I am soothed, finally: Daria finally out on DVD.

Here it is. The whole thing. From "Sealed With A Kick" to "Is It College Yet?"

It's a beautiful package, all things considered. Including the omitted songs and the fact that "Is It Fall Yet?" is still the shortened version and not the original version that aired. In the latter case, I wouldn't be surprised if the only version of the TV movie that MTV had still hung onto was the short version. In the case of the DVD of the original Spumco Ren & Stimpy episodes (Season 1 plus the first half of Season 2) Paramount Home Video actually had to use archival material kept by John Kricfalusi to get the best possible release. MTV Networks is notorious for these sort of things.

One other nit to pick: they didn't release all the goodies in the vault. There was a 30 minute "the making of" special, plus Garbage premiered a video during the initial "Is It College Yet?" airing, "Breaking Up The Girl." Later, Garbage released a "movie clips" version of the video...I've got it for you right here:



Thing was, there was a whole animated intro for the song that only aired once. I remember that they did an "anything can happen in a cartoon" gag where the band's animated counterparts took off into the air. Of course, that all could be buried in a filing cabinet in a locked room at 1515 Broadway, with a sign reading "Beware of the Leopard" on the door.

At least the "Freakin' Friends" Mystik Spiral video is included...plus a .PDF of a spec script for a Mystik Spiral spinoff series that never made it even to the animatic stage.

Again, all this is nits picked by an unashamed Daria fangirl. I'm delighted it's finally out, I'm doubly delighted it's out at a more-than-fair price: it's "streeting" for less than $50. Well done.