Lucky Strike

"Lucky Strike" was the sixth episode of the fifth season of Daria (episode number 506). It first aired on MTV on March 26, 2001.

"Lucky Strike" was written by Peter Elwell.

Summary
The teachers of Lawndale High, unable to reach an agreement with the school district (on whose behalf Ms. Li negotiates) go on strike. Students are still required to attend classes, however, Ms. Li having found substitutes ranging from the senile (Mrs. Stoller, who believes her charges are first graders) to the ephebophile (Ken Edwards, an unself-conscious and irony-free version of Vladimir Nabokov's Humbert Humbert.) After Quinn lets it slip to her mother that Mr. Edwards' attention to Tiffany in class borders on the inappropriate if not indecent, Helen calls the school to threaten legal action. Ken Edwards is summarily dismissed, and Ms. Li press-gangs Daria into service as his replacement.

Meanwhile, both Jane and Trent help make the teacher's picketing more effective and eye-catching, while DeMartino fights to keep the protest going and finally takes on Li in direct negotiation.

Replacement music
On Daria: The Complete Animated Series, replacement tracks by Extreme Music were used, including:


 * Slow Death (for a scene of Mrs Stoller)

Trivia
The name "Lucky Strike" refers to a brand of cigarette, Lucky Strike, as well as to the teachers' strike being a lucky thing for improving the relationship between Daria & Quinn and the strike actually succeeding.

Ms. Morris, Coach Gibson, and Margaret Manson all appear in the strike, all of them after long absences from Daria. In Morris' case, it's the only appearance she ever had outside of her first episode.

The strike shows several teachers we have never seen or heard of before: a tall black man in a blue suit, a pudgy black man with glasses, a brunette woman in a yellow blouse, a bald man with a large brown beard, and a skinny, seemingly middle-aged woman with short, spiky blonde hair.

This is also the only episode, aside from Daria reading them out loud in "Speedtrapped", where someone else is singing Trent's lyrics.

Daria's Reading Material
At the kitchen's table, while Quinn is talking about Ken Edwards, Daria is reading As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner.

"Lucky Strike" and Fanfic

 * The Angst Guy gives Mrs. Stoller a small role in his alternate universe tale, "It Slipped Through My Hands, Like a Shadow, Like a Dream." While still a substitute teacher, she is not at Lawndale High for a strike, but for the special needs of that story's version of Daria, a developmentally disabled teen.
 * Ken Edwards is one of the two main characters, along with Tiffany Blum-Deckler, in the post-canon story Calling Calliope by Dennis. In the story, Ken is still working on the the book and his designs on Tiffany are not sexual.