Interesting iCarly Episodes

I just watched through the first season of iCarly. For the most part, it's a solid show that I think adequately captures the growing mass appeal of online media via some charming and goofy performances. I like that the responsible adult character is a twenty-five-year-old big kid, giving the show more of an anarchic feel. I like the extremely cartoonish and fake image of a livestream and/or web show it presents. It's fun to spend every episode asking, "who the hell is watching iCarly?"

But beyond its basic, serviceable plot and characters, there were a few episodes in particular that I found a little bit thornier, and its those I'd like to talk about here.

#1: iNevel & iRue the Day

In these episodes, we deal with a repulsive, villainous boy blogger named Nevel, who writes a nasty review of the iCarly webshow on his famous blog when Carly refuses to kiss him. This is a bold exploration of sexual assault and coercion, and it's pretty striking to see Nevel plainly try to use his power and influence to gain sexual favours.

It's also pretty iconic that they revisit it in a second episode, in which Nevel simply tries again to sabotage and ruin iCarly by, this time, hacking their website. There's no new slight he's had to suffer, no repeated refusal, he's just still mad about the first one. Relentless. There's something so great about that.

What I also find notable is that while the topic is very much taken seriously, they still manage to make Nevel's character funny. This is largely because of the actor's really wonderful, theatrical performance. So, strangely, Nevel the would-be abuser is a joy to watch. How unusual and special.

#2: iPromote Techfoots

This one is about sponsorship. A shoe company makes a deal with the iCarly children, and they begin promoting the shoes (Techfoots) on their shows. But oh no, those shoes are comically horrible to the point of being a genuine hazard, so now the iCarly team are stuck promoting shoes that spontaneously combust. They get out of this via some nonsensical legal wizardry whereby they describe the shoes sarcastically positively on their show, and all is well, but the lesson has been learned: advertising is evil.

It's a nice bit of silly satire that perfectly reflects the unbearable nature of sponsorships. It also tickles me that the kids are so excited to be able to get a few hundred dollars out of their show when it's clearly worth so much more.

#3: iCarly Saves TV 

This episode concerns itself with the awkward relationship between TV and online media. The boss at a TV network hears about iCarly from his daughter, who finds his programming excruciatingly dull, and grabs it up for broadcast. The iCarly kids are delighted, but soon discover that the boss insists on increasingly misguided changes to the content.

He brings in an ugly mascot character called 'Zeebo'. I love Zeebo. Terrible, hideous Zeebo.

Zeebo moment.

After a while, the changes irritate Carly so much that she leaves the show, and learns that the deal they made was very bad - the TV station owns the iCarly intellectual property or something. But this is solved quickly when the boss decides he doesn't want his show to be called iCarly anymore. They really couldn't think of a neat way to end the episode with iCarly re-instated and back to normal, and that in itself is sort of interesting.

Of course these sorts of issues need to be easily solved on the show to keep the episodic continuum intact, but it's fun that legality often has to break in order for that to happen. It's just like in Columbo, where Columbo doesn't have to actually find any evidence because the killer always confesses in a deranged, smug monologue at the end. 

***

These three episodes paint an interesting picture of iCarly's cultural criticism. Media figures here are always out to dupe these poor kids in some way. The wider world of success and influence is dangerous and ugly. And the legalities of the world are, of course, flexible and game-able so that the universe can remain as imaginative as possible, as reactive as we need.

Probably my favourite single image from iCarly so far.

So Carly escapes attempted sexual extortion cleanly, and ducks out of restrictive, punishing contracts with simple trickery. What a beautiful world.