iCarly: or, Rather iSparly, the Show I Watch – Part II: Seasons 3, 4, and 5

Here it is: Part II.

I know your lives have been on hold while you waited for it.

Haven’t read Part I? Or maybe you just want to relive the magic? It’s here.

SUB SECTION C: SEASON 3

Season 3!

Spencer is surprised to learn that Sam and Freddie kissed.

It starts off well with “iThink They Kissed”. Carly finds out that Sam and Freddie kissed and never told her about it, and is very upset and feeling pretty betrayed by the secrecy. The second she gets the chance, she starts talking to Spencer about it. He tells her to calm down, and that just makes her freak out even more.She says that guys should never tell girls to calm down, and she starts hitting him.I love how she sets them up in that male-female dichotomy, and typically that sort of speak refers to husbands or boyfriends. He suffers the hitting, and says, “Most guys have to get married to suffer this kind of abuse.”

Most guys have to get married to suffer this kind of abuse.

That’s the second time there has been a joke about Spencer and Carly being like a married couple. WIFE MUCH?

What makes it even perfect is how apt the comparison is, for that scene even more particularly than the series as a whole, which is saying A LOT.

And it’s great how much Spencer wants to gossip about Freddie and Sam. He’s friends with Freddie, and must know about Freddie’s crush on Carly (I mean I can’t think of a specific time when he talks about it, but it would be impossible for him not to know), but he seems like such a Seddie shipper. It only gets more apparent.

Even though Sam and Carly are the closest of friends – more than sisters – there really is this sense that Carly and Spencer are a unit apart from the other two in so many ways (besides the obvious ones, like the fact that they’re family and live together, etc.), and Freddie and Sam are this other unit. This scene in “iThink They Kissed” really shows that off. It makes sense that Spencer is the person Carly talks to about Sam and Freddie, but she doesn’t really have to talk to anyone at all, does she?

It’s hard to describe how I’m seeing this unit-thing I’m describing, so I hate blabbering on inarticulately like this, but there’s something real here that I’m trying to get at. Carly and Sam, and Carly and Freddie, and Carly and Sam/Freddie spend most of their time harmoniously, but sometimes there are oppositions that are set up, like in this episode.

But Carly and Spencer are always on the same team. There’s never a divergence. “iLook Alike” and “iDate a Bad Boy” come close, but it’s not really the same. Even in “iDate A Bad Boy”, Carly complains a little to Sam, but offhandedly. They never plot together against Spencer even though that’s Sam’s specialty. Even though Carly is furious at Spencer in those two situations, they even get along while they’re fighting. It’s the sort of fighting that happens between two people that love and trust each other completely. When Carly fights with Sam and/or Freddie, it’s not like that.

In the next episode, 3×02 “iCook”, Spencer comes to school in his pajamas because he’s got exciting news for the kids. Unfortunately, Sam has electrified her locker to protect against theft, and Spencer gets electrocuted when he leans back against it.Carly goes back home and takes care of him. Freddie comes too, though I’m not sure why. If anyone should have come, it should have been Sam.2×03 “iSpeed Date” is another great Spencer/Carly episode, if the scenes are few. Carly doesn’t have a date to the “girl’s choice” dance, so Sam, against Carly’s wishes, advertises on iCarly for a guy. So many guys show up to try out for the date that they do a speed-dating thing where Spencer, Carly, Sam, and Freddie each spend 15 seconds with a potential.

Freddie was obviously turning down every good looking guy. We’re only shown two of Spencer’s interviews, and one doesn’t really count because Spencer does his own thing and scares the guy away. But in the other one, he says, “So you’d like to take Carly to the dance,” and the guy responds, “I’d rather just make out with her,”

And Spencer instantly yells, “Next!”I would expect nothing less, but it’s gratifying to see protective-big-brother Spencer (aka shipping goggles’ jealous-big-brother-Spencer), and character continuity from “iDate a Bad Boy”.Later, he’s pacing around nervously downstairs waiting for her to come down.When she shows up at the top of the stairs dressed for the dance in a short skirt (and a long jacket), Spencer totally looks her over disapprovingly. I don’t think she’s dressed all that scandalously.She asks, “Does this look cute?”, and he says, “Maybe a little too cute.” And he makes a face.Then he tries to have “the talk” with her, but he doesn’t get very far.

Carly jumps up to her feet and screams that she’s not having that conversation with him, and he’s immediately and obviously relieved.

I really like this, because even though they are SO close, that sort of sex talk is still uncomfortable to them, which is so important when you’re creating the right kind of chemistry for that sort of relationship (and by that I of course mean the fictional relationship that I fantasize about in my head). I just don’t find that there’s quite as much satisfaction to an incestuous relationship occurring in a household where they’re very open about sex. The Dreamers might be a good example. I still enjoy the movie because it’s about incestuous twins who love each other very much, but that enjoyment I get from shipping, that satisfaction, is just so much less in those cases.

Look at how distressed Spencer is when Carly walks over to answer the door:Carly tells her date he looks nice when she answers the door. He says that he was going to say the the same thing to her. Spencer snaps, “Everyone looks nice,” annoyedly. Awww. Then he takes a picture of them. Unlike Carly, her date is very sharply dressed. I mean, WOW. He could puncture the hull of an empire class Fire Nation battleship.Again I have to promise you that I’m not going to mention every episode, but in 2×04 “iCarly Awards” there really is stuff I HAVE to tell you about. Freddie comes into the apartment as everyone is getting ready for the awards, and informs them all that European swimsuit models are waiting down in the lobby for their photo shoot.Spencer is very interested in this news, and pesters Freddie with questions.

Carly cuts him off. He’s supposed to be making the awards for the iCarly awards, but she believes them to already be done so her impatience is hardly necessary. And she’s still wearing her bathrobe! It’s not like the show is starting any minute. Unfortunately, there has been a misunderstanding, and Spencer hasn’t made enough awards. He says he can get them all done in time, but not without help.Then he announces that the models could probably help him. Carly curtly chastises him, saying that he just wants to flirt with European swimsuit models. He begins indignant, and then humorously confirms that she’s right.She’s not very happy about it.He runs off to get them.(Yes, she does keep holding her hand out like that after he’s left the apartment.)

Obviously there’s (at least) two ways to look at this kind of thing: 1) the reasonable, right way intended by the writers, 2) my crazy-ass, perverted way. In way #1 Carly is just being a typical teasing little sister, mixed in with her impatience and annoyance about the awards. But way number two is so much more fun, and honestly Carly could definitely be painted as jealous in this scene.  I mean if she were Sam and Spencer were Freddie this would probably be considered in the upper echelon of Seddie scenes because of Sam’s “jealousy”.

It turns out that the European swimsuit models are men.

But he still needs them for labor. When their photographer comes looking for them, Spencer ties him up. That’s how much he cares about making the awards for the show.

The awards, as it turns out, are little doll-sized Carlys that need to be assembled and dressed. Sometimes they’re not quite completed.I’m not even going to comment.

Spencer pulls it off, and then at the end, Carly does a surprise award for best big brother and best award maker.Awww.I mean could these two be any cuter?

And I feel like there’s something uber possessive about Carly’s hug.

For his award, Carly gives him the one he mistakenly made at the beginning:I’m not saying it’s weird that Spencer made a 10-foot sculpture of his sister, or that it’s weird she gave it back to him and he will now have it in his room. But some people might find that a little…weird. Especially given the fact that Spencer already has a history of weird relations with inanimate women:

And there’s another example too.

Episode 3×08 is “iQuit iCarly”, in which Carly and Sam have a serious fight. I would say that their fight was contrived, although honestly I’m more likely to wonder why they don’t have one in every single episode. Well, why Carly doesn’t freak out on Sam every episode. I love Sam, but she is awful. She’s an awful friend (most of the time). She’s an awful person to be around. Sam can have no reasonable complaint against Carly, truly.

Anyway, Spencer and Gibby are hanging, and Gibby brings up the tiff, and Spencer is very nonchalant, and shrugs it off and says that it’ll be fine. And it seems like he’s too self-involved to care. But I think he’s just being wise. I mean everyone knows Sam and Carly are going to make up (and by everyone I mean the audience, of course), and they do by the end of the episode without actually talking through their issues at all. (And I prefer it that way, because it’s like a clear statement that their issues don’t really matter. Which they don’t, not really. And it wouldn’t make sense for them to be solved in a single episode anyway. )

So maybe Spencer isn’t sweating it because he knows even better than Carly and Sam just how good of friends they are and how important they are to each other and he’s not even worried that they’re fighting because that’s how confident he is that it’ll all get smoothed out.

And he’s 100 percent right.

