Jake Morgendorffer

Jake Morgendorffer is a fictional animated character who featured regularly in the MTV television show, Daria. Father of Daria Morgendorffer, he is a middle-aged man, brown-haired, and trim, who almost always wears an ocean-blue business suit.



Background
Jake Morgendorffer was the son of an emotionally abusive father, nicknamed "Mad Dog" Morgendorffer, who (as Jake remembers it) tormented his son mercilessly and ultimately shipped him off to military school the first chance he got. Jake's time in military school further traumatized him, as his parents refused to visit him and all but forgot about him until graduation. Little is known about Jake's siblings, though it is possible he had an older sister.

Afterwards, Jake enrolled at Middleton College and met his future wife Helen Barksdale. The two were part of the hippie counter-culture at the time, which was a calming influence to the seething cauldron of repressed rage and hatred for the world around him and for his father. The two moved into a commune after graduation and got married. His father died shortly thereafter.

Like many hippies, Jake and Helen rejected the 1960s counter-culture by the end of the 1970s and began working in the corporate world. Jake in particular began work in the advertisement industry, with little success. Adding to his strife was the fact that Jake worked for a rather controlling boss who treated Jake poorly (whom he referred to as a "mini-Mussolini" in the episode "Boxing Daria") and further verbally abused Jake on a regular basis.

Jake and Helen ultimately had two daughters, Daria and Quinn. By this point the family was living in Highland, Texas, (home of Beavis and Butt-head). The family stayed there for several years before moving to the suburb of Lawndale. It has been implied that the family moving came with Jake's decision to quit his job and start his own freelance advertising consultant firm. The move was designed to give Jake the freedom of being his own boss and to free him from the stress-filled environment in which he used to work.

Relationship with Helen
Jake and Helen are and always have been much in love, but there is a strong undercurrent of resentment between the two of them in their relationship. Helen described Jake's behavior as "wandering in a fog when he's not flying into a rage" to a counselor. His general meekness often causes Helen to make a majority of the decisions. When Jake goes into a rage, Helen ranges from either humoring him or conflicting.

In the episode "Psycho Therapy," Jake accuses Helen of having control issues, in which he is allowed no vices. Both of them are then asked to role-play as the other, and Jake portrayed Helen as a narcissistic career woman with an addiction to praise and does everything without empathy, while Helen portrayed Jake as a self-pitying manic-depressive who doesn't try to fix his own problems and aversion to responsibility. Jake's assessment of Helen really hit home for her and upset her greatly, to which he apologized afterwards.

Despite this, though, both of them still care about each other, and there is no lack of passion in their marriage.

Personality
As a victim of long-term emotional abuse, Jake suffers from neurotic behavior that at times borders on mental illness. His general reaction to everyday trauma is to avoid conflict, usually by ducking behind a newspaper that he pretends to read. However, in spite of this defense, Jake has been known to go off on angry fits of yelling and screaming at things, real and imaginary that he feels are out to get him. In particular, Jake is prone to scream "Damn it!" during these sorts of tirades. These drastic mood swings eventually affect his health, once giving him a mild heart attack that leaves him bedridden for a short time. However, during his convalescence, Daria points out his delight that despite this health problem he has now lived longer than his hated father.

In spite of these fits, Jake has not shown signs of physically or emotionally abusing his wife or children like many victims of childhood abuse engage in. Indeed, his children both are quite protective of their father and his wife Helen often goes out of her way to humor her husband during his tirades.

Despite Jake's neurotic behavior, there have been periods where he had true insight into the lives of his children, such as during "Boxing Daria," when he explained to Daria that while she was a difficult child to deal with due to her reclusive and jaded behavior, they understood her and accepted that while Daria was highly intelligent, she was not going to be like everyone else. This of course contradicts their behavior (primarily Helen's) who were often trying to get Daria to be like everyone else.

Clueless Jake
It would be difficult to make Jake any more oblivious than he is portrayed in the series. Let's face it, a man who yells "What's the number for nine-one-one?" ("Write Where It Hurts") is more than a few fries short of Happy Meal. This stereotype works well in farcical comedies (see Squirrel Story), but making him a more serious character is challenging.

Darth Jake
There are a number of stories which postulate that the emotional trauma Jake suffered through as a child would have serious future ramifications in his future. "Darth Jake" stories almost always focus of the characterization of Jake as horrifying, vicious, cruel, and acting out a pathological desire to show that he's a better father than "Mag Dog" Morgendorffer. Examples of this psychotic variation include The Angst Guy's Darius, LyinTamer's Night of the Storm, and Scissors MacGillicutty's Where's Mary Sue When You Need Her?.

A fic that subverts this variation is Chosin Fate, where Daria finds audio tapes of her grandfather before and after the wartime events that transformed him into 'the Mad Dog'. In the fic, listening to those tapes had a cathartic effect on Jake; he muses on how that was the first time he had ever heard his father say that he loved him, and considers how his father was a damaged soul who wasn't trying to abuse him, but to toughen him up for the dangers of the world. We also see this in It's All About Respect where Jake and Lauriel de la Ribas speak on the 'Mad Dog's' service time, and how it affected him (Mad Dog) and the people around him.