Gerdy’s Gab Gallows: ICarly (2007) Season 1 & 2

Welcome one and welcome all to a new review title breaking the internet with its hotness. Yes dear reader this is the first official review blog post that I deem the Gab Gallows. I don’t enjoy talking about myself, shocker I know but I mean that in a: my analysis is so deep and thorough, that I often find it cutting. All I’ve written so far has been mostly surface level thoughts that I believe anyone could come to the conclusion of. In this type of post everything is up for review and my analysis hat is on the entire time. Basically you think you’re to mean so any review you do in this series will be like sending them to their death. I’m going to be thorough and cover the points I find important. We’re still different people though (I’m literally a slime) so what I observe and include/exclude may be different than what you thought. Please leave a comment if there is something burning in your mind that I didn’t mention (or maybe I'm wrong about). If you disagree and say nothing or something constructive that’s fine too but don’t be a butt and be rude. I'm just writing what I think and see I’m going to have bias and preconceived thoughts thanks to the whole free will thing. This means I won’t be objective all the time and no one could be. There is also no objectivism in reviewing, I can give you a compelling argument for what I think but ultimately it comes down to feelings. Take this as a template for all reviews under the Gab Gallows umbrella and without further ado let's begin our first Gab Gallows.  

ICarly is a sitcom for kids that first aired in September of 2007 on Nickelodeon. Broadcast television is a fun relic of the past to ponder, my age was the one of a thousand channels with nine hundred of them behind a paywall. Did you know there is legislation in most states for what is considered public channels or better known by the private cable companies: the ones we gotta give them for free, dammit. TPT was the local kids network but because my mom was cool we had cable and with that came three more options for kids content. I was really drowning in the choices but the three pillars of my kid watching television days were Disney, Nick and Cartoon Network. My favorite was Nick when Avatar: The Last Airbender and ICarly were releasing at the same time but Nick stopped doing many cartoons after Avatar. Cartoon Network became my favorite because animation for life but I do have a weakness for sitcoms. Now that I’m an “adult” I have seen many a sitcom, and now that I’ve rewatched ICarly multiple times I can see the inspirations clearly. ICarly hits all of the famous sitcom tropes and set the foundation and expectations for my personal enjoyment of them. The show's surreal environment lends a lot of credibility to the strange and outlandish things that tend to happen. 

Let’s start with the pilot and see if I can lend some examples to that last statement. If you expect the pilot for every show to be the best and most action packed then you need to stop watching anime. Stop drinking Mountain Dew or whatever overly sugar drink you have and prepare to enter our slow paced reality. A pilot episode's job is to set up the premise of the show and showcase a potential outline for the future episodes and/or plot. This is easy for me to summarize but hard to execute. A lot is riding on the pilots shoulders and most people don’t give a second chance after a poor first impression. I’m a little surprised that ICarly got five, maybe six depending on where you’re watching it, seasons based on how weak the pilot is. Perhaps pilots have gotten better or the cast's chemistry starts off very awkward but this pilot just doesn’t have the sauce. The episode revolves around Carly getting in trouble with her dangerous yet lovable best friend Sam. I believe that Carly goes down for something Sam did, because she’s a real one, and together they get detention. Special guest?? Mindy Sterling as Miss Briggs has them judge the people who want to participate in the school's talent show. This is a popular lie all sitcoms and many other shows seem to share, no school in America has ever had a talent show; at least mine didn’t to my disappointment. They need to film them so Miss Briggs can review them later so they enlist the help of tech nerd Freddie. His type of autism is that he's really into “tech”. So he’s got a movie grade video camera with on set playback just ready to go. The contestants are bad but the banter between Carly and Sam is so natural, and funny and totally doesn’t feel like middle aged men wrote it, that Freddie ends up rolling on them for all the auditions. The plot demands that Freddie makes a mistake and he mistakenly uploads the entire recording instead of just the edited auditions to the shows Youtube replacement Splash Face. A very real and novel flashback to how Youtube was originally, and still sometimes used today. The video became a smash hit overnight with over 100,000 views and one of them was their teacher who they bad mouthed for having pointy breasts. We here at Gerdy’s Soda Fountain appreciate any and all boobs. The teacher chastises their choices on who to allow into the talent show and their potty humor and walks her pointed breasts out of the show until her next guest star episode. This inspires Carly to drag the lazy delinquent Sam to start their own show where the discounted talent people can have a moment to shine. Freddie boysplains to Carly and Sam, that they should name the show ICarly after his queen Carly and Sam is too lazy to argue. We all have our moment pointing at the screen and saying that's the name of the show for it to end on the first official broadcast of ICarly. A live streaming web show in 2007, the first of its kind. The ending does set up the gimmick for the outro of the first season of the show. A weird or random talent showcased by a slanky white person. Okay the other outros are fan submissions (or just submissions from the writers/producers kids for all we know) and they aren’t all white but that description fits that first weirdo to a T. I don’t care if it’s childish if you can drink milk and then shoot it out your eyelid you are a weirdo. I can’t even begin to fathom what that requires physically speaking because the tube in the back of your throat connects to your nostrils but I thought that was it, and if it is some elaborate stage trick then congratulations it disgusts me. A strong end for an overly convoluted plot to get us to the simple premise of two girls and a nerd making a web show. The live streaming that we’re accustomed to now is a testament to ICarly starting out ahead of its time. Back in 2007 internet speeds were much slower than they were now. Dial-up was still the norm for many rural people and even the speeds available in most metro areas couldn’t handle the data needed for both upload and download speeds that streaming needs to get at least some decent picture. The talent show just feels out of place and is intentionally boring to offset the bombastic and cool first ICarly stream. It just doesn’t work great for me but it does it’s job 6/10.

