Scientific Stuff

Scientific Stuff was an early episode of Beavis and Butt-head, and the first ever appearance of Daria Morgendorffer.

Plot

Beavis and Butt-head present their latest science project to Mrs. Dickie: a cheap model of the space shuttle Challenger that they blow up. When she disgustedly asks Butt-head how he could do something so tasteless, he cheerfully replies "Beavis helped me". The teacher orders them to do another project ("but we're out of firecrackers"), and assigns them to work with Daria, who has an A in the class and has won the science fair several times in a row. Both parties are reluctant:

Daria: But Mrs Dickie! Beavis and Butt-head are complete imbeciles!
Beavis: Yeah, heheh, she's right.

but Mrs. Dickie forces them to work together.

Later, Daria arrives at Beavis and/or Butt-head's house. She asks them for their project ideas, but she is quite unimpressed by their proposals:

Beavis:If you pour salt on a snail, a lot of scientific stuff happens.
Butt-head: We could burn some ants.
Beavis: We could have Butt-head sit on a big glass jar - and then FART!
Daria: What's scientific about that?
Beavis: Nothing until you light it.

When she asks them how they learned to be so disgusting, Butt-head proudly informs her he learned everything he knows from his dad. Beavis agrees.

Daria: You both have the same dad?
Butt-head: Uhhh, we're not sure. It's possible.

This gives her an idea for a science project (and gives the boys no thought at all).

The next day at school, the three are then seen presenting their project, "Stupidity: Biological or Environmental?" to Mrs. Dickie's science class. This basically is Beavis and Butt-head hurting themselves in front of everyone while talking about their relatives and Daria saying this shows both factors lead to stupidity. Later, Daria is seen sitting on the couch between Beavis and Butt-head. She congratulates the two of them for doing well on the project. Then Butt-head asks her:

Butt-head: Do you, like, get periods?
Daria: Butt-head, why don't you try this experiment? Analyse the friction caused by digitally oscillating your weiner.

[Beavis and Butt-head both laugh]

Butt-head: That was cool.

Timeline headaches

As Daria spans roughly three years, her time in Highland High is usually taken as a single year by fandom. Unfortunately Beavis and Butt-head didn't know the future and so Dickie says Daria won the science fair "last year", when Daria continuity requires her to be in junior high.

Trivia

This earliest form of Daria doesn't yet have her cutting sarcasm (bar her final line) and she speaks in a more high-pitched, expressive tone. Her misanthropy, tendency to manipulate, and intelligence are all on display already.

In repeats, the farts line was cut as part of MTV's mass censorship of Beavis' pyromania.

As Mike Judge has cited David Felton as coming up with Daria's character (on the Mike Judge Collection DVD), Felton likely wrote this episode.