The fight worsens after this scene, and Carly quits iCarly, as does Sam. She runs into Spencer, who’s all excited about his b-plot boat, and Freddie says to her, “He doesn’t know?” Freddie is that cool that he knows that Spencer would be acting differently if he knew what Carly was actually going through and what had just happened.

And then Carly says that she’ll tell Spencer later. The conversation is going to be so important that she can’t just tell him like that and has to actually make a moment in order to have that conversation, because that’s how involved they are in each others’ lives. Or maybe she knows she’ll break down and cry and wants it to be a private moment with Spencer.

Carly and Sam end up on competing teams to make a video, and they want to shoot some footage off the window-washer’s scaffolding outside of the top floor. Spencer is super worried and isn’t going to let her do it, but the window-washer is going to be there with harnesses and everything so he finally agrees. But he’s downstairs and hears the screaming and looks up and sees her when she falls on the tenuous scaffolding (because she and Sam were fighting more and end up pretty much daring each other into stupid things while the window washer was away), and he screams his lungs out, but still has the presence of mind to grab a rope, and then he takes off running after them.And then he uses the rope to pull Carly and Sam (who has also fallen) up to the window, and then he and Freddie pull them in – Freddie pulling in Sam and Spencer pulling in Carly.

There’s nothing remarkable (aside from the perilous events themselves) about this, but it just feels like such a shippy moment. More so for Seddie than Sparly. And I’m not going to squee over Freddie/Sam here too much, but just look at this:He’s so focused on her! He cares about Carly too, of course, but he’s so concerned about Sam in this scene.

I JUST WANT TO DIE.

I made this GIF-in-reverse where it almost sorta looks like she’s running into arms. If you ignore how it looks exactly like it’s in-reverse.It also sort of looks like he’s used the rope to wrangle her and pull her towards him against her will. Ignore that too.

And, of course, Seddie scene ≠ Sparly scene. But sometimes when it’s just the four of them, and Sam and Freddie are being Seddie-ish, it feels like fate pushing us towards Spencer/Carly. On the one hand, that’s just silly. Not even because of the incest, but because we’re not all perfectly paired off like animals on Noah’s Ark, and especially not any given group of four people. But on the other hand, that’s a formula we see often enough. Like a double date, where one of the couples aren’t actually dating, but when the other couple starts making out or is acting all couple-y and it gets all awkward and wonderful? And then they get together in the end, of course.

It sort of happens in this scene, in another way. At the end, Carly and Sam reunite, and another set – mini-thems – also reconcile. So Freddie and Spencer shrug and hug as well.But first, after Carly and Sam have been pulled inside, Spencer hugs BOTH of them and it’s so sweet. He loves Sam too, both for herself and as Carly’s friend.

And then the girls start crying, and Spencer pushes them together so they can hug each other. It’s just so PERFECT! I mean the situation as a whole is contrived (the accident with the scaffolding), but the way Spencer knows what they need and gives them that little nudge is just so fantastically beautiful and wonderful.

You’ll have to excuse my hyperbolic language, but I’ve recently become a tumblr user and those folks know how to exaggerate, and it’s addictive. They sweep you up into their fangirling and then that’s where you live, lofty in that tornado.

And there’s so many ways that situation could have been resolved without Spencer ever being involved, but the writers were wonderful and decided that if Carly’s life was going to be in danger, then Spencer, her brother, was going to help save her and it’s beautiful because the writers really care about this relationship. They sacrifice it for cheap humor so much less often than they could and I love them for that.

And before I forget, I know I mentioned that there are a lot of references to Spencer’s groin, often because of him being hurt there, or getting a rash there, or some such thing. And I know I mentioned Carly ordering him to bathe, and saying she ought to give him a tick bath. But there’s even more: Spencer is constantly in the shower, and things happen to him there. He discovers chicks after thinking they were soap and thank God he realized before…“nevermind”,or he goes into the bathroom to take a long shower to think because his best ideas come to him “when he’s wet”. Either Spencer is supposed to be some sort of neat freak, or the writers are obsessed with his body and its cleanliness. Spencer’s always cleaning out his mouth too, and scrubbing it, because of whoever kissed him or whatever he accidentally drank.It could almost be an indication that he could never belong with Sam, because Sam is the complete opposite. She’s constantly filthy, and there are jokes about her rarely bathing, or washing her hands, and she’ll eat almost anything. That’s way too opposite to be even a possible “opposites-attract” sort of deal. But Carly’s the same as Spencer, with regards to showers/bathing. Not only do we have the reference of every time she has told Spencer to take one. But in “iFight Shelby Marx” and 2×09 “iGive Away A Car” we learn that Carly likes to take long showers when she’s depressed or needs to think, even taking a chair in there. In 5×01 “iLost My Mind”, Carly goes to rinse her mouth out after licking Sam’s hand. Then again who wouldn’t?

Spencer and Sam have quite a few parallels because they’re sort of the crazy quirky ones contrasting with the normalness of Carly and Freddie.

In 3×10 “iWas A Pageant Girl”, Sam throws a tantrum in order to get Carly to do something, and Carly gives in. Then Spencer throws a tantrum to get Freddie to do something, and then Freddie gives in.

I mean, I don’t really feel the need to make a case against Spencer/Sam, especially not after some of the Sam/Freddie developments, but I had might as well make a few points as they come up.(But don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Spam or think it’s the worst ship for iCarly. In fact, under different circumstances, uniting Sam to Carly through a union with Carly’s brother would be something I would like. I like tidy things like that. And I like the idea of Spencer caring about Sam as his friend’s little sister and then growing to care for her in her own right. But aside from my hearty shipping of Spencer/Carly and Freddie/Sam, Spencer and Sam really aren’t too well-suited to each other.)

Spencer wants Freddie to go on a double date with him. What’s hilarious is that to kill time before their reservation, the four of them begin to play a game, and Spencer and Freddie get so into the game that they completely ignore their dates.

Another example of Spencer trying really hard to get a girlfriend. Not.

And Spencer is always doing strange movements with his body, which I sort of mentioned but I don’t think I described it enough for you to fully grasp.

In “iSpeed Date”, he gets an application for his “pear phone” that beeps 180 times a day warning him that it’s time for 10 seconds of exercise.

Hip swivels

His choice of exercise moves included many “suggestive” motions.

Squat thrusts

Windmills was another activity suggested by his app. Freddie comes up behind him, and Spencer accidentally knocks him out. Carly ignores the event, but Sam claps and cheers. That’s what I mean by Sam always giving Freddie attention – even if it’s negative – while sometimes Carly doesn’t even act like he’s there.

Sam jumps in and does the windmills with Spencer. And I’m not saying Carly got jealous, but I am saying that these following stills make it look like she was.

So she joins in.(Sam is so obviously the best at it that I feel bad for the others.)

I’m not sure what episode this is from, only that I haven’t seen it. Is it 5×05…? Hmmm. All I can say is that I’m pretty excited, if this is anything to go by.

In 3×05 “iHave My Principals”, Spencer finds a mechanical bull at the junkyard. I don’t even need to explain that one.

This scene comes in 3×07 “iMove Out”. It’s actually the least shippy moment in the entire series as far as I’m concerned, in that Carly lets Spencer climb out on a ledge to retrieve a cat. I would NEVER let someone in my family do that. But…it does look like Carly is checking out Spencer’s butt, so much that I had to make a GIF of it. I’M NOT SAYING SHE IS! I’m just saying it looks like it.  This gif doesn’t even do it justice, because “it” goes on for three times as long as the duration the GIF records.(I’m officially embarrassed now.)

Goodbye hug

3×13 “iSpace Out” is probably one of my favorite episodes, even though its plot is even more ridiculous than what you can usually expect from this show. The trio goes away after being given the chance to compete to do their webshow from space.Once Carly has left the house, Spencer sees a little girl who sort of runs around and screams, although she never does anything too destructive.Spencer calls the police to come get the girl, but she disappears every time they show up.He’s told to call a psychologist, so he sees one, and the psychologist deems that this little girl is a manifestation of Spencer’s mind, his way of dealing with Carly’s absence. He sees the little girl Carly used to be, who was always around him, and he misses her.

Like how do I even deal with how great this is?First of all, how wonderful is it that Spencer’s big plans while he has the apartment to himself is to do exactly what he would be doing while she was there, namely eating pizza and watching TV?

Then there’s the psychologist who spends all of three minutes talking to Spencer, and in those three minutes decides that Spencer loves Carly so much that he’s actually having a psychotic break because she left for the weekend.

