Disasters the result from Jake's cooking have become a fanfic trope in the Daria community. Granted, there is canon justification for some of them, "Helen, my tongue is turning black!"
But in other cases, the Morgendorffers are shown eating his cooking without ill effects for distress (Helen stressing out and dumping the Penne a la Pesto on Jake's head really wasn't a result of his cooking). If nothing else, the family got a welcome break from the lasagna and unidentified vegetables that Helen always served.
Jake may have had a few disasters, but at least he showed a willingness to try something new. Something Helen never did.
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It bugs me (no pun intended) that Jake was depicted as so incompetent at everything. In one of the interviews with Mr. Eichler, it was mentioned that Jake was not a good businessman. I can live with that. But having him be a total klutz while trying to learn to cook kinda rankled because, yeah, he was willing to try new things. Perhaps Daria looked up to him for that, knowing that 99% of everything he tried failed but he still kept trying because he loved his family and wanted to do more for them. He just had no common sense about it.
After a while, I started thinking that Jake was a master of obfuscating stupidity: the art of looking dumb so nobody will expect anything from you.
There is some evidence to support that theory. Perhaps he felt looking stupid was better than looking evil, and he would look evil if he put his foot down for anything.
It makes sense if you consider that Jake's primary motivation behind everything he did or didn't do was: be different from his father.
Jake's dad strikes me as one of those assertive, aggressively over-competent types.
One could also argue, that Jake wanted to make sure he didn't take out his emotional problems on his family, which could have been very easy to do. He was able to be a good father when it counted.
Also, the argument can be made that the show was a biased perspective of life from Daria's point of view and that everyone wasn't as stupid and self obsessed as they were depicted, I reference that Quinn idea Kara had a long time ago.
After a while, I started thinking that Jake was a master of obfuscating stupidity: the art of looking dumb so nobody will expect anything from you.
That's pretty much exactly what Daria said in "Psycho Therapy", that Jake's cluelessness was an act to cover his own fear of inadequacy.
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