Woah oh my god lol. Pretty much from the jump, I was shocked at how much better this is than season 1, and I was even more shocked at how it maintained the same level of quality and incisiveness throughout every episode. It feels like the writers have a much more in-depth understanding of what each of these characters adds to the show and the significance of their relationships with other characters than they did in season 1, which makes for a really propulsive style with each character’s personality constantly bouncing off another’s in a really interesting and relatable way. More importantly though, this deeper understanding leads to much more frequent and meaningful subversions of these characters’ archetypes that both expose their true natures and let the audience know that the creators are aware of the conceits that they are setting up and they know what they want you to take from them. For example, the final episode “Write Where it Hurts” in which Daria writes a story about the future of her family devoid of the joking sarcasm she uses as a coping method, painting an optimistic future for everyone involved including herself and Quinn, which reveals the complex understanding the show has of how Daria uses her wit in everyday circumstances as well as how she chooses to interact with her loved ones. This is revealing itself to be a very emotionally complicated and Smart show in ways that I didn’t expect, and I’m interested to see how these ideas are furthered in later seasons. It’s very, very funny too obviously.. and it has a rly intimate understanding of some very specific teenage emotions that you don’t see portrayed as carefully as this like,, ever. Would honestly give this season a 5/5 (and I might go back and do so), but I want to leave some wiggle room bc I’m hoping it gets even better than this lmao.