Then there’s Spencer, who actually believes what the psychologist told him, even though the little girl doesn’t look anything like Carly (she’s blond) and it all seemed so real to him. But he knows that he loves Carly so much that him having a psychological collapse because she left FOR THE WEEKEND is more likely than a girl who moves quickly and knows how to hide.

Carly arrives home in the middle of the night. Spencer, for once, grabs a sensible weapon.

Of course he hugs her when she returns.

And it’s probably the longest hug ever, because he looks around for the little girl. (Carly should get off his back about working out.)And then he’s so awkward but adorable when he tells her that he missed her. (During the, what?, 36 hours she was gone?)

Spencer: “I just missed you. A lot.” Carly: “Awwww.”

“And I missed your spine.”

It’s all just so lovely.

And again, it’s not that there’s incest subtext here. There’s not. (Although that spine business IS  interesting – my favorite word.) But I feel that there’s some…link…to be made between intense codependence and pseudo-marriage, and a sort of emotional incest, or totally undiscovered incestuous feelings. I think that’s kind of how Neil Jordan describes his Cesare and Lucrezia in The Borgias – they have an incestuous love for each other but they don’t know it and it may never go anywhere further than that.

Or the “psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent” brothers we have in the Winchesters on Supernatural. They’re not incestuous. But their codependence and love for each other takes things to a level that excludes significant others.  The girl was real. At least that’s what we’re to assume, because Carly sees her as well at the end of the episode, but Carly wasn’t exactly mentally stable herself after some of the tests she had to undergo on her little space adventure. So maybe she and Spencer were actually having the same hallucination, and isn’t that delightful? In 1×03 “iDream Of Dance”, they have the same dream, so maybe it’s not such a crazy idea.Spencer and Carly are so close that they actually share hallucination/dream space.

I don’t know if this will come up on the show – I don’t know how the show will end or when – but Seattle has a ton of colleges. In fact, I have three friends who all went to college in Seattle, and none of them went to the same school. And I don’t even have that many friends. So, conceivably, Carly doesn’t have to go anywhere. She could still live with Spencer and go to college while living there. They seem to live downtown, which makes travel that much easier. I’m just sayin’.

 “iFix A Popstar” (3×14) is an episode that always stuck in my head as being rather boring and generally uncomfortable to watch, although it has few choice moments. Spencer’s b-plot is that he is dating Gibby’s mother, who he met independently on the street, and didn’t know who she was. Her face seems familiar to him, but it takes Gibby actually walking in on one of their dates for the truth to come out.After that, Spencer can’t see her as anything other than Gibby.I have to love that Carly is indirectly responsible for this relationship of Spencer’s not working out. Even more so than that, because Gibby’s mother begins to only be able to see Carly in Spencer’s face.I was thrilled to see this relationship of Spencer’s in particular fall apart, because Gibby’s mother is probably threat #1. Spencer and Carly are never going to get together, so the best I can hope for is for the show to end with both of them single. But if Spencer were to end up with someone, Gibby’s mother is the best candidate from the writers’ perspective. He really liked her at first, and she really liked him, his socks too. And look at the children she raised! Spencer likes them and he’s popular with them. Plus she’s not just a one-off character: she’s Gibby’s mom! She appears in several episodes, and is mentioned in even more. But even if she’s not around, she’s still a character however unknown because she’s the mother of a regular!

And I don’t think I said this already, but there isn’t necessarily a reason why Spencer should be single. He could have a regular girlfriend, he could have a fiancée, he could even be married. He could have a love interest who lives in the building and they have flirtations every other episode as their love story builds. There would be plenty of storylines that could go along with those developments, even if he had always been married since before the show started. But they left him single, without a love interest he dates in more than one episode. The girl who liked him in the tux makes a secondary appearance a season later, but it’s because she thinks Spencer is dead and has nothing to do with being interested in him, or a continued relationship. And, in fact, when she learns Spencer’s not dead and starts calling him a freak, Carly just stands there laughing, enjoying it all, and even remarking upon the fact that she’s enjoying it all. (That’s 3×12 “iEnrage Gibby”).

Honey, I’m home! (paraphrased)

Spencer is upset by his Gibby dilemma, and is sitting on the couch pensively when Carly comes home from school. She walks in the door, and says hello to him, and he sort of ignores her although for some reason it didn’t seem rude. Well, Carly isn’t having any of that.

She reminds him again that she just walked through the door, and when she still doesn’t get a response she stops mid-unloading, walks over to him, and does the silly belly dance that they do in the Shay family. (We saw this in iWanna Stay With Spencer and elsewhere.)This gets his attention, and he finally tells her what his problem is. THEN she returns to hanging her back-pack up. But she couldn’t wait, not even during the 10 seconds it would have taken for her to hang her backpack up. She had to get some attention from him immediately.

This is another one of those small things that inadvertently reveals so much about their relationship. When she walks through the door she expects a raucous and loving greeting from her brother. Not because she has a sense of entitlement, but because that’s what she’s used to, that’s what he always does. Because Spencer loves her so much that he’s thrilled every time he sees her and he’s always happy when she gets home. I mean, I love my family, but what they’re going to get from me most days is a “hello” through my closed bedroom door, and maybe a “How was work?” when I get up to go to the bathroom an hour later.

Not at Spencer and Carly Shay’s apartment. They’re like dogs.

3×16 “iWon’t Cancel The Show” is an episode where circumstances just seem to point at a fated Sparly.Spencer met a very “classy lady”, a “real woman” named Candice, and has invited her over for dinner.She likes sophisticated men, so he’s bought fake glasses and is wearing a nice suit, and cooking a nice dinner. (He’s an impressive cook when things don’t catch fire.And the Shays happen to have my favorite cook book: America’s Test Kitchen. It’s no wonder Spencer cooks such nice things. Be warned: they call for buttermilk in what seems like every recipe.)Spencer is the highest of larious when he tries to be suave.

(This is just like “iWin A Date” when he tried to set up a profile on a dating website and couldn’t because he doesn’t know how to be himself when he’s courting and wooing.)

But it’s an iCarly night, and Sam has been arrested after an incident with a foreign dignitary. Not only has iCarly never been cancelled, but Spencer and Carly’s dad is going to be able to watch this episode, for the first time ever.

–

So Carly has to ask Spencer to co-host with her, even though Gibby is there, even though Freddie can set-up an unmanned camera and host too (it just has to be stationary), even though the show is better with but doesn’t necessarily have to have two hosts. And just a note: Carly and Gibby actually do iCarly all by themselves in 5×03 (even if it doesn’t go too well, that’s little to with the fact that there’s only two people involved), so clearly Carly doesn’t really need Spencer to co-host with her.

I command that you reschedule, slave.

She tells him to reschedule his date (nonchalantly, like it’s no big deal, like she expects him to do it because he’s Spencer and that’s the sort of thing he does for her, and because dates come and go but sisters are forever and iCarly proves this over and over again), but it’s too late, the date’s already on her way. Carly asks him to have her wait while he does the show. No.

She tells him that his date can come up on and watch the show – that’s a definite no. “I can’t have her thinking I spend my time with teenagers doing goofy stuff.” LOLOLOLOL. The statement’s ironic enough on its own, but Carly says, “That’s like ALL you do.” And she’s right. And she knows that about him, and he knows that about himself, and normally it doesn’t even matter. And the relationship with his date was doomed from the start because he doesn’t belong with a woman like that, he needs to be with a woman who will let him be who he is. (This is the guy who only went to three days of law school – he clearly can’t handle faking it for very long.)After he refuses again, kindly, sympathetically, reminding her that if it were any other night of course he’d do it, she pulls out the big guns and starts to cry.Both Sam and Spencer have thrown all-out tantrums before (like I mentioned), but Carly goes with the classier sad-cry.Well, Spencer bends pretty quickly under that pressure and agrees. Carly snaps back immediately, and even though Spencer says that he feels duped, he certainly doesn’t take the agreement back, even though by rights he could.

Carly tells him to take off his glasses and jacket. He doesn’t want to, because he looks sophisticated. She tells him, “This is iCarly. We don’t do sophisticated.” And she hits him.

Spencer tries to juggle the date and the show, running back and forth – hilarity ensues, you know the drill. And each time Carly pleads with him not to go.What’s interesting is that he gives priority to the show, even though Carly guilted him into it, and he grows impatient with his date, who tries to tell him a story. Now, this woman is BORING, and her story is even worse, but still. He tells Carly that she “wouldn’t shut up.”You know what else is interesting (there’s that word again!)? Spencer didn’t rehearse for the show at all, doesn’t even know what bits they’re doing, but Carly trusts him to co-host, without giving him barely any direction. And they work together so well. He’s a bit more awkward than Sam, but he’s distracted, and think how many times Sam has done the show! It just goes to show how perfect Carly and Spencer are together.

