Jane joins the track team, leaving Daria so alone that she begins talking to herself. Helen bribes Quinn to hang out with Daria, worried that she's spending so much time alone.
This episode provides examples of:
- Derailing Love Interests: Arguably Evan, near the end.
- Downer Ending: Jane took advantage of a corrupt system that she ultimately quit but failed to change, for fear of ostracism that she's stuck with anyway. And she and Daria (who didn't exactly cover herself with glory either) have a lot of cheerleading training to catch up on.
Jane: Come on, stop trying to paint a rosy picture.
- Dude, Not Funny!: When Daria makes a fart joke at Jane's expense in front of Evan, Jane is mortified and storms off.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Evan is a sports elitist that takes advantage of his privileges but he, unlike the Fashion Club, holds a more egalitarian view of girls in athletics.
- Helen voices her approval for Daria refusing to go along with Ms. Morris's attempts to sneak cheer practice into regular gym, even if she doesn't approve of Daria not participating in class.
- Face Plant: Brittany, whenever she does a split.
- Fashion Hurts: Quinn tortures herself wearing these tight heels throughout the whole episode because "they make her legs look hot".
- Hypocrite: Daria is fine taking advantage of the "spillover perks" of Jane being a jock, until she takes a freebie on a test that Daria doesn't agree with. She is, thankfully, called on it by Jane herself.
- Insistent Terminology:
- That's not cheerleading the girls are practising in gym class, it's agility.
- Jane appreciates Evan.
- Irony:
- Jane joins the track team to prove she isn't a deadbeat, and winds up using her place to take a bye on a test. The irony does not escape her.
- Earlier, we learn that Kevin has gotten a bye on an ethics test.
- Leg Focus: The effect Quinn meant to go for in wearing those painful shoes, she then takes them off realizing her legs look good already.
- Metaphorgotten: They can have Jane's squat-thrusts when they pry them from her cold, dead hands.
Daria: What?
Jane: I don't know.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: The Fashion Club openly sneer at girls signing up for athletics and at girl athletes invoking this trope, Evan remarks that they are quite old-fashioned for girls born in The '80s.
- Noodle Incident: Miss Morris is directly implied to be the reason Penny Lane's spent several years backpacking in third world countries.
Miss Morris: I taught her a thing or two about the American competitive spirit.
Jane: You sure did. That's why she's spent the last ten years out of the country.
- Thinking Out Loud: Without Jane as a sounding board, Daria begins to do this a lot. She's clearly not aware of it, anyway, as she voices thoughts that she wouldn't want those around her to hear.
- This Is the Part Where...: "you say, 'Hey, way to go, congratulations!'"
- Where Did We Go Wrong?: What Helen was thinking after she made a feminist inspired speech praising Daria for her principles and then Quinn shows up wearing painful shoes that accentuate her legs.
