Legends of the Mall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Legends of the Mall”
Daria episode
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 49 (410)
Written by	Peter Elwell
Directed by	Patrick Smith
Original airdate	July 12, 2000
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"Mart of Darkness"	"Groped by an Angel"

Legends of the Mall is the tenth episode of the fourth season of Daria.

1 Plot Summary

[edit] Plot Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] The Rattling Girl of Lawndale

Quinn and the Fashion Club get held up at the mall and Jake can't go to pick them up since his car won't start. So they're forced to take the bus. But they're forced to get off in a rather run-down neighborhood of Lawndale after the bus reaches the end of the line. Freaked out by a rattling noise, Stacy thinks that it is the Rattling Girl of Lawndale. Quinn is unfamiliar with the story and asks Stacy to tell it.

Sometime during the 1960s, there was this really popular girl at Lawndale High. One day, someone called her "almost perfect", and so she looked over every inch of her body to find out what was "almost perfect" about her and discovered that her eyelids were fat. She then cut her diet in half and lost enough weight in time for the school dance, becoming perfect. Unfortunately, she lost so much weight that people could hear her bones rattle as she moved and was humiliated at the dance. She swore revenge on the popular girls of Lawndale High. At night, she would wait for them to fall asleep, break into their rooms, and try to eat their eyelids. This scared them so much that they were afraid to close their eyes and soon they became red and bloodshot. And one by one every popular girl became unpopular.

Sandi mocks the idea of eyelid-eating monsters, until the girls hear the rattling sound again and run off screaming, not knowing it was mearly a dog running a stick on a fence.

[edit] Metalmouth

Jake decides to ask Trent if he could drive him over to mall to pick up Quinn. Daria and Jane accompany the two. On the way, Trent drives a road near the woods and worries about his car stopping near it. He then tells the story of Metalmouth.

Metalmouth was once a metalshop teacher at Lawndale High who had a bad habit of grinding his teeth. One morning he woke up and found that he had grinded his teeth down to nothing and being a teacher, he couldn't pay for dentures. His students made fun of the way he talked since he had no teeth, until one day he decided to make a pair of metal teeth. Unfortunately, those teeth could pick up radio signals and was laughed out of school when his teeth began broadcasting the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

One night, two teens were making out in their car by the old woods when one of them heard a song playing, even though the radio wasn't on. Followed by the song was the sound of metal scraping against the car door when the two teens drove off. One of them got out and found that the tires had been bitten flat and on the door handle was a pair of metal teeth.

[edit] The House of Bad Grades

Trent's car finally dies near a house that Jane calls "The House of Bad Grades."

During the Cold War, a family had just put a bomb shelter in their yard. One night, the eldest daughter tried to write her college applications inside the shelter because the house was too noisy. The next morning, the father had the shelter covered with cement so he could build a barbecue on top of it, not knowing that his daughter was asleep in the shelter. Trapped, the girl realized that she could never leave Lawndale. From then on, her spirit haunted every family that lived in the house, changing the answers on the homework of the children who live in the house, forcing them to fail and get minimum-wage jobs. Because if she couldn't leave Lawndale, no one could.

[edit] Ending

Finally, Quinn and the Fashion Club find their way home, with Jake having enough time to prepare dinner before Helen got home. When she does get home, she mentions that she stopped by a light near the woods and heard a song even though the radio wasn't on, followed by a metallic scraping noise...