It does. OK?!!!Remember when Carly told Spencer to shave his toes? Well in one of the iCarly bits, she bites his foot. It’s seriously the most random thing ever, and we’re talking about iCarly here. I can’t believe Miranda Cosgrove actually bit Jerry Trainor’s foot. Also, this is a skit with recurring characters, and Carly’s character tends to be a bit flirtatious with the other character (who is typically played by Sam), even asking him to be her boyfriend in a later episode.So you could almost say they star as romantic opposites in this skit.

You could. OK?!!!Once the little skit is over Spencer wants to run downstairs again, but she clings to his arm and begs him to stay until the show is over. He tells her he’ll only be gone for three minutes, and she petulantly reminds him that that’s what he said last time. She really wants him to stay. And she’s upset. But then he takes off his costume eyebrows and puts them on her, and she breaks down in a smile and is suddenly in a great mood. She loves him so much.They do another skit, and Candice walks up and interrupts it. (In this skit Carly is acting as a nanny to a baby Spencer. Sort of like their real life.) Carly doesn’t want anyone to break character, even though Candice walked right in front of the camera and Spencer already broke character to speak to her. Carly stuffs his face with food so that he can’t talk, and she starts saying things that would probably frighten any normal woman away, let alone one who’s already unlikely to enjoy these antics. Then Spencer starts choking on the food. She presses down on the baby’s stomach (but not his, so why this works I don’t understand), and he projectile coughs the food out, and it hits her in the face. The writers certainly didn’t like her, did they? She leaves, as you can imagine, and Spencer really doesn’t seem all that disappointed. At all.

This is one of the last shots of the episode, and as you can see, Spencer is smiling.

Perfection.

I mean, an episode about Spencer trying to go on a date with a sophisticated woman was good enough, because it was already doomed. But the fact that Carly drags him away from his date the entire episode, and in many ways is ultimately responsible for her leaving, just makes it that much better.

The nature of acting, of watching a performance on screen (or especially on stage), often necessitates more physicality in interaction than you might see in the real world. There’s a staging to every scene, a choreography of movement – where a normal person might just sit on the couch, an actor will walk around the room, pace, stop to look out the window – things like that. And when two people are sharing a scene, they’ll often touch, hug, kiss, etc., more than two people having the same moment in real life would. I realize this.

But Carly and Spencer are constantly grabbing each other. Carly frequently holds onto Spencer’s hand. Sometimes she drags him off so that she can speak to him – I’ve provided plenty of pictures and GIFs of that – but sometimes she’ll just hold onto his hand even without forcing him to change his location. It’s just a something that very often happens between them. And it’s unusual. I just don’t think you’d see a lot of that in real life between typical siblings. (Maybe it’s just that I’m not a very tactile person.) So I gave that whole disclaimer-preamble so you’d know that I’m aware there’s a theatrical reason for this, but I’d obviously like to ascribe a little more to it.In 3×20 “iBeat The Heat”, Carly does this. Twice, actually. Spencer is standing by the door, and she grabs his hand and talks to him, even though she never pulls him anywhere, they just stand in that exact same spot by the door and have their conversation. I mean, I know that it’s mostly her trying to keep his attention on her, especially since there’s a lot going on in the room and she needs him to keep his focus on her, but still.

And it’s often the case that two characters need to go to a corner and confer secretly about whatever wackiness is going on, but Spencer and Carly are the ones who are constantly grabbing each other’s hands to do it. Spencer just gestures to the others, beckoning them with a finger. Carly, when she needs to talk to Freddie or Sam, usually just pushes them and then ends the touch.In this same episode, that little boy who terrorizes Spencer, Chuck, the one that Carly was tutoring when the two of them pranked the boy together, shows up. You remember Chuck.Spencer and Carly’s apartment is the only one in the building with power and air conditioning during a heat wave because Spencer has a generator. Well, of course, Spencer isn’t going to let that boy and his father into the apartment, but then Chuck’s older sister, Gia, comes to stand with them, Spencer decides to put up with everything Chuck does just so he can talk to Gia.Well, they never tell us how old Gia is, but she looks young enough that she could be a high schooler. Spencer is a lot older than Carly, but that sort of age difference between siblings is definitely not typical, and Chuck is even younger than Carly, so it’s most likely that Gia is around Carly’s age. Spencer never asks how old she is, there’s no passing line about the fact that she’s home visiting from college or anything like that. I mean, she’s living at home with her father and her younger brother who is probably middle-school aged. Chances are she’s in high school.

Anyway, my point is, that girl totally could have been Carly’s age and Spencer was totally into her.

Just saying.

An it’s not even necessary to point this out because it’s hardly remarkable, but it does bear knowing that Freddie has expressed appreciation for at least two of Spencer’s girlfriends.

There’s even more in this episode too: once Spencer hooks up the super powerful Norwegian air conditioner he got, he and the trio lean over it to enjoy the blast of cool air. Spencer then says that now he doesn’t need the ice in his pants, and he pulls a ziplock full of ice right out of his pants.  Then he hands it to Carly, placing it against her neck. She says “ew” but not in a very heartful way, and she totally leaves it there. If Spencer didn’t need the ice in his pants anymore, she sure doesn’t need it on her neck, which is getting full exposure to the cold air.Just saying.The saga of the brotherhood of the traveling bag of ice continues in 5×03 “iCan’t Take It” after Sam accidentally kicks Spencer in the nethers. Yeah.

The apartment fills up with neighbors, but they’re all sort of arguing and not really getting along. Sweet-hearted Carly decides to give a speech. She begins by saying, “Maybe it’s not so bad…” And Spencer interrupts her, saying that it is so bad. She gives him an unappreciative look, and he’s appropriately abashed.Carly continues her speech about community, and knowing each others’ names just like the olden days, and everything golden like that, but the power comes back on and everyone flees the apartment. You can tell Carly is really upset. Freddie sort of clucks sympathetically, but Spencer is the only one who tells her seriously that he liked her speech.SUB SECTION D: SEASON 4

Season 4!

RANDOM DANCING!!!!! 

Don’t talk about what the goat did!

4×01 is called “iGot A Hot Room”, which is a very strange title. But ignore the title. It’s Carly’s birthday!

Spencer is determined to give her the best birthday ever, because she’s turning 16 (I believe, it’s not actually mentioned, she could even be turning 17), and apparently because her last birthday didn’t go so well, something about a goat at a petting zoo. Another innuendo. I figure it started humping her. But it might have also had something to do with her claustrophobia issues, as she starts bleating during her next anxiety attack, in 4×02 “iSam’s Mom”.

(Just a note: my 720p download of “iGot a Hot Room” includes hard-coded Spanish subtitles. So you get to learn some Spanish today!)When she gets up the morning of and comes downstairs, Spencer pretends like it’s no a big deal. He sends her to the bathroom to get the milk for their boring, fiber-filled cereal. She says, “You promised to stop drinking milk in the shower”, and he retorts, “Stop trying to change me!” See what I mean about the constant references to Spencer in the shower. And there are just as many references to strange things he does there, drinking milk is the least of them.

And we hear that Carly is trying to form Spencer into the perfect man, as most wives try to do. WIFE MUCH? I swear, I heard this exact same line the other night, said by the husband to the wife. What was it? The Middle, maybe?While she’s away in the bathroom, Spencer calls in Sam, Freddy, Gibby, and the guy from the smoothie shop who is catering the affair, T-Bo. Carly is happy. She even drops the milk in excitement. She looks like Lucille when Gene Parmesan removes ones of his disguises:And Spencer planned it all. Awww. And Carly knows it. She doesn’t even wonder if one of the others was responsible.While they dine on their glorious breakfast of waffle bouquets and bacon balls,Carly gets on Spencer’s case about getting a haircut. He tells her she is going to get a funtastic present from him, and her first guess and most ardent wish is that he should get a haircut.

“No.”

“Please get a haircut.”

“No!”

“Please.”

“For my birthday?”

 

Spencer’s hair has gotten ridiculously long. So I’m totally on Carly’s side. He tells her he doesn’t want one, but she INSISTS, for her birthday, and makes puppy dog eyes, the ones he’s can never resist. (And she’s about to eat a strawberry! Though she’s certainly no match for Katherine.)

“Ok. I’ll get a haircut.”

So he agrees. And Carly is thrilled. And I could go on and on about how Carly wants him to be good looking for herself, and maybe I will, but I can say from the experience of many a year begging my own brother to go get a haircut that sometimes you just think it’s what needs to be done.

Everyone admires his new haircut. (Especially me.) In fact, let’s celebrate:He shows off his haircut with much pomp and circumstance when Carly comes home.

