A girl in Quinn's grade named Brooke gets a new nose job, and Quinn is treated as a pariah for not praising it as obsessively as the other popular girls. With her station threatened, Quinn believes that she needs to get plastic surgery herself in order to keep up, and drags Daria with her to consult Dr. Shar. The amoral surgeon agrees to give Quinn plastic surgery, but only if Daria gets plastic surgery to look like Quinn, while Daria tries to convince Quinn that she doesn't need it. Meanwhile, Kevin gets assigned to one of Ms. Barch's male-bashing projects.
This episode provides examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Sandi uses the incident with Brooke as an excuse to covertly bully Quinn, to which even Quinn herself is oblivious about.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
- When Quinn takes Daria with her to the surgeon for moral support, it seems to be more than just her only option. She seems to really need her big sister. Subverted since it's eventually revealed that Quinn brought Daria to skip in line for an "urgent consultation".
- Daria is especially concerned about the idea of her sister mutilating her body for shallow beauty standards. She even gives her a heartfelt talk (which she swears to deny hereafter) where she tells her she's beautiful.
- Body Horror: What supposedly happens to Brooke at the end. According to Quinn, her new nose caved in and the fat she had implanted in both her lips slid down to the bottom one.
- Boring, but Practical: Invoked. Jane was somewhat excited to see what fake boobs would look like so she keeps insisting Daria bring them to school and show them. She gets quite disappointed when she sees it's just two silicone balloons.
Jane: (upon seeing them and taking one out of the box) Hmm. Why did I think this would be more interesting?
- Break Them by Talking: Dr. Shar tries this on Quinn and Daria to get them to spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. She manages to break Quinn through backhanded compliments and convince her she needs six thousand dollars worth of surgery to make herself look attractive. With Daria, she tries to make her think she needs surgery to look like Quinn does now for starters, but of course, fails miserably. To take the attempts to the next level, she sends Daria away with a box of breast implants.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Despite Upchuck flirting with Daria and Jane on a regular basis, he actually freaks out when he sees a fake breast implant for the first time. Then he asks through Quinn if he can rent them from Daria.
- Comically Missing the Point: To get rid of Kevin, Daria tells him Dr. Shar's phrase "Money can make anyone beautiful", not caring what Kevin understood from it. At the end of the episode, Kevin got people to accept his greetings... By paying for each one of them.
- Damned by Faint Praise: In-Universe; while the other girls are gushing about Brooke's new nose, Quinn politely says that it's "cute." This is treated as if it were a terrible insult.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Subverted with Dr. Shar, who tells Quinn her nose is perfect and refuses to surgically alter it exclaiming "It'd be a crime against nature...and an ethics violation Dr. Shar just doesn't NEED RIGHT NOW!" She then proposes all the other ways she can "Fix" Quinn's looks.
- Andrea's disgusted by Quinn trying to claim her plastic surgery is "A statement on solidarity" and indirectly tells her she's going to Hell.
- Insult Backfire: Lampshaded by Daria when she tells Jane about the encounter with Dr. Shar. The woman tried all the tricks to make Daria insecure about her appearance and even gave her a box of breast implants. Daria says that her self-esteem is already too low to be lowered.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Not so much for Brooke, who was actually quite nice if not easily influenced, but for Sandi and the other Fashion Club members that also received nose jobs from Dr. Shar.
- Mad Doctor: Dr. Shar is more amoral and corrupt than anything. She even suggests at one point that Quinn can get her parents to pay for her plastic surgery by tricking them into thinking Daria needs growth hormones.
- Though considering her conversation with a patient who had a rhinoplasty (advising her to breathe through her mouth when she was having problems taking in air through her nose) and what happened to poor Brooke, it's very likely she doesn't really look out for the health of her patients in the long run but cares more about short term results so she can get paid.
- The procedure she did on Brooke is very questionable itself: She does liposuction on Brooke's waist, and takes that fat and puts it into her lips instead of using collagen. No wonder why her lips end up melting away.
- Sadist Teacher: Ms. Barch is at her worst in this episode concerning the subplot of making Kevin walk around in ugly make-up as an experiment on the perception of appearance, when she pretty much says she just wants to break his spirit because he's male.
- Sarcasm-Blind: When Quinn tries to convince Ms. Barch into giving her money for the surgery, she has this to say.
Quinn: It's not even like I'm doing that for me. I'm doing it to bring honor to the school.
Ms. Barch: Oh, well then, why don't you apply for a federal grant, dear? Send an inquiry to the U.S. Department of Deluded Adolescents.
Quinn: Is that E-N-T-E or E-N-T-S?
- Unnecessary Makeover: Invoked. Dr. Shar makes a computer simulation of Quinn's makeover, which makes her look exactly like herself, while she makes Daria look like Quinn.
- Brooke, who starts off with a new nose and then moves on from there to get liposuction and plumped-up lips.
- With Friends Like These...: This episode begins to make clear just how Sandi treats the rest of the Fashion Club.
- What the Hell, Hero?: When Quinn shamelessly tries to spin off her attempts to raise money for cosmetic surgery as "Making a statement about solidarity," Andrea has this to ask:
Andrea: Aren't you just a little bit worried that there might be a Hell?
