There are very few original programmes on MTV that I can be encouraged to watch, and even fewer that actually reward the effort; to be precise, apart from "House of Style" - the Crawford Years, of course - the only one is "Daria." (Sorry fans of "The Osbournes," but reality TV is not my thing.)
Basically a feature-length final episode of the show, "Is It College Yet?" follows the ever-introspective Miss Morgendorffer and her friends and enemies as graduation and college near. Having not managed to see the show for a while thanks to MTV UK's idiotic scheduling (although bless Channel 5 for showing it terrestrially), it was a surprise to see that Daria had actually managed to get herself a boyfriend (and yet Quinn hadn't? Oh well).
In this opus things come to a head between her and Tom while she's pitching to go to Raft as opposed to the "better" Bramwell; Quinn gets a summer job at a restaurant and launches a drinking problem that plays a bit too much like a bad After School Special for comfort; Jane is unsure about going to college and pursuing her dreams as an artist; Jody doesn't want to go to a place where she'll be seen as the token black; and one of the characters (not Quinn) turns out to not be moving on from school, a subplot which really would have benefitted from a bit more depth... as opposed to the thread dealing with the lovelife of Mr. O'Neill, which would have benefitted from not being there at all.
The movie is a bit of a stretch in a 90-minute slot, and there are some elements (like Sandy losing her voice and the aforementioned O'Neill problem) that practically scream "padding," but Daria, Jane, Trent and the rest are as sparky as ever, and the movie does manage to wrap up the series in a fairly satisfactory fashion. "Is It College Yet?" isn't the show at its best, but it was always a gem in MTV's lineup, and the departure of "Daria" means more room for "Celebrity Deathmatch," "The Real World," "Videoclash," "Essential Insert-Name-Of-Rubbish-Pop-Star-Here"...
"Daria" 1997-2002. A "My So-Called Life" in a world of "Saved by the Bell"s.