Carly has to run her fingers through it. Because…? I got nothing. (And this time she didn’t get chicken fat on her fingers – re: “iWin A Date”)Carly is happy when he tells her he’s taking her (and company) to Petrosini’s for dinner. (They must have a lot of Italians in their neighborhood – except for the Groovy Smoothie every eatery seems to end in an ini.)That night, Spencer sends Carly to her room to get a new jacket, even though as he tells Sam and Freddie, “I actually really like the jacket she’s wearing”. Like what an odd thing to say, you know? Does a guy really notice his sister’s clothes like that? I mean, it’s one thing to say, “Oh you look nice” when she first walks out in the outfit, but this was different. *continues to grasp at phantom straws and regrets nothing*No matter. He sent her to her room so she would see the gummy bear lamp that he made for her.

But it catches on fire, and her whole room goes ablaze.

Now Spencer’s creations combusting is a running gag (if you haven’t noticed by now), but sometimes things that aren’t even remotely flammable or electronic in anyway catch on fire, so it’s more like Spencer is cursed. It’s not always his fault, is my point. Poor Carly: it’s always her stuff that burns.

Carly begins crying, and she and Sam hug while Spencer gets dirty looks from the firemen. No, not those kind of dirty looks, though I’m sure even the firemen like his new haircut. The exasperated kind of dirty look. Spencer introduces himself, and the fireman cuts him off: “We know who you are.” LOL.

Sam tells Carly that she can come stay at the Puckett’s, and Carly starts crying even harder. Commentary isn’t even necessary.

Don’t worry, there isn’t going to be another hasty wish and a visit from an angel. Actually the devil comes through in this episode: the insurance company. The insurance payout ends up being an enormous sum of money because there was an antique in Carly’s room and that burned up. So Spencer uses all of the money to build Carly a fabulous new room that will “make all the other teenage girls cry.”

But what’s so cute is not only the fact that he spends 80,000+ dollars of insurance money on Carly’s bedroom (in an apartment that they rent), but how much he wants to surprise her. He hides the check from her and sends her to the smoothie shop to get a job. She doesn’t want to go upstairs when she gets home, but Spencer drags her there. Literally.He just loves doing things that way, and it shows how much he loves her and why he’s so perfect for her.

It’s just like “iPromote Techfoots”: when they have more money than they could ever fathom, they spend it all on the other.

Now, prepare yourself for an overindulgence of sugary cuteness.

“Who has the best big brother in the world?”

“You.”

And then they hug at the end, of course.They have the perfect hugs because he’s so much bigger than she is.

And Sam and Gibby, and Freddie too are watching so happily. (shhh: they ship it.)Just a Seddie note: lest you be confused by the staging of this picture, Gibby had just pulled Sam off of Freddie after she jumped on top of him while he was on the bed. Sam and Freddie were very much up in each others’ space only a moment ago.In “iBeat The Heat”, Carly aks Freddie to give her a boost onto the counter for her speech, but he can’t do it. He’s not strong enough. Just saying. She tells him to stop trying because he’s embarrassing her. So I think Carly definitely wants a guy (like Spencer!) who is much bigger than her and strong enough to lift her up and carry her and swing her around. (Especially after a lifetime of being used to Spencer doing all of that.)

I was not thrilled about them adding the new set of Carly’s room (as cool as it is), because I was worried that if Carly and friends weren’t hanging out in the living room, they wouldn’t be interacting with Spencer as much. Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case.

Jerry Trainor with Jane Lynch, who plays Pam Puckett, Sam’s mom

In 4×02 “iSam’s Mom”, Sam has a big fight with her mother and moves in with Carly, without asking for Carly’s permission. Later on in the episode, Freddie is in danger (it’s a long story), so he and Mrs. Benson impose themselves on the Shays as well.

There have been other episodes, like “iBeat the Heat”, and 1×20 “iStakeout” (in which the police camp out at the apartment to watch a convenience store across the street), and others, that have been about guests staying at the apartment, and I really enjoy how Spencer and Carly respond. Even though Sam and Freddie and Gibby and whoever else are over ALL THE TIME, Carly and Spencer still hate it when anyone actually stays there for very long. They’re so protective of their inner sanctum, and so in-tune with each other and their set ways.There’s also a great scene when Sam shows up in the middle of the night to stay, and Spencer comes armed with a “suckduster”. Carly makes fun of him, though as I pointed out, she’s fought off the homeless with towels, and in 3×16 “iBelieve In Bigfoot” she armed herself with a baster. But anyway, Spencer retaliates in an intense suckduster attack. And we don’t even know how it ends because the scene ends first.Sam gets impatient with them and leaves the room! And they’re still going at it when the scene ends.4×03 “iGet Pranky” is sort of an odd episode. Sam and Freddie make fun of Carly because she has never pulled a prank. Only it’s not true, because Carly pulled that prank on Chuck. Well, continuity fail, not even an acknowledged one like the one in “iKiss” about Freddie never having kissed anyone. Carly goes to Spencer for help. Sounds like cheating to me, but you won’t hear me complaining.

But first we get to see the spoon hat he has just built. I have to say, I think the spoon hat is the coolest thing Spencer has ever made.

Well, Spencer can tell Carly is upset, probably from her lackluster reception of his spoon hat.He coaxes the story out of her after charming her with his hat.

Carly goes to Spencer with all of the problems I would use the internet to solve.

He’s afraid to help her, because he once had a pranking addiction, a story she has to coax out of him.Carly is either unconcerned about his addiction (even though we already know he has an addictive personality, if you recall the video game episode), or unfrightened by the story that put him off pranking forever. She puts on the spoon hat – because she knows him that well – and asks for his help again.He tries to resist at first. But he “can’t say ‘no’ to a girl in a spoon hat”.

Good to know.The addiction comes back. It has echoes of “iStage An Intervention”. In fact, that title would probably be more appropriate for this episode. Spencer spends most of the episode obnoxious, and then he gets beat up at the end. Considering how much interaction there is between Carly and Spencer, it’s rather disappointing on the Sparly front. But the spoon hat scene is pretty adorable.

Here’s a spam, part of the Spencer Pranks montage.Another thing of note in this episode: Sam is fed-up, like everyone else, with Spencer’s pranking, and admits to all in the room, including Spencer, perhaps without exactly wanting to, that she’d have done him violence if she didn’t have “a little crush on” him.

There’s a slight pause, while everyone sort of digests that tidbit, and then they all go on as if she’d never said it.

I’m secure enough in Seddie (and even in Sparly) that I don’t feel threatened by this. And that’s even ignoring the fact that a children’s TV show would never have a high schooler hook up with a 30 year-old, especially not one that had been shown knowing her since she was a young child.

Spencer with flashback Sam and Carly

So I mostly think it’s just kind of awesome that they threw that in there. I mean, it may never be referred to again, but viewers aren’t just going to forget that Sam admitted to having a small crush on Spencer. (The writers might. Stupid writers.) Obviously it’s just a silly little crush. She’s got epic love with Freddie. That’s not he point.But that kind of opens some doors, doesn’t it? Doors that weren’t really closed, but might have looked closed. You know, like slightly ajar doors. Plenty of 12+ young girls have crushes on celebrities that are in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, or even 50’s depending. But to have a crush on someone that old who you see everyday in the way that Sam sees Spencer? That’s a little different. That’s why it’s remarkable.

And Carly and Sam don’t have interchangeable love lives, but they more often share an opinion of a guy than they differ. “iDream of Dance”, 1×04 “iLike Jake”, “iSaw Him First”, 4×07 “iHire An Idiot” – just to name a few. And they share the only love interest who is not a one-off character: Freddie.

Just saying.

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Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Jennette McCurdy – dear Jennette – confessed to having a crush on Jerry Trainor at some point. I don’t have the source, or an exact quote, but I’ve seen it referenced in enough places to believe it’s legitimate.Well, I mean, who wouldn’t? Right?

On the one hand, I don’t usually pay too much attention to when costars compliment each other in that way. Like when an interviewer asks so-and-so how so-and-so kissed, and they say it was nice, and make some joke about the spouse listening. That’s just Hollywood talk. But on the other hand, I can’t believe Jennette admitted to it. Because of the circumstances particular to this situation, I totally believe her.

What a wildly appropriate admission for this post.Jennette does not fear this world!

Episode 4×05 is called “iDo”, and honestly it’s not a very shippy episode for either Spencer/Carly or Freddie/Sam.

(But I don’t take “not very shippy” for an answer.)

