Ms Li pulled strings to get Kevin good enough grades to pass and stay on the football team....until the very end of his senior year, when if he graduates, she'll, er, the *school* will lose its star athlete and winning record. Suddenly, Kevin's grades drop so much that he has to repeat his senior year. Anyone want to bet his grades rapidly come back up enough for him to regain his eligibility?
Keeping Kevin at all costs is totally justified. The last time he stopped playing the whole town was labelled "a loser town" and a full blown collapse of property values ensued!
The Morgendorffers are originally from Texas, as Beavis And Butthead was based there. It is very easy to imagine Daria being tormented there and developing her anti-social personality which she brought to Lawndale, even though everyone there pretty much lets her do her thing.
Tiffany turns up to the mother/daughter fashion show having asked for the prettiest model from a modelling agency. They send a very tall and thin black model - to play her mother. This is an unvoiced, unofficial cameo by Naomi Campbell.
Little Sister, the song Trent wrote for Jane's birthday, shows their shared disdain for mainstream society in Trent's typical unsubtle way, but the repeated 'does anybody know why we're here' line, clumsy as it is, doesn't sound like something Trent would say. It sounds more like... ohhh.
Quinn's behavior towards boys is a misunderstanding of her parents' relationship. She sees her mother walking all over her father and interprets this as the man is used by the woman for what he can give her i.e. money, stuff, etc. The misunderstanding is that she doesn't see the other layers of Jake and Helen's relationship, wherein they are ideologically aligned, comforting and nurturing of each other, and obviously enjoy their physical relationship. In her time with David the tutor, she finally encounters a male of her age bracket that isn't immediately seduced by her looks and from then on begins to look for deeper relationships with boys i.e. looking for a real boyfriend instead of just eye candy who buys her stuff.
The episode "Boxing Daria" shows a younger Quinn desperately trying to get her parents attention while they are worrying over Daria's unwillingness to be friendly with others. That may reveal another strong reason why Quinn neglects her education in favor of popularity: competing with Daria academically is futile because Daria would likely always overshadow her in grades and academic achievements, but popularity is the one thing Quinn can do better than Daria.
While likely an accident, Daria's washed and paler color palette in "The Misery Chick" suits her dilemma of being actively sought out or shunned by almost everyone over her presumed morbid mindset.
As nonsensical as "Depth Takes a Holiday" was, it's not the first time something that strange happened in this universe: Beavis and Butthead themselves have met with a spirit of Christmas in their own show's "It's a Miserable Life" (in fact, Daria herself cameo'd as being happier in life and even having a boyfriend).
In "Fizz Ed", Principal Li is shown to rank low in the ranking of not only principals but even Asian educators. But considering her disastrous policies and self-centered behavior, it is no wonder that even the educational establishment doesn't think much of her. In that episode alone, she turned her school into a cash cow for a soda company, bribed students into drinking more to the point it got them sick, and even was hospitalized when the stress of meeting the sales quota drove her mad.
Kevin actually buying the car instead of simply learning the process is itself an Epic Fail... but it also actually further reinforces Diane's point about why this assignment was a group assignment: Kevin went to the dealer's without Mac to put a down payment on the car. Even single people are often advised to, when making major purchases or taking out loans, talk to someone they can trust who is not associated with the institution at all: because many of them actually do want to make money. In fact? Some high school Econ teachers have actually copied this assignment.
"Write where it hurts" depicts some brilliance in other ways - Daria's WIPs that depict her family are far more complete than when she is writing other characters. Why is that? She knows them the most.
It's also one of the reasons why her "Successful" story is the idealised future. In every other story, she put the characters in a fantastical situation... and of course, would have trouble thinking of what they would do in such a thing without making them act incredibly out of character.
Some other brilliance from O'neil as well: He may be somewhat of a well meaning but out of touch teacher, but he actually does have a point: Sometimes limitations can bring about creativity. And this is something that has been proven true. The fact that he told Daria to use people she knows as character is both good advice: He told her to Write Who You Know, and that itself is also somewhat of a challenge.
Mr. DeMartino is shown to be quite good with late elementary-middle school age kids. So why doesn't he work with them? Rule of Funny? Well... look at his appearance. He'd be quite intimidating. This is a challenge men face in education: Looking and sounding intimidating, even if one doesn't mean it.
From The Daria Database: Quinn's Baby-sitting Spreadsheet makes note of Todd Green, age 8, who pestered Quinn to play games until she tricked him into Hide and Seek so she could watch a movie. Ha ha, typical Quinn right? Until you realize this neglected child, whom according to Quinn "walks funny and has a really round head" might actually be disabled.
Brittany's little brother is a Chronic Pet Killer, considering the fact that he is apparently the reason they don't name their pets anymore. In which case, what got him like that in the first place?
Living in The '90s. A lot of psychopaths went undiagnosed and untreated.
The help Lawndale High offers to troubled students are thinly-veiled attempts to enforce conformity, single out the outcasts, and force-feed them school spirit. It serves more to the staff's interests than the students'. But there probably are students in the school who really need help but are getting ignored because they don't fit the staff's ideas of how a depressed teen would look and act.
While it's Played for Laughs in "Just Add Water", "Antisocial Climbers", and "Daria Hunters", just how long were Kevin, Brittany, and Sandi left behind? In the days before Cell Phones (and in the case of Antisocial Climbers, in a place like a mountain that likely has poor cell phone reception) this would be horrifying.
In Is It Fall Yet?, the source of Link’s issues stems from his stepfather. But the subtext seems to imply that not only is he dealing with him, his mother may be neglecting him.
