Ibinged Icarly (Season 3)

Here’s the first thing you arguably need to know about iCarly season 3: it very easily could have been the last season of the show. Not because there was a dip in popularity, far from it, but because at that point in Nickelodeon history, 3-4 seasons was the standard for even the most popular live-action sitcoms. And that made sense, these shows were usually set in a school setting, either Middle School or High School, so three to four years was basically the maximum length they could go on for before people started to ask questions. And furthermore, there was always a short window of time for teen sitcoms to remain marketable, because teenagers, fun fact, eventually become adults who don’t watch Nickelodeon anymore. And because of this, season 3 is packed full of massive event stories which were heavily advertised and tend to focus a lot on character-driven drama. One thing I remember that really pissed me off at the time, was they’d air these commercials for episodes that had some really funny or notable moment, and you’d watch the episode, and it just wouldn’t be there. It always felt so cheap, like were they filming scenes just for the TV trailers? Were they that low? Nowadays the understanding is that the trailers often just used deleted scenes, but I still think it’s a pretty lame thing that they did. Visuals for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQqBqAVlrqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3MWk3mF0TU [The girls screaming about iCarly being canceled and the girls fighting over Freddie as he says “hey look a Freckle” are both deleted scenes] The reason I’m bringing this up, is that while for seasons 1 and 2 I typically caught most of the episodes in re-runs, kind of randomly depending what was on after school, with iCarly season 3, I saw most of these episodes the day they originally aired, and when they came out in the season thus feels important. Talking about the Bigfoot episode, and then the episode where Freddie and Carly date, THEN the school dance episode, would just feel so very wrong. Talking about these stories almost in broadcast order also means that I can write and record intermediately, which means I can get the video out much faster, because my goal at this point is still to have SOMETHING out before the revival. Hope this makes sense. I think the most notable aspect of season 3 was its sudden milking of one of the most essential pieces to the iCarly show since its start: shipping culture. Basically, from the day that the pilot was shot, iCarly was trying very hard to get you invested in some kind of relationship pairing in the cast. Most notably, Freddie with one of the two girls. So either Sam and Freddie, aka Seddie, or Sam and Carly, aka Creddie. Back in 2018, I made a Fallen Titans where I talked about iCarly for like half the run time. I think that video is bad, and this year I’ve been kinda stripping it down for parts and remaking all the good bits. But I do want to steal one funny joke from it real quick. https://youtu.be/YW3HarwTiIY?t=843 [14:04 - 14:10] That’s such a good bit I realized while working on this that it’s weird that “Seddie” and “Creddie” are the ship names that stuck, when we could have gone with the vastly superior “Fram” and “Farly”. Think about it, Fram sounds like Spam, which obviously Sam would probably love eating, and Farly reminds me of Chris Farley, a man so funny even photos of him make you feel good But the names have stuck, so there’s nothing I can do. So anyways, my point is that building off of these ships and stretching them out as long as the writers possibly could is the basis for quite a few episodes. And starting us off is the sequel to iKiss: season 3, episode 1: iThink they Kissed. In the story, Carly is tasked with taking Sam to the dentist, and making sure she goes through with it and isn’t violent. Sam gets hopped up on nitrous oxide, and begins speaking to Carly while she’s not of clear mind, even briefly believing that her thumb is missing. Suddenly, without prompt, she makes an admission: [“Me and Freddie Kissed”] As Carly begins to freak out to this shocking news, Sam suddenly adds: [“Don’t tell Carly.”] When you watch all these episodes in a row, binging through them in a few nights, the impact of this story doesn’t hit you quite right. But being there, seeing that kiss go down, and feeling the anxiety of it needing to remain a secret lest it rip the trio apart, that made this story a must-see episode, while today, it’s almost something you can read the title of and then skip. This episode is actually considered a Creddie or Farly episode by most fans, because the way that it was marketed was almost to imply that Carly was MAD at the idea of Freddie with another girl. But in the actual episode of course, her actual anxiety draws from the fact that she’s been told a secret she’s not supposed to know while not being sure why she’s not supposed to know it, again playing into Miranda’s strength at portraying “human-shaped bundle of anxiety” Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Spencer begins teaching an art class at a local prison, where it goes poorly when one inmate tries to murder him numerous times. But who gives a shit about that? Carly tries to confront Freddie about what Sam said, but she tries to tackle him to force him to answer the question. There’s this joke in season 1 where Carly and Sam are both constantly able to tackle Freddie and hold him down against his will, because he’s so tiny, but the payoff in this episode is that he easily turns that around and does it to her instead, [15:15 - 15:19] But yeah it’s a weird moment if you don’t go in with that context Freddie explains that it’s all true, but makes Carly promise she won’t bring it up to Sam because if she finds out he talked about it, she’ll “kick him in places that shouldn’t be kicked.” Meanwhile, Spencer and his prison students build a massive pair of pants, and a few of the prisoners hide inside of the pants when he’s in another room. Spencer is apparently the strongest man in the world because he brings the pants home, and in his own words, drags it upstairs, meaning he pulled the weight of two full-bodies adults up to his apartment all on his own. The trio have a confrontation and discussion about the kiss, at the same time that the prisoners break out of the pants, tying them up in the apartment. Forced to work things out, they all agree to never keep secrets, telling Carly they’ll tell her anything. Carly then asks a series of follow-ups about the kiss, including if it was something they both enjoyed doing, leaving an awkward silence as the pair really aren’t sure if they’re ready to say the truth out loud. Spencer runs back in, but is so distracted by trying to bang a girl he met who likes banjo music that he doesn’t even notice the kids are tied up. To be fair tho, these three are basically YouTubers. I imagine this isn’t the weirdest thing he’s walked in on. In episode 2, the iCarly gang do a tribute to their favorite network, Food TV, a parody of the Food Network. In the segment, they speak about their favorite chef, Ricky Flames, who challenges people to sporadic cooking competitions, and they then show off Spencer’s special recipe, Spaghetti Tacos. The next day, Spencer rushes into the trio’s school to announce that Food TV got in contact with him about the iCarly webcast, and that they want to feature iCarly in an episode of the show. Carly says that since it’s Spencer’s recipe, he deserves credit, but Spencer says helping grow iCarly.com is much more important, before he electrocutes himself because Sam hooked up a security system to her locker Spencer runs off, having seen a vision in his electrocuted state which he is convinced showed him the future, and later on Food TV arrives to film a segment on iCarly. [0:79 - 07:34] But it turns out that they are on Ricky Flames’ show and are challenged to a foot fight as Freddie makes a pog face. They have the competition downstairs, and things are fierce, but somehow the iCarly gang win, a shocking outcome considering that Ricky Flames has never lost a cooking competition in his entire life. This causes him to have a physical and mental breakdown, and this is truly a level of defeat he has never experienced before. After he quits his show and becomes bedridden with depression, the gang try to force him to remember how he loves cooking, what it felt like to be a winner. Later on, he sends them a V-mail saying that thanks to them, he now DOES remember that winning was what kept him going: and he’s found the one place where he always can win.

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