There’s also a lot of small things I don’t like about it. For example: all of the insulting of Wisconsin (it’s like Yakima 2.0) – I’ve been to Wisconsin a few times and it’s lovely and so are the people (when they’re not electing terrible people to congress)!; the uncomfortable scenes of the bride coming on to Spencer, and her general uckiness,and the fact that this sweet guy has to woo back his own bride on his wedding day because she thinks she’s in love with a guy she doesn’t even know; and the Miranda Cosgrove show-off scene.(She’s a singer. We get it.)But…There’s also so much to like about it.What happens is a fan of iCarly wants to propose to his girlfriend on the show, and ends up inviting the trio and Spencer to come to the wedding in Wisconsin. But the bride has a bit of a crush on Spencer, and ends up running away from the wedding because of it.

Now, obviously I would have been more pleased if Carly and Spencer had been in matching positions. But the fact that Freddie was made the Best Man was part of the story line, and it makes sense that Carly would be the first bridesmaid given the situation. Plus, you’ll notice, it’s not like Sam and Freddie are matched up, or even Sam and Spencer. It’s just one jumbled, senseless mess. What were they going for here? Real life? And if you were to match up the bridesmaids and the groomsmen, without knowing anything about them, wouldn’t you match them up as Carly and Spencer and Sam and Freddie, and then the other two. Carly’s too tall for Freddie in those shoes, and the third girl is the only one who looks old enough for the third man. On another note: isn’t her wedding dress lovely? I think it’s gorgeous.

Eventually the crew helps the guy woo her back, and the wedding, we assume, happens as planned.

Carly and Sam are invited to be bridesmaids, and Spencer and Freddie are groomsmen.

Sam and Carly complain a little about the dresses, but I don’t know why because the dresses were lovely and both the girls looked absolutely amazing and the guys looked even better. I hope someday they have to wear really ugly bridesmaid dresses and then they can look back and appreciate these ones.And, well, I guess I’ve got this kink about grown brothers and sisters dressed to match.

I think it was caused by High School Musical. I also enjoyed this from the Wizards of Waverly Place movie:Because seeing Carly in her blue dress stand next to Spencer in his tux with blue vest, bow-tie, and pocket square…well, it’s magic for me.They just look SO GOOD together. All the time, but especially like that.

And, yeah, Freddie and Sam are dressed the same way. But Freddie keeps his jacket buttoned, so the blue just doesn’t present itself as much. And Carly and Spencer’s matching hair color really makes all the difference. They look like companion pieces.

And even though Sam and Freddie don’t have any extra interaction in this episode, and in fact, probably even less than normal because the plot is driven by one-off characters who take up a lot of screen time, I still got this sense from the episode that they were paired off: Spencer and Carly, Freddie and Sam. Gibby doesn’t come to the wedding (although he still gets some scenes on his own for whatever reason I don’t understand, even though I love him, and Guppy his little brother, played by the real-life little brother of Noah Munck), so the equal number of regular characters in the Wisconsin scenes, and particularly the equal male-female ratio, puts even more subconscious pressure on pairing off the quartet.Plus all of the characters in Wisconsin have this “other-ness” to them. The bride and groom are kind but weird, and everyone else at the wedding acts a little xenophobic towards our characters, even more so after the bride declares she’s in love with Spencer. So it really sets Carly, Spencer, Freddie, and Sam even more apart than they already were.

Plus there’s that whole romantic comedy blueprint of groomsmen and bridesmaids hooking up at weddings. I’m going to be a bridesmaid in a few months – so trust me, it’s something you think about, even if it only actually happens in the movies.

In fact, if there had been even a little bit less going on in this episode, I would have expected Spencer to have some sort of love interest at the wedding (one he was interested in), some woman he was comically pursuing, because that’s often the case. Instead he spends most of the episode self-conscious about his butt after Sam calls it flat. Why’s he looking at Carly? What does he care what she thinks about his butt? (Especially since she wasn’t even the one who insulted it in the first place.)

Well, it’s better this way for me, although confusing. Because even though there is almost nothing in the episode to make me feel this way, my subconscious believes the entire time that Carly and Spencer are implicitly in love with each other.

Let me explain: I feel like I’ve seen an episode of another show just like this, where the fiancée/bride falls in love with the male lead of the show (who is flattered but uninterested, and a confidant of the groom), and even though the female lead of the show isn’t in a romantic relationship with him, the show has set them up as halves in that meant-to-be-together-OTP equation and she seems a little put-out and jealous. So they help the couple get back together, and then share a significant scene at the end.

What am I thinking of? The X-Files, maybe? YES YES YES.  Yes!!!!!!! That’s it!!!! I’ve seriously been racking my mind for a few minutes, and I finally came up with it: “Rain King”. Season 6. Don’t you just love that feeling when  you finally remember what you’ve been trying to remember? (I’m not going to edit this out because I like showing my thought flow sometimes.) I don’t think you fully grasp this: in the year since this episode first aired, I have considered it a good Sparly episode but never been able to understand why. I understand why now!

Our troubled, mixed-up foursome.

I don’t know how much you know about The X-Files, but it was a very big part of my life when it was on, and it will be a cherished show forever. I have all nine seasons, and I just rewatched them a little less than two years ago.

 

Anyway, Mulder and Scully are FBI agents, they investigate cases, they try to prove that aliens are going to invade and are in collusion with a secret government syndicate. It’s good stuff. Mulder and Scully pretty much stick to the “friend” category for most of the series, even though it becomes increasingly obvious how much they love each other and how impossible it would be for either of them to end up with anyone else. And in “Rain King”, pretty much the plot of “iDo” happens, only it’s about Mulder and Scully investigating a case. And the ending just makes you breathe this happy Mulder/Scully sigh. And so “iDo” in turn makes me want to breathe a happy Spencer/Carly sigh.

That totally explains it. The parallels are almost too much for me to handle. Rain King takes place in the midwest – Kansas instead of Wisconsin! There’s a high school reunion dance instead of a wedding!

Mulder and Scully gaze at the people at the high school reunion. Like aliens to them. Like Wisconsinites to Seattlites.

I’m not saying Dan Schneider and team copied “Rain King”, I’m just saying Chris Carter and team should probably go find the iCarly writers and either beat them with a sock full of butter, or force them to have a dog food fight in bikinis.

“iTake on Dingo”

Obviously there are more differences than similarities – the two shows don’t have very much in common. But a comparison is clearly possible, as I made one without even realizing it.

I’ll stop now.

(By the second way, if you’ve never seen The X-Files, you would probably still enjoy the “Rain King” episode. It’s one of my favorites, and it could stand on its own pretty well. The only problem is that you wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate how momentous each little Mulder/Scully hint in that episode is because you haven’t just watched five seasons of romantic table scraps.)

I guess I just really internalized that sort of dynamic and formulaic storyline. So often things are formulaic, and I love when those formulas are broken or inverted or twisted, but the fact is that they do exist in their regular form very often and they affect the way we view things. Those formulas become part of our world view and part of the way we perceive new material. So it’s clear that I’ve seen enough plotlines like “Rain Man” that when I see “iDo”, I can’t help but view it in the same way, even though it’s brother and sister.

(It doesn’t help that I was already shipping Spencer and Carly, of course.)

The bride greets the iCarly crew when they first arrive. Everyone jumps around, excited. Then she narrows in on Spencer. Look at Carly’s face:I’m not kidding – she was smiling right before this.

Remember how I mentioned that there almost (keyword being almost) was an understated message pairing off Spencer/Carly and Freddie/Sam?

Well, part of my perception of that “message” came from the subtle staging of a few of these scenes. It’s not something you’d necessarily notice consciously. But I swear it really exists.

Carly finally breaks a smile when Spencer makes a joke.

The bride was recently in a huddle with all four of them. She zeros in on Spencer, and Carly makes herself a part of that conversation. Sam and Freddie haven’t moved, but they remain largely off camera. Sam is seen to the side, but her facial expressions show she’s not really listening to the conversation or a part of it.

I feel weird as I keep calling her “the bride”

Despite the fact that Carly doesn’t say anything – all of the dialogue is a back and forth between the bride and Spencer – Spencer and Carly keep looking at each other. Even though this is awkward because they’re standing right next to each other. The bride is superfluous. Spencer and Carly are having their own conversation with each other.

(This is an exaggeration.)

The bride laughs really hard at Spencer’s joke, and he calls it cackling. Carly just takes it all in stride, though never making a move to leave Spencer’s side. She just stands there, laughing more gracefully at all of Spencer’s jokes.

“You’re quite a cackler, aren’t you?”

