HEAVY SPOILERS, for those who have not reached season three and beyond)
In the fourth season of Daria, Jane and Tom are together as a very awkward couple, but understand each other in a way I can’t even explain. Jane starts to become highly paranoid and fragile after her and Tom have been dating for awhile. Tom quickly (and almost purposely) finds a kinship with Daria over books and Daria starts to have a crush on Tom as they grow closer, even though she hated him early on. The tension between Jane and Tom overlaps in a quiet, cringeworthy way with the tension between Daria and Jane. We see the friends not having each others backs as much because Jane forgot rule #1 of dating when you have a close best friend: don’t leave your friends behind. Daria also forgot the #1 rule of their best friend dating someone: don’t fall for your best friend’s mate.
Glenn Eichler, the creator of Daria, shares in an interview with Kara Wild in 2006 two reasons why he wanted the storyline for Tom, Jane and Daria to happen:
“We had him start life as Jane’s boyfriend for two reasons. First, Daria is not the type of person a high school boy would ask out after first meeting her–she’s too formidable. In order for a boy to be attracted to someone as sarcastic and aloof as Daria, and vice versa, the two of them would have to grow on each other–in other words, he would need to spend a fair amount of time in her company BEFORE they started dating. So if he were going out with Jane, that would put them in close, frequent proximity.
The second reason he began as Jane’s boyfriend was that I thought the situation would allow us to explore and test Daria and Jane’s friendship. That may have backfired, because a percentage of the viewers thought that Jane would never have forgiven Daria in real life. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it’s not. They’re fictional characters. George Harrison forgave Eric Clapton, right?”
For “close proximity” reasons, Daria hates her fellow students, but she isn’t immune to meeting someone outside her student population. There are a couple of examples of this scattered throughout the season. She goes to Mystic Spiral concerts–who’s to say she won’t meet a nice alternative guy there like Trent? Or better yet, Trent himself. When they were at the Homecoming Dance in the episode “Daria’s Dance Party,” she and Jane met some nice guys (they turned out to be Upchucks cousins but still…). When she was on yearbook she made friends with Ted and had a slight crush on him. If you don’t think Daria could meet someone, please think again. Daria seemed like the type of girl who would wait until someone presented themselves to her, this much is true, but, forcing the character into a relationship with her best friend’s boyfriend because of “close proximity” doesn’t make much sense.
“We tried to make him sympathetic, but again, perhaps the ‘betrayal’ of Jane was too much for the majority of viewers. You know, sometimes a person as impulsive as Jane gets into a relationship that’s not right, and it ends. That doesn’t make Tom a monster. You have to consider that Tom and Jane would have broken up even if Daria hadn’t been in the picture–they just weren’t right for each other. And Jane wants to date a lot of guys at art college!”
Tom becomes a monster for the reason I stated before. He has a severe lack of remorse for the situation and understanding that a genuine friendship hangs in the jeopardy over him. He states in a later episode, “We should have just broken up and I never should have dragged Daria into this.” Yeah! You think?! Even with him saying that, his actions after the entire talk with Jane still gets him what he wants. He broke up with Jane then immediately goes to Jane’s best friend to start something fresh and new with her instead of letting time pass. By the time we get to the fifth season, Jane is left sitting across the pizza table in Daria’s place, but now she sits as the third wheel to Daria and Tom. During the fifth season, everything became a little rougher, but rounded itself out in the end. Daria was openly showing her dislike for the relationship with Tom. Thankfully, she had enough common sense to be aware of the signs and not focus so much on just having a boyfriend. She didn’t know much about Tom, everything about his family was starting to rub her the wrong way, we were introduced to the cringe worthy sex episode and it seemed like the both of them were destined to end up in the same place that Tom and Jane ended up before. They broke up by the end of the season, leaving Daria and Jane to fully get their friendship back on track. However great that was, the show was still over. But having Jane and Daria back, even for a brief second, while Trent sang they’ll always be “Freakin’ Friends” really put the mind at ease.
Daria’s love triangle arc was a lesson to me as a person who wants to write for a living: how to treat your characters properly in relationships. Sure, your characters are going to have some seriously bad relationships. They’ll even break up friendships because of them, but when you completely go out of your norm without ANY hint of changes coming for the characters, it becomes a problem. Daria and Jane’s friendship, thankfully, lasted past this drama, but knowing that it could have fallen apart in the first place is a sad reality. Sure, they may just be cartoon characters, but the relationships that we form with them, watch them go through troubles, affect us in some ways as well. Daria and Jane deserved so much more than Tom. We deserved better than Tom. I’d like to think in the future Jane settled down with some nice partner that peaked her interest for a very long time and Daria finally found someone who she can feel matches her intellectually and makes her feel comfortable and supports her. One can only dream.