The pilot sets the mood for the first season as it is the weakest season of the series. This isn’t a bad thing and is a norm for many sitcoms. The first season is often cliched episodes that help it find its niche, gimmick and tone going forward. In its first season ICarly finds its niche as a shippers paradise, its gimmick as Spencer Rice and its tone of giggly, glorious, and girly violence. As a filthy shipper and one who shamelessly does it even to real people I never stood a chance to not be thanks to this show. The writers like to play koi and be confused by the infamous shippers that plague this show's fanbase. Now you can never control what people will take from your writing so part of me feels for the writers that were creeped out by the overwhelming number of fans that seemed to only watch the show to find out who Freddie ended up with. However if you start the show with Freddie lusting after Carly like a love sick puppy from the get go and have three different episodes that plots revolve around relationship drama in your first season, you shouldn’t be surprised when people think that’s all your show is. Yes, ICarly does the bold thing that many shows refuse to address today, that preteens and young teens do in fact date. I never shipped Carly and Freddie personally or even Sam and Freddie because they had great friend chemistry. I’m not into numerology but three has felt like the best for groups of friends to me, at least close friends. The Three Musketeers did it best and that is how I see Carly, Sam and Freddie. Three is hard to balance and for it to work they need to stay friends which they do for most of the show.  

Most sitcoms have some type of naming convention for their episodes, Friends has each episode start with: The One Where We ____, Scrubs has a possessive: My ____, and ICarly has the simple iEpisode Title. Simple and cute, the i meaning internet that will always be trendy and exist forever  right? The internet has little to do with ICarly, it mostly fills the role of motivator and power. Websites aren’t really great visual storytellers, most often they are used to display counters of numbers going up and down. To counter this perceived boring visual most of the humor revolves around gag humor and interpersonal drama. Spencer Rice played by Jerry Trainor is the culprit of most of the gags and more extreme stunts on the show. Nothing too crazy so far but if someone needs to get smacked or hit or stand near wild animals it’s Spencer. He’s an artist by trade but an ADHD sculptor by lifestyle. In the pilot he “sculps” a ten foot high cup of Starbuck coffee, we did product placement classily back in the day, no words just logos, and the gang swim and drink in it as it is totally filled with coffee we swear. The gag humor works more often than not except for when it gets really creepy and fetishy, cough feet stuff cough. A lot of the gags are recurring and have bits added to them over time in some nice continuity running jokes like random dancing and Spencer's sculptors. 

For cliche episodes in the first season we have the classic rival introduction in INevel where we meet a famous blogger, oh my god could be you one day! Who only reviews the hottest and coolest things on the internet. Carly goes to meet him and it turns out to be a pampered little eleven year old mama's boy who's way too posh even for posh people. This kid made me stop learning words because I didn’t want to be such a loser like him. Rue is a real cool word that I still don’t get to use because of loser babies like him 8/10. Next up would be the character who just got here might have to leave now in IWanna Stay with Spencer. Grandpa Shay shows up and almost takes Carly away to Yakima but Spencer shows how caring he can be and she gets to stay. Even though we all know that there is no risk we see real sibling chemistry between Spencer and Carly in this episode. They look out for each other and when Spencer runs down with Carly’s old inhaler it gets me every time. Grandad is a relatable antagonist because he just wants what’s best for Carly and is right to be worried about flying hammers nearly killing her. Mistakes happen but with faith in each other we can overcome a lot together. The Carly and Spencer relationship is the pillar that holds up a lot of the show and is one of the best character pairings for gag comedy 9/10. 