When the bride touches Spencer’s chest and compliments his pecks, we see the return of Carly’s bitchface. When Spencer, a little uncomfortable but flattered, replies back that he works out, Carly is quick to point out that he doesn’t. Hmm…territorial demonstration? (I’m not even trying to be sane anymore.)Freddie gets a visitor of his own – the groom’s brother, who is not pleased that he has been passed over for Best Man.Notice how Sam is a part of this conversation?

Everyone is surprised when the bride announces she loves Spencer instead of saying “I do.” Especially Spencer. (His clothes fall off when he’s shocked.)The groom’s grandmother, I believe, comes over and knees Spencer in the stomach. We to see the return of fierce protective lioness Carly, who begins giving the woman a good scolding, before being stepped on herself.While this is going on, Freddie and Sam are doing a separate thing:The groom comes in to speak to Spencer, and Carly defends him.Again, Sam and Freddie are present, but they aren’t really part of it.The trio and Spencer try to convince the bride that she doesn’t want Spencer, but I love how nothing they say is all that bad. Freddie says that Spencer never hangs out with anyone his own age. So true, and so OTP with Carly. They say he doesn’t have a job, although that’s not exactly true because he’s an artist and we see him make more money from his sculpting than most amateur artists make (I would think).

They say that he’s messy, although considering how messy things can get at the apartment, it’s average state is pretty clean. Carly says he drinks milk in the shower, and Spencer adds, “All wet and naked.” Thanks for the elaboration, Spencer. And I do appreciate the fact that Carly brings up Spencer’s shower habits.And Carly says that he hasn’t had a steady girlfriend since high school. That means that even for eight years before the show started, Spencer still never had a real girlfriend. And Spencer has dated a lot of girls during the show’s run so far. He has NO PROBLEM meeting or getting women. But he still hasn’t met the one. I mean, he’s 29-30. It’s not like he’s one of those inveterate bachelors, or some crazy womanizer who just wants to have sex with a different woman every week. Why no wife?

So, obviously, he’s just waiting for Carly.

Obviously.

What? Sorry? I can’t hear your disagreements over the sound of my conviction.

And of course I don’t actually believe this, but Carly was born when Spencer was just starting high school, and she was about four when he graduated. And I’m not saying Spencer did some freaky werewolf imprint on his four year old little sister, but kids start to look and talk and act like actual people right around that age. What a perfect time for his subconscious to decide that there was no other woman for him.

Have you read The Thorn Birds? Or seen the movie? Meggie is four when Father De Bricassart first sees her. He pretty much falls in love with her then. (Wow, I’m amazed I remember their names.)

I can think of about a billion examples of little girls falling in love with grown men. Not so many of the inverse.

There was an episode of Fringe…one of the Observers. I’ve looked it up: Episode 2×08, “August”. I wish I could say it was a good standalone for a non-regular-viewer because it’s one of the best episodes of the entire series, but I can’t. Arguably he wasn’t “in-love” with her. But those are semantics for another conversation.

Fringe: The Observer, and the grown up girl

This is Carly looking at Spencer. For real.

Well, the groom wrote a love song for his bride, but he’s too nervous to sing it (in fact he pees himself in front of everyone trying), so Carly sings it for him.

And she and Spencer share this look while she’s up on stage.

I broke my storage-space bank putting this enormous GIF on here. 33 frames, 497 in width. Bright and colorful. You’re welcome.

Oh. My. Gosh. THAT LOOK.

Sizzling.

Also enjoy this more reasonably-sized alternate

There’s just something especially chemical about it. I don’t know, maybe you don’t see it. But I definitely do. Especially on her half.

And what makes it all the more interesting is the fact that Carly spends the introductory instrumental interlude of the LOVE SONG she is about to sing looking at Spencer, the love song that is going to drive a woman in love with Spencer back into her rightful man’s arms.

JUST. SAYING.

And the look in summary.

After she sings the song, Spencer runs up on stage so he can tell everyone that she’s his sister and make them all cheer for her and for the happy couple that is back together again.And they hug, of course.So, in the end, I spent pages talking about this episode in which almost nothing Spencer/Carly happened. And yet I always think about this as such a Spencer/Carly episode, just because of The X-Files and my matching kink.

Oh, and there’s one weird thing about this episode:There’s some strange magic mirror in the background that always seems to be reflecting Spencer.

This OBVIOUSLY means that Spencer and Carly are meant to be together, because…just because.

Come, be twisted with me.RANDOM…PICTURE OF SPENCER, CARLY, FREDDIE, AND SAM WATCHING TV (The Shays need a new couch, I’ve never seen one that looked more uncomfortable.)RANDOM…PICTURE OF THE ICARLY CAST WINNING AN AWARDRANDOM…DANCING!

4×06 is called “iStart a Fan War”, and it’s kind of a meta episode about intense real life iCarly fans who get into Creddie v. Seddie ship wars and hurt poor creator Dan Schneider’s feelings with their criticism and vitriol and one-track thinking. I kind of hate the episode, really, even though it’s hilarious. Meta can be funny, but it can also be mean. Schneider obviously doesn’t like that people watch his show for the shipping. Well, sad trombone for you, Dan, but if that’s why we watch the show then that’s why we watch the show and telling us that’s wrong is kind of insulting. Your show can’t stand alone on its comedy for me. Sorry. (I actually love Dan Schneider because he created this show and these characters and these relationships that I love SO FREAKING MUCH. But some commentary I’ve heard about him makes him sound like a pouty little child sometimes. Again, second-hand info disclaimer.)

Goopy Gilbert, a great man and fierce Seddie warrior, defends the faith in the riot

Some of the attendees to the conference that the episode is about do silly things like analyze photographs and comment that Freddie must love Carly because they touched shoulders. Of course, that’s exactly what I do here on this website, so it’s only natural that I would be a little bit offended. Plus once they start rioting, the security guard warns them that it could last for days because most of them have no jobs or lives to return to.

Low blow.

More of the Great Goopy Gilbert

Another thing that bothers me is how many Creddie fans there are. I mean Creddie fans do exist, but Seddie is much more popular, and the proportion in the episode is not at all accurate in my experience. Although the Creddie fans are portrayed as the crazier ones. I don’t have enough experience in this fandom to have anything to say about that, but it seems unlikely. Unless the Creddie fans have been getting on Dan’s case because the show has been leaning towards Seddie and this is his revenge. But it was my impression that the Seddie fans were the belligerent ones where Dan was concerned.

Another thing that bothers me is the amount of Creddie in this episode. Even though Carly fervently denies that she’s dating Freddie when the conference fans and a boy she’s interested in heartily suggest it, and even acts a little disgusted at the idea (which is sort of strange considering 3×10 “iSaved Your Life”, in which Freddie and Carly date for a little while after Freddie saves her life, but then they break up because Sam tells Freddie that Carly doesn’t love him, only what he did), Freddie acts more jealous of Carly’s love interest in this episode than he has in a long time.

But it is all pretty funny. And Spencer’s b-plot with Jack Black is pretty darn funny as well, though there are a couple of his scenes that drag. The Gibby stuff is pretty bad. He’s on his own again, dealing with his senile grandfather.Anyway, Carly has a love interest in this episode. She was video chatting with him on her awesome flatscreen in her new awesome bedroom, and then Spencer comes in and surprises her.She says, “I told you never to sneak up on me while I’m thinking about boys.”I wonder what happened last time. And how was he supposed to know she was thinking about boys? Asking him to figure out whether she is or not is sort of a creepy task to put him to.

It reminds me of True Blood season 2, when Sookie keeps having these intense sex dreams about Eric, and when she wakes up Jason (her brother) is staring at her with this amused look on his face, asking her what she was dreaming about, and probably knowing exactly what she was dreaming about.

Spencer’s into an online game called World of Warlords, which is poking at World of Warcraft, I believe, although I know absolutely nothing about it. He plays it in Carly’s room because her TV is so good.

Right.He’s a little offended when Carly calls the game stupid. Not so much with the “stupid” part, but with the “game” part. It’s a way of life, apparently.

Freddie is just as into War of Warlords, and it’s pretty cool to see them bonding and agreeing, because despite both being guys they’re not as close as any other given pair in the main four. Spencer’s going to dress up and go to a con for it, which turns out to be webicon where team iCarly is going to be, hence the meta. When Spencer keeps referring to his (co)stume, Carly asks whether that makes him a (lo)ser. He tells her that that she’s going to lose the fight they’re about to have. (And you know it’s going to be serious because he sets down his cheese.)And then he beats her with a pillow.They’re just so cute sometimes. I love that they have pillow fights.

Have you read the first ever entry I wrote? Well, in it I talk about a book that I read which sort of opened the incest-shipping floodgates for me. And in the book, the narrator sort of has this vision of her as her boyfriend’s sister, and them having a pillow fight that ends in sex. So this amuses me. And of course pillow fights become sexualized often enough.

