Did anyone else find Jodie SO annoying
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Daria
LadyN1 — 13 years ago(October 22, 2012 10:48 AM)
I know she's meant to be the most well rounded student and the middle ground between the OTT pep and popularity of those like Brittany and Quinn and the cynical realism of Daria and Jane but she just always wound me up.
Literally her character does almost nothing else but promote school activities and/or bringing up how hard it is to be a minority. And yes I understand that in the 90s and society has changed somewhat now in 2012 but ugh I wish she'd been given more to do then play up the token black student angle. And this is coming from a girl who is biracial. I don't know if this will ever happen but if mtv wises up and reboots the show I hope Jodie's character is far more interesting and better developed.
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lowegoes — 13 years ago(October 22, 2012 04:30 PM)
Sometimes I found here a little annoying but I liked how she shared Daria's intelligence but contrasted with her sharply in some ways, which made for an interesting dynamic. I actually think we saw too little of her in S3 and onwards.
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kennerguy66 — 12 years ago(September 02, 2013 09:50 PM)
Jodie and Mack are to Daria as Grizz and Dotcom are to 30 Rock. They're black intellectuals that are marginalized and surrounded by chaotic morons.
Jodie was more developed than Mack obviously, and she was one of the only people who could go toe to toe with Daria. I really liked their characters.
Shaka Da Gnu -
sakura_droplet — 13 years ago(October 23, 2012 01:22 PM)
I know she's meant to be the most well rounded student and the middle ground between the OTT pep and popularity of those like Brittany and Quinn and the cynical realism of Daria and Jane but she just always wound me up.
Yes.
A thousand times yes. I often found a lot of her views and opinions to be rather condescending, despite the fact I'm guessing she was supposed to be (as you say) a 'middle ground' type character.
"Only some of us stay beautiful unless you go and get elastic perjury."Angelica
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AryaHotPie — 12 years ago(November 23, 2013 04:14 AM)
I'm surprised someone made this thread, because I was going to but thought I'd be the only one who felt that Jodie is annoying. Glad to see I'm not! She seems to have all these hangups about how she is perceived due to race, but possesses little insight into other aspects of her behaviour- e.g. sucking up to authority figures, making speeches she doesn't believe in etc. For these reasons I thought it was annoying how she would keep propping herself up as an example to the Black community, for no reason other than being black. Also the way she talks grates on me, lol.
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Caffeine-Free — 13 years ago(October 24, 2012 04:46 PM)
She could be annoying I suppose but I think she was significant. Her storylines regarding race were unique, I thought. It was taken on and expressed in a way that not many shows do, even in the 90s and especially from a female character.
She added a strong element to the show too in that she was one of the only people that could get Daria to realize and admit what a "rigid, unrealistic, self-righteous jerk" she could be as she puts it after Jodie confronts her.
A thorn in her side that Jane never was. Both Daria and Jodie had more similar upbringing, at least with Helen being such a pusher and Jodie's parents being overachievers. Daria could be cynical and reject everything, whereas Jodie couldn't.
I think they brought that together really well in some of the episodes, the two sides of the coin sort of. As Daria always felt so put upon by everything but Jodie did too, but under more pressure to excel and please people. Daria needed to get smacked down sometimes, and Jodie was one of the few to do it. -
notforsale4 — 12 years ago(August 25, 2013 03:11 PM)
What does you being Biracial have to do with it? if anything, that could even alienate you from some of her viewpoints depending on your upbringing. I also don't like the subtle racism that is looming in this thread. It's hilarious to me how people attack characters of colour by assuming they are 'tokens' and such by adding their own thinly veiled racism to the commentary.
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peachie_keen — 12 years ago(August 28, 2013 08:45 PM)
^^^ "Finding racism where there is none" gets me every time.
@ OP, I actually liked Jodie's character, and I wouldn't say she was a token black character because of the fact that she was painfully aware of her being used by her community to paint a diverse backdrop. "Ethnic window dressing."
I dunno, that to me makes her a unique character, albeit underdeveloped due to lack of screen time. -
Jane_Doe01 — 12 years ago(September 05, 2013 12:50 AM)
Black people tend to make the same 'tokenism' observations and it's been a parodied subject in black comedy, so I don't think it's fair to assume there are racist motives behind mentioning it. I will say though that I don't agree in this case. Many TV characters of color have been tokens for sure (and actually I can think a few white tokens from minority shows), but I don't consider Jodie to be. Her character provided a pretty fresh TV perspective on minorities in suburbia. Nothing too groundbreaking, but thoughtful and differentrealistic without the melodramatic preachiness. Mack was probably a more likeable character though.
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Jane_Doe01 — 12 years ago(September 05, 2013 01:01 AM)
And yes I understand that in the 90s and society has changed somewhat now
It was late-90s until 2001, not really the same as just '90s'. Still, I'm not so sure that real life situations have changed so much there, although TV-wise, her character might be likely to date a white guy or two nowadays(maybe they'd have a black girl in the fashion club). -
Absolved — 12 years ago(January 15, 2014 01:02 PM)
I found her annoying, but not for the reasons mentioned her. Her being such a an overachieving goody-goody (with a near Pollyanna persona), and simultaneously angry about having to be that way, was off-putting to me. When she went off about having to be "Queen of the negroes" and the "perfect" role model for other black kids at school, I couldn't help but think that she had an annoyingly exaggerated opinion of herself. And her inability to stand up to her horribly pretentious parents and their OTT expectations made her a coward IMO.
That being said, you have to give her some credit for being the only one who could go shoulder to shoulder in confrontations with Daria, and accurately call her out when she needed it. -
trixie-k-88 — 12 years ago(February 17, 2014 08:59 PM)
The funny thing about her character is that I think they were trying to poke fun at casual racism or the "token black kid thing" whenall they were doing was reinforcing it. If anything they exacerbated it because Jodie's personality is often based on her race. I don't think there are any episodes where she has a significant part where she isn't talking about being black. I mean if you wanted to ACTUALLY integrate a cast of charactersit would help if you didn't constantly have them pointing out like "LOOK I'M BLACK! You didn't forget did you? Because it's annoying being the only black kid. AND I AM BLACK!"
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Illyngophobia — 10 years ago(October 06, 2015 01:52 PM)
I didn't find her annoying, but I am disappointed that she didn't have a lot of episodes where she had some form of a plotlinelet alone one or two where it's focused on her.
I would have loved to see a few about how she's tired of trying to live up to her parents' standards of perfection or add development with her relationship to Mack; sort of like what they did with Kevin and Brittany, where they had quite a bit of centered episodes and had their own episodes (like A Tree Grows in Lawndale if that counts).
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Orson Welles -
MovieGem — 10 years ago(October 08, 2015 09:34 AM)
BUT, I did like Jodie for the most part, b/c she was the neutral character. I actually liked that she brought up racial issues instead of being passive or overlooking things.Her parents were pretty extreme though lol. I liked Mack, he should have had more scenes.
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sweetprincessplacebo — 10 years ago(November 04, 2015 06:18 PM)
I loved Jodie, and she represented the life of many Black kids in an all white place. I definitely felt the same way she did, and it was crazy at the time I was a kid to hear EXACTLY what I felt. As far as her complaining they ALL complained, Daria complained about how everyone was stupid, Jodie made observations about being the only Black person and having friends to who lacked the empathy to even consider what they said to her. Considering how annoyed all of you were with her, can you wonder why all the real Jodies didn't like being the only Black person.
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