"Are you taking some kind of experimental depression medicine?"This was Quinn's question to Daria in "Depth Takes a Holiday." Sort of makes you wonder. What if Daria had been taking an experimental antidepressant, and she began to hallucinate and have delusions as a result? No one but her sees or can interact with the Holidays, but Jane and Trent play along, and Quinn decides the whole family is going to hell in a handbasket. (Jake and Helen have gotten frisky without the help of a love Taser.) This would be an interesting AU... or perhaps a good explanation for what really happened, as Jane chases Daria all over town to keep her safe during her brief psychosis while Quinn tries to get her parents to stop snogging and get Daria to a hospital.
Makes more sense than a wormhole behind a Chinese restaurant.
Less fun, though. Maybe the wormhole wasn't so bad after all. You decide.
3 comments:
Why, it's a good idea, although I cannot see Daria agreeing to take antidepressants, at least at that moment in the series. Maybe there was some kind of mistake, for example, Daria getting an experimental antidepressant instead of something else, experimental but not psychoactive...
I agree she would not take them voluntarily. As she (and Jane) see it, she's not depressed, just realistic. (I want to write about that connection later, good point.) Still, it is an intriguing idea.
I wonder if an antipsychotic or just a psychotic break would be the culprit. Even more than of Darlene, Daria reminds me of my friend in high school who hallucinated on and off antipsychotics and experimented with the same 'recreational' drugs as me with mixed results. For example, some illegal drugs helped her greatly (and Jake may even have acquired these for PTSD and left some around) while her reaction to a common legal hallucinogen (not to minimize its effects on others) was more intense at lower doses and looked worse from the outside. While Daria's strictly canon indulgences do not overtly include illegal drug experimentation, neither do just about anyone else's, which is pretty unrealistic for a typical HS ina boring mid atlantic 'burb and make me tend to think MTV, advertisers or ssomeone else put limits on illegal drug content that tthe writers mostly didn't want to write within. My grade school teachers in a similar environ treated us all like future drug heads of the nearby town's HS (save their genius preemptive interventions). While Trent has a licit explanation for t the smell in the van, it's hard to believe he knows no drug uusers and it could have easily included aany smoked or spilled drug that he didn't want to disclose to Jake given his and Jane's ages. Having Jake ask (instead of "the coolest high schooler" or an adult near Trent s age) felt to me like a device for plausibly hiding and thereby explaining the likelihood that a neglected slacker guitarist his age uses any number of ddrugs without strictly following FDA recommendations. In any case, since Daria could easily hallucinate a combative Quinn and indulgent Jane and Trent wwithout their knowledge, the idea that they actually had these reactions is fun but not strictly necessary. I aalso struggle to figure how Quinn is trying to be helpful unless her scenes are rewritten - without Daria being present for much of her interaction with the 'rents, a significant amount of her imagination or hallucination is required to explain ttheir scenes anyway, right? An AU could even have Quinn say another kind of drug and Daria hear "antidepressant" in her hallucinating state because the Quinn of her prior life experiences would not shy from agreeing with authorities' assumptions about her. If memory serves, too, H&J may be frequently absent and absentminded respectively but respond quickly to Daria's health crises (real or constructed by school authorities) in other episodes? It's an interesting interpretation to pursue, though!
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