As a Millennial, I cherish both King Of The Hill and Beavis And Butt-head. The shows have wholly different comedic sensibilities, but they both notably spawned from the brilliant mind of Mike Judge (the latter co-created by the likewise brilliant Greg Daniels), and they’ve been making me laugh for the vast majority of my life, from the original airings, to reruns, to recent revivals. In regards to the most recent runs of episodes – including Season 14 of King Of The Hill and three new seasons of Beavis And Butt-Head – I’ve been amazed by the remarkable consistency and how everything I’ve loved about the shows has been beautifully recaptured.
And it makes me wonder why the hell we can’t get a new season of Daria to go with them.
To be clear, I am aware that Daria is a show that was made by different creative minds. While the title character was introduced in Beavis And Butt-head, Mike Judge’s commitment to King Of The Hill meant that he couldn’t be a creative contributor to the spinoff and it was made without him. That left the story of television’s most sarcastic teenager in the hands of creators Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn… and they crafted what is one of the greatest coming-of-age shows of all time. The MTV original arguably exists as more a cousin of the two Judge creations than a sibling, but they’ve nonetheless caused me to develop a pop culture itch that is in need of scratching now that a tremendously high level of quality has been executed with the revival approach.
There Has Admittedly Been An Effort To Return To The World Of Daria… But It Disappeared
To be fair, there has been an attempt to bring back Daria, but it took a vastly different direction when it went into development. In 2018, MTV Studios announced work on a new show that would be called Daria & Jodie, with supporting character Jodie Landon promoted to be a co-lead, and it became simply Jodie about one year later – with Tracee Ellis Ross attached to both star and produce as a young adult incarnation of the protagonist.
About three years after that, Jodie morphed into a feature, lining up some great talent including The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper and King Of The Hill’s Pamela Adlon… but it disappeared two years later. MTV Studios announced in 2024 that the movie was not moving forward, and though there was a tease that a search was happening for a new home, nothing came of that effort.
Beyond what’s been reported, I don’t know that happened with Jodie or why the decision was made to pull the plug. But with that effort in the past, I’m hoping that a tabula rasa approach can be taken to bringing back Daria, and I’m particularly hopeful that the show takes a cue from the original show’s Season 2 finale.
The Blueprint For A Daria Revival Exists In Season 2’s “Write Where It Hurts”
I could list many reasons why modern incarnations of both King Of The Hill and Beavis And Butt-head have been so successful, but a prominent quality has been a willingness to evolve the show. In the case of our favorite family from Arlen, Texas, audiences are catching up with the characters about eight years since we last saw them, and when it comes to the two biggest idiots on television, the new seasons deliver stories with them both as modern teens and adults. I very much want to catch up with Daria in the same way, and Season 2’s “Write Where It Hurts” offers an exceptional preview of what a revival series could be.
For those who don’t recall, the episode finds the ennui-brimming Daria Morgendorffer given a challenging assignment by her English teacher to write a short story that includes people she knows. She makes various swings with different genres, from Victorian romance to Shakespearean drama, but after being dissatisfied with that approach she tries something different: she imagines a time in the near future when she is a married adult with a career as a columnist and visits with her parents, who are now retired, and her sister Quinn is also married and raising four children. It’s a wonderful and adept appreciation on the character’s behalf understanding how the relationship between parents and their kids vastly change after the teenage years – and I would blissfully watch multiple seasons of the matured Morgendorffers.
The new season of Beavis And Butt-head is airing now, and King Of The Hill has been renewed for Season 15, and I don’t want to be greedy, but there is probably no show out there right now that I would want to see get a revival more than Daria. Given the fate of Jodie, I’m not sure it’s something that we’ll ever get to see, but I’m nonetheless going to keep my fingers crossed.