My pick for peak of season one would be iHatch Chicks this is the episode where the cast start to feel more comfortable with each other and start bouncing off each other. The episode's plot is about a science project that Carly and Sam are doing. They decide on hatching chicken eggs, they can have a camera filming the entire time capturing every step of the process. Twenty-four hour live streaming, the future really was written. Things must go awry for our entertainment and all six hatchlings broke out of their incubator because these newborns have better heist skills than any of the Ocean’s teams combined. The rest of the episode the gang rounds up the six chicks with the last one falling through the elevator shaft right into Spencer's mouth. It’s okay that all works out because Spencer was in a vent and as we all know newly born chickens will die the second after four hours of no food or not being kept at ninety degrees Fahrenheit. The lengths the gang is willing to go to for these chicks is truly on another level of motherly, and Freddie's lab partner happens to be a jock who loves meat and is very strong. He has some great moments like smashing his head through a wall and lifting a fridge along with the poor attempts at support from Freddie. The girls climb into the rafters for another chick and the results are both Carly and the chick falling to the ground, Sam only being able to catch the chick. Everything ends up well and it proves that solving problems just takes a little bit of organizing to immediately dissolve into running around like a couple of headless chickens and just brute forcing your way through any issues that may come your way. This episode sets the template for what to expect from an ICarly episode. Spencer's subtle art skills at play with the pictures of the chicks, Sam’s laziness getting in the way of her reliability, Carly failing in the most spectacular way and Freddie trying to think his way around a physical problem 9.5/10.    

The last stand out episode from the first season is iFence. This solidifies the Spencer and Freddie friendship as another foundational pillar of the series. Freddie is tired of hanging out with the girls, a feeling I truly don’t understand you’re friends are your friends and I’m always happy to hang out with mine, but Freddie was in need of some guy time and it totally isn’t because men aren’t great at writing girls, teenage girls at that. They match each others weird and play off each other very well. This episode contains my favorite lore that Freddie comes from a long line of fencers called the Fencing Bensons. His moms father was so obsessed with it that it consumed his life and he pushed it all onto his daughter. It adds a spin to Ms. Benson’s overbearingness, and shows that she blocks a lot of her worst behaviors down so her son can have a fair chance at life. The episode ends with her beating Toter and his two grunts, one of which is named Cliche because ICarly loves to be cheeky, in a 3v1 fencing match in which she defeats them handily 8/10. 

Season one was when the kids were at their youngest so everyone but Spencer is a shorty. In season two the gang graduate from pre-teens to just teens as Freddie gets a couple inches taller and an octave lower speaking voice. The gang uses the chemistry they grew in the first season to bring some of the best ICarly has to offer this season. This is also when the seasons of the show can get a little messy. Netflix has 39 episodes in this season but Paramount Plus had a staggering 49 episodes in this season if I recall correctly. This is because ICarly had many special episodes that came out in its lifetime. These episodes were usually released on their own with no correlation to the other seasonal releases. There also isn’t much continuity or overarching plot that connects each episode. The stories of each episode begin and end within their twenty five to hour timeframes and that is the norm for most sitcoms. The only continuity is the relationships that develop and the evolution of the running gags. The characters are static for the most part and not much development happens outside of Sam and Freddie. This isn’t a bad thing because it sets up clear expectations for how each character will react in a given situation and makes you feel like you know who they are. For example Carly is a kindhearted well intentioned girl that is a bit of a prissy poo. She’s willing to help but is quite shallow and has a very uptight expectation for things. Sam is a grizzly cutthroat that’s rough upbringing has molded her to bluntly following her gut feeling through all situations. Freddie is a not so smart hard worker that's drilled in routines from his mother allow him to have basic knowledge of most life skills as well as plan for most situations but panics when actually in said situation. Spencer is a carefree manchild that could rule the world if he only could commit to locking in. These things are true of the characters from the first episode to the last and that is part of the appeal of the show. We follow this gang of flawed yet compelling characters in their antics they go through to produce a web show that is getting 100,000 concurrent viewers every time it airs. Even today that is baffling, most big streamers only get 10,000 concurrent viewers and lets not even go into bots. 

