidenced by Daria reaction to Jane saying "oh, brother" (Daria said either "he's not a brother" or "there is no cult" as a response). The stress seems to have gotten to her brain....

Alvin, Simon, Ted (as in Theodore) - Ted ran the gamut of modes and activity. First he was curious and talkative, then he showed joyous excitement over getting a piece of gum, then he called Daria shallow (a supreme insult in itself) and said that she would get along with Quinn and finally he became 'almost interesting' after going to the arcade (I wonder how his parents took that one). He seemed to go with the flow in his own innocent sort of way and took the hits as they came.

Picture Perfect - Major continuity plus points to the writer of this episode for remembering that Daria has an interest or talent or both for photography as seen at least once on her Beavis and Butthead days. They even showed her carrying her camera around- some things don't change. (Note: I was running out of opinions, good or bad, about specific parts of this episode and needed this section to fill it out, so to speak).

I did laugh out loud a couple of times, but I can't say that I enjoyed this episode, it was too weird for me. Ted probably won't be back (except maybe in the background), but I can't say I'll miss him. As some people have pointed out - Daria is not doing anything to come out on top in 2nd season episodes like she did in earlier ones. The New Kid is probably the best example of that phenomenon - she doesn't get the yearbook pages, Ted won't even talk to her anymore, she didn't get to exchange the software and she didn't try anything that could have swayed thing in her direction (all she did was beat up Quinn and she probably does that a lot anyway). To top it all off the virtual reality scenes were virtual crap. The episode made me want to 'hit' something too - the cannel changer.

Grade: C