Monday March 26, 2001
506
When Principal Li fails to honor the raise promised in the teachers' contracts, the teachers go on strike. Substitutes are hired to take their place, including a spaced-out elderly woman to take over for Mr. DeMartino; and a sleazebag for Mr. O'Neill's class who is soon fired for hitting on Tiffany. That substitute's replacement is none other than Daria. Quinn starts to fear that the truth about her sibling relationship to Daria will come out, especially when she keeps having to defend Daria in front of her friends. Daria tries to teach the class Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", and when she assigns a test, Quinn finds that she knows the play well enough to ace it. When Quinn gets a much better grade than the rest of the Fashion Club, Sandi brings up the question of Quinn's relationship to Daria. Quinn finally admits, with no shame, that she and Daria are sisters.
While the strike is going on, the Lane siblings end up helping the teachers--Jane by creating posters, and Trent by writing inspiring lyrics for Mr. O'Neill to sing.
This episode is definitely one of the best episodes of the series. It's full of character development, great dialogue and hilarious situations with almost every major and minor characters appearing. hide show
The Lawndale teachers go on strike and Ms. Li has to find someone to teach the children...sounds like a plotline we've seen before, doesn't it? Even "The Simpsons" had the teacher strike episode in their first couple seasons. However the writers of "Daria" managed to keep this episode fun and original by adding the twist that Daria takes over teaching Quinn's English class. Meanwhile, Trent gets coerced by Mr. O'Neil to help them write a "stirring song" to help band the teachers together to have their demands met by Ms. Li so they could return to work. Part of the fun of this episode is building on the characters that we already know and love by putting them in new situations: Quinn, her fan club and the Fashion club dealing with Daria (aka: Miss Darlene) as their substitute, Kevin constantly being thwarted by an elderly woman, Mr. DeMartino trying desperately to negotiate a new teaching contract with Ms. Li, Trent collaborating on strike songs with Mr. O'Neil, and Jane painting strike posters with Ms. DeFoe. In the end Quinn proudly admits that Daria is her sister and realizes that she's much smarter than she thought she was, Kevin loses the battle with his substitute, Mr. DeMartino manages to get the new contract signed and the strike is over. There's a ton of great dialogue between Daria and her new students, including their discussions on Shakespeare and her enlightening the class on the meaning of "woe" ("It's like the feeling you'd get if the Superbowl were preempted by "Antiques Roadshow.") All in all, another great installment from a great series.
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