As of writing this I am only halfway through the second season of the show (watching on Netflix). With the increased height of the actors comes increased comfort and better acting. From the beginning of the second season the dialogue feels a little more punchy and the gang is delivering like they are just friends. I’m going to attribute this more to the talent of Miranda Cosgrove, Jenette Mcgurdy, and Nathan Kress than any direction. I haven’t read Mcgurdy’s book: I’m Glad My Mom Died but I’m sure you’re aware of just some of what she alleges happened during her time being directed under Dan and yikes! I use alleged but it doesn’t take much to see the creepiness in a lot of what Dan Schneider has produced and he’s made a lot. Knowing of the rumors is enough to make me look at a couple things in this show a little differently but I am still able to escape into the ICarly world very easily. The main trio just bounce off each other so well and iOwe You does a good job of showcasing it. In this episode Freddie confronts Sam about never paying back money that she constantly borrows from Carly and himself. Sam postures that she in fact does pay them back or will so Freddie is malicious compliant and adds up all the money she owes. The total comes out to a little over $500 bucks a lot of money but an infinite amount of money to a young teenager. You see Sam and Freddie aren’t really friends, they don’t care for each other much and are reliant on Carly to be the glue to hold everything together. This may seem like a trope but I shall cast a stone at anyone reading this who doesn’t have a friend of a friend that you don’t really care for. It’s not their fault your friend is cooler than them and they just rub you the wrong way, metaphorically speaking. Carly is a soothsayer that uplifts her boring techy friend and chills out her delinquent friends' rage. Together they are codependent and teach that if one friend is doing all the emotional labor of the group she’ll eventually break down 8/10. We’re not that far in the series yet so lets move onto more highlights of this season so far. 

iKiss is the first Seddie episode, just typing that gives us shivers, this is the episode where Sam and Freddie kiss for the first time. It also showcases that these two do care for each other and that neither of them are really good at talking about how they feel. This episode starts with Freddie running from Sam because he has handcuffed him to Gibby. Gibby is the show's wacky fat person they roll out to make fun of and showcase how wacky and weird people on the spectrum can be. He’s very much an of the times joke and is a sitcom standard. Sam breaks down the door and demands Freddie unlock them. Instead of pummeling him and getting vengeance then and there she threatens him that his retribution is coming, terrifying him to his core. The vengeance comes when she reveals on the latest stream of ICarly that Freddie has not kissed a girl, something she overheard him tell Carly when she was coming back from failing to get a snack. Freddie’s social life is ruined at this and I sigh at the simplicity and dumb shit I stressed over when I was a teenager. For those of you who need to hear it, it’s not a race let things work out at their own time and pace with willing people it feels right with. To fix her wrong on the next stream of ICarly she tells the audience that she has never kissed a boy and if that’s a problem to catch her outside, she’s quite the ruffian. Sam goes to Freddie, isolating on the fire escape like a cool troubled teen boy and she formally apologizes to him. She shares that she lied about kissing a boy earlier and the two kiss just to get it out of the way. While this is cute for teenagers, don't be a dullard about why you kiss. Some may not believe in platonic kisses while others may see it as a highly romantic gesture. These two dummies definitely felt some spark no matter how dull it may have been 9/10. 

2008 was a strange year, the internet started making real changes in the world and one of those things was the rise of Youtubers. Fred was one of the first Youtubers to blow up and sell out. To you that may not know Fred was an internet sensation that was a scrawny blonde white kid with Justin Bebier hair that used a pitch changer to make his voice high pitched and obnoxious. Needless to say I didn’t see the appeal but I’ve always had a noise sensitivity issue. Nickelodeon paid fistfuls of dollars to get Fred some TV specials and he got to do a crossover with ICarly. You see dear reader Fred and ICarly both internet so obviously they go together naturally. It’s also not like streamers and Youtubers beef all the time to drive engagement. That’s correct, ICarly also foretold of the creator sudobeefs to drive engagement. It’s as Fred said in the episode:”Everyone loves a good fight!” Everything is just the same events repeating over and over again until the heat death of the universe 5/10. Take a deep breath and relax for a couple of minutes 6.5/10.

