Or You Could Just Hug a Very Old Cat

Quinn's looking very...mature...for Old Maid's Day, and I'm sure she'll wake up from this nightmare any minute now. It's also National Hug Your Cat Day, so if Daria ever achieved that lofty goal of turning "into an old woman alone in a one room apartment filled with thirty year old newspapers and cats," then today's the perfect day for her.

This is also the anniversary of "Aunt Nauseam," which first aired on this day in 2001. We learned a lot about the Barksdale sibling dynamic in that one, specifically what not to do. Still, it brought Daria and Quinn closer together, and is it possible that that was the aunts' plan all along? No, it really isn't.

Anyway, it's time for the moment you've all been waiting for (all two of you), the fourth segment of the "Great Mysteries of Daria" series. This time I'm discussing the fantasy (or are they?) episodes--"Depth Takes a Holiday" being the most notable example. Debate has raged, or at least simmered, in the past over whether that episode is canon, a dream, a hallucination, or who knows what else. It seems unlikely to be based in reality, but we never see anything that specifically indicates otherwise in the episode. The fact that it never gets mentioned again doesn't really matter; few of the episodes really impact later events anyway. And honestly, if you'd gone through a wormhole behind the Good Time Chinese Restaurant dumpster, you'd probably keep quiet about it, too.

The same thing goes for the musical episode, "Daria!" Did the events of the episode take place, singing and all? Or was it a fantasy episode of some kind? It would almost have to be, because I can't imagine Daria willingly singing in public under any circumstances. (Okay, embarrassing her family at Pizza Forest being a rare exception.)

Obviously most of "Legends of the Mall" was fantasy, because each sequence was framed by a character telling it as a story. Still, you can't forget those metal dentures on Helen's car at the very end. So if Metal Mouth is real, then what about the rest of the episode? Is there really a Rattling Girl of Lawndale? Is there a girl buried inside a bomb shelter somewhere in Lawndale? And was that red-haired woman actually Upchuck's mother? We'll never know.