from the Philadelphia Daily News 2/15/99 http://www.phillynews.com
Ellen Gray / Daily News TV critic
You could say these are good times for teen-age girls on TV.
"Sabrina the Teenage Witch," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Moesha," "Felicity" and those practically grown twins on "Sister, Sister" all have their own shows.
Unlike Marcia Brady, they're not being forced to share the spotlight with cute big brothers. Nor are boyfriends the only focus of their lives (although the premise of the WB's "Felicity" - that a girl would choose a college on the basis of a high school crush - makes "The Brady Bunch" look like a documentary).
But if there's a unifying theme in all these shows, it seems to be that extremely attractive girls have problems, too, even if those problems are just learning to deal with super powers in a world full of ordinary mortals.
But what if your high school experience didn't actually include witchcraft, or a quest to rid the world of vampires, or flawless skin, achieved without benefit of Clearasil?
What if you - or your daughter or most of the teen-age girls you know - had more in common with misfit Angela Chase of "My So-Called Life"?
For you, and them, there's MTV's "Daria."
I love Buffy, too, but the most realistic teen-age girl on television is a cartoon character, and her name is Daria Morgendorffer.
Smart, sarcastic, funny (and surrounded by idiots), Daria stars in the show "The Simpsons" might have become if Lisa, not Bart, had become the breakout character. If the major networks made passes at - or gave production deals to - girls who wear glasses. If the people who made television shows saw adolescents as something other than a marketing opportunity.
If you're home for Presidents Day and haven't yet met Daria and her best friend, Jane, and her absurdly cute and popular sister, Quinn, and her yuppie parents, Helen and Jake, MTV has a "Daria Day" marathon starting at 10 a.m. today that features highlights of the past two seasons and leads up to Wednesday's third season premiere, "Daria! (The Musical)."
I don't know why "Daria" needed a musical episode. Maybe it's an MTV requirement, some token effort to keep the copyright to the title Music Television from lapsing.
With the exception of a duet by Helen and Quinn on the subject of obsessive behavior, there's not much to sing about in Wednesday's show. The town is threatened by a hurricane and Daria and the equally disaffected Jane are trapped on the high school roof with the high school quarterback and his cheerleader girlfriend.
Daria may rhyme with aria, but an opera singer she's not. Her best lines are spoken, as when she attempts to save herself from the big storm because "I want to see what this place looks like after it's obliterated."
"You know," replies Jane, "being a post-apocalyptic town is gonna be cool. Other towns will be scared of us."
"I'm sure they already are," says Daria drily.
She may have more in common with Buffy than I thought.