IWant My Website Back is one of my favorite continuations of the Nevel Papperman saga. The ICarly gang and Nevel have butted heads several times thus far and the gang has always prevailed because the best way to deal with a nark is to nark on the nark. Nevel is also a mama’s boy and mama wasn’t too proud of her son for pestering a girl for not wanting to kiss him. Even broken clocks are right twice a day right? This time mama is on vacation so the forever virgin has the freedom to purchase the ICarly url that is up for grabs because Spencer’s credit card expired. *Sad trumpet noises* Mandy ICarly’s “biggest” fan and first psycho got the url first but Nevel posed as Freddie on the internet and got her to transfer the url to his name. After some unflattering puppet shows the gang isn’t able to make any progress in getting the url back under their ownership. Carly barters with Nevel that she will kiss him for the website back. Our society does such a good job of teaching young women how to overcome their problems, sarcasm heavily implied. She meets him in the alleyway behind her apartment building to exchange the documents and kiss. Nevel hands over the documents before getting the kiss because he’s a gentleman but also because he’s hired bodyguards to prevent Carly from running away. At least the creepiness is intentional, hopefully. Also Nevel only thought two dimensionally while Carly a savvy three dimensional thinker came up with the idea of having her brother and friends reel her back up to the third floor of her eighth floor apartment with a deep sea fishing rod. Carly died from overwhelming physical trauma in that alleyway but her manikin made it up just fine so thanks to TV logic she did as well. Then she wastes perfectly good tapenade in albeit decent revenge on Nevel by pouring it out the window. Nevel the creepy gentleman stands stock still for his comeuppance and gets a face full. This is my favorite Nevel episode because it’s a pure Carly vs Nevel with no outside exmachinas. Yes the fishing rod can count as one but that isn’t as egregious as the military or the all powerful mother. Carly is pressed into a situation where her only way out is through quick wit and negotiation. She is a people person through and through she knows what Nevel really wants and exploits this as well as his overconfidence into a situation where she can’t lose. This episode shows that Carly has spunk and deserves to be the it girl 8.5/10.

Finally iTake On Dingo will be the last episode that I cover from season two and also happens to be where my current rewatch left off. The trick to writing is to write what you know, and that’s why you’ll find so many shows and movies about actors acting or a gaggle of writers living life. I bring this up because this is the edgy little fish taking a bite out of the larger fish in the pond of television. Dingo is Disney, I know who would've thought, and Dan wanted to make fun of the lazy writers for big cable networks. That’s right the pot was calling the kettle black and we get an insight to what the writers room of ICarly actually looked like in this episode. It turns out to be a bunch of middle aged dudes playing video games and making the intern do all the work, shocking. This episode has the first appearance of the butter sock and Sam uses it to beat up one of the writers so that’s at least a little cathartic. The butter sock is my favorite running gag but that’s mostly due to people constantly being knocked out in one hit by it. Butter doesn’t even get that hard even if you freeze it’ll defrost and melt in that sock. It’s just the right amount of absurd and the perfect weapon for Sam Puckett. The plot of this episode is about some writers stealing the bits from ICarly and using them on their show. The gang confronts them by encouraging Spencer to continue the pointless rumor that Walt Disney may have been cryogenically frozen or at least his head, and if he takes them to Dingo headquarters he can search for the head in the bowels of Dingo. Thanks ICarly for making me think exploring the bowels of something was a normal turn of phrase. Spencer does find the head though because he manifests whatever he wants into this world by will, and the gang leverages that discovery to get the writers to stop stealing from ICarly. There’s a moment in the episode where the writers are all laughing as they eagerly write down Carly and Sam's banter and remark on how hilarious it is. I don’t have much of an ego but it takes some level of dickiness to write a writer that compliments your own dialogue. Just because you think it’s good doesn’t make it good Dan. If that isn’t bad enough the episode ends with two of the writers in bikinis throwing dog food at each other. You read that correctly crossdressing cable writers throwing dog food at each other. Now just imagine Dan Schneider saying: “I want two teenage girls to coerce me and a coworker into wearing a bikini and throw dog food at each other.” It doesn’t feel good does it, no shame to crossdressing this is just creepy 2.5/10. 

So far season two has been better than the first season aside from iTake on Dingo. I’m looking forward to the rest of it, especially iGo To Japan, my favorite TV special. The cast is the strongest part of this show as it is for most shows. The writing can be a bit tired and cliche but the acting and relationships that develop around them is something unique. Spencer pairs nicely with Carly, Freddie and Sam, and the returning actors are strong as well. Notably Gibby, Lewbert, Tvo and Freddie’s mother Marisa. They add the right amount of weird to compliment the quickness of the main cast and all feel like real believably unbelievable characters themselves. Plan on me covering more of the show next Saturday, now I must rest.