(I’m glad to see that the Shays have pillows made of tougher stuff.)

And you already know how much I enjoyed the suckduster fight (wow, that sounds dirty).

Although when I remember it, it looks a bit more like that Shakira music video for Lo hecho esta heco.

Carly was wearing black, lacy lingerie, wasn’t she?They’re almost exactly the same, right?

Well, back to the con. No episode or excursion would be complete without Spencer suffering injury to his privates.Spencer is roleplaying in his ‘stume against his character’s archrival, and Carly shows up. The rival brings Carly into the game by pretending to kidnap her.Spencer demands that she be let go, but Carly grows a little impatient when Spencer continues to taunt the nemesis and refuses to utter the phrase what would be her release.Carly escapes on her own and defeats him by pulling off some necklace. I just love that Carly shows up and defeats Spencer’s enemy, and then they go home.

Episode 4×10 is called “iParty with Victorious”, and it’s a crossover with Victorious, another Dan Schneider production that airs on Nickelodeon. It’s three times the length of a normal episode, and it was shown after 4×09 “iOMG”, but the episodes are clearly not supposed to be in that order because iOMG has a cliffhanger Seddie ending.

Just a disclaimer: there’s an extended edition. I have not seen it. If there’s anything Spencer/Carly related, and one of you has seen it, a notification from you would be greatly appreciated.Anyway, it’s not a favorite episode of mine because it has a lot of Victorious content in it (and because it showcases yet another guest star, Keenan Thompson, who is funny and I like him – who doesn’t like Keenan Thompson? – but it’s a waste of screen time in an episode that’s already wasting screen time), and because there’s a big singing number at the end, just like “iDo”. I hate those.Yeah, I get it, these actresses can sing.

I’m just not a concert person, I think watching people sing is boring. And the medley of the two theme songs that they sing is a hot mess.

I’ve only seen this and one other episode of Victorious, but it didn’t pique my interest, although I do like a few of the quirky characters, like Cat and the puppet kid. The puppet kid because he’s so different, and Cat was just too precious, but the fact that she couldn’t speak probably helped her case. And I think she mentioned something about a brother…? While I’ve been working on this post I’ve been listing to Pandora, and Best Friend’s Brother, a song sung by the Victorious Cast, came on several times. I know I said I liked it, Pandora, but that doesn’t mean you should play it ONCE EVERY 90 MINUTES!!!! The brother in question is six foot three. That’s pretty tall. I thought of Spencer. Somehow it was all meant to be and it all equals Sparly.

Somehow.

Well, I felt better about Cat until I saw all of these images of Ariana Grand stealing the iCarly cast.(But her hair is so cute! And I don’t know, I just really like her face.)

Anyway, Tori Vega is the main character on Victorious, played by Victoria Justice. Yes, the same actress who played Shelby Marx, and they do make a joke about it. And apparently both Nathan Kress and Jerry Trainor have appeared on Victorious before, among other previous cameos.

Well, the episode starts out well for Spencer/Carly. Spencer is building a sculpture out of radios he pulled from the junkyard. He calls it potatio radio, because he thought of it while he was squeezing a potato.

Sure. A “potato”. Right. That’s what he was squeezing.Well, Carly says that she likes “potatoes” and radios, and she taps him on the head affectionately, gleaning an “awww” from Spencer.

So, in this episode, Carly has a boyfriend, Steven, and she’s on cloud nine about him and very happy.

But he’s cheating on her with Tori in LA (his parents are divorced so he splits his time between there and Seattle). Carly sees a picture of them together, and Freddie keeps going on and on about how hot she is.Spencer comes out, and wants to see this picture that has given everyone the idea that Steven is cheating on Carly with “quite some girl”.

“Quite some girl.” Freddie informs, clearly with a mind to what Spencer will think of her.

But not before snarkily commenting, “Sam and Freddie are here? That’s different!” in a tone that would make it totally possible for him to actually be pretty frustrated about it.

“Oh look: Freddie and Sam are here. That’s different.”

Spencer’s phonetically accurate response to looking at the picture of Tori: “Whooooahohohoooooo.  That is quite a-“ Then he looks at Carly and sees her anger, and changes his tune: “…quite a high resolution monitor.”

“Let me see this girl….Whoa…………”

“That’s quite a…high resolution monitor.”

I did a poor job with those GIFs, they’re way too small for you to truly see the expressions on Spencer and Carly’s faces.

Wow, this scene. I just…ah! I mean, I know Carly isn’t jealous that Spencer thinks Tori is hot, she just doesn’t like everyone thinking that the girl her boyfriend might be cheating on her with someone so good-looking, and she got even angrier at Freddie (though Freddie wouldn’t shut up about it). But…I think I might just decide to think she’s jealous anyway. I’m sure Creddie shippers took this scene as Carly jealous of Freddie liking Tori, so I’m going to take this scene as Carly jealous of Spencer liking Tori.

I should probably stop saying how smokin’ hot I think this girl is.

But that’s not even the best part, although that look between them is almost as good as the look at the wedding. What’s so marvelous about that look is that it’s just such a husband/wife look/moment. WIFE MUCH? I feel like the exact same thing has happened between husbands and wives on a million different sitcoms. It’s like she’s caught him being attracted to another woman. That’s what the look on his face says to me, the way he reacts to her glare and changes his sentence.

In fact, I’m certain the exact same thing has happened with Phil Dunphy and Claire on Modern Family no less five times.The best part might actually be the fact that we’ve got Spencer lusting after some teenage girl. Tori may be older than Carly, I don’t know, but she’s still in high school either way, and I doubt she’s a senior or else Victorious, a show about a girl named Tori Vega at a performing arts high school, wouldn’t have much of a future.

Jerry Trainor with Victoria Justice. Not Spencer on a date with Tori.

It’s funny; I remembered Spencer looking at a picture of Victoria Justice and declaring her hot, but I thought it was Shelby Marx. So when I rewatched “iFight Shelby Marx” and it never happened, I thought my shipper’s brain had made it up and was disappointed. But no, it was this episode.

IT REALLY HAPPENED!

Twin pic of Jerry Trainor and Miranda Cosgrove. Not Spencer and Carly on a date. Also, this is the third picture of Jerry Trainor with a drink in his hand. We get it, Jerry: you’re actually over 21, unlike everyone around you.

And it isn’t just Spencer agreeing that Tori is a good-looking girl, he is attracted to her and you can tell. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) Spencer can play the (age) spectrum with the best of them. Spencer is attracted to Carly’s romantic rival in this episode. How perfect is that?

Again, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

If you don’t spend time with people younger than you, you tend to forget how they are and what they are like. You start to think that they’re so young. I know, it happened to me when I went off to college. But then I started babysitting, and I realized how much older each age is than we think it is. And now I’m wasting my life on tumblr, and there are a lot of teenagers on there, and some of them are giving teenagers a bad name, but some of them are just so brilliant, and mature, and hilarious, and they’re totally playing on the same level as me, or adults far smarter than me.

And you forget when you don’t interact with them. And then I go back and read my diary from when I was younger, and even I’ve forgotten what I was like. 16 year olds may seem young, especially when you see them on the school bus or something like that, but they are 100% capable of being a regular adult, I’ve seen it happen. And, like Spencer, I’m sort of caught in a 20’s age warp, and I can tell you that you can feel still like a teenager.

But Spencer hasn’t forgotten. He hangs out with high schoolers all the time. He knows how smart and capable Carly is. He doesn’t have that same impression of high schoolers that a sophomore in college might start developing (and one which never goes away).

And even though parents spend a lot of time with their kids, it’s not always the same. They don’t see every side of their kid. My mom still thinks I’m incompetent sometimes, but it’s being around her that brings out my incompetent, dependent side. On my own I can handle myself and everything just fine. But when she knows how to do something it’s just easier to ask her, if she’s around. You know what I mean?

What I’m getting at is that a typical 29 or 30 year old male would probably balk a little at the idea of being in a sexual or romantic relationship with a 16/17 year-old. They might find the idea of the sex appealing, but they probably wouldn’t want to go out on sit down dinners, and not just because they wouldn’t want to be seen. But that’s because of their impression of 16 year-olds. They’ve forgotten. Spencer wouldn’t balk in that same way because not only has he not forgotten, he actually spends most of his time with 16 year-olds and he likes it.

And this concludes the passage where I try to convince you that Spencer wouldn’t be against “seeing” a 16 year-old the way most adults would shudder at the idea (either as a participant or as a viewer) NOT because he’s perverted, but because he truly knows what a 16 year-old is, and he knows they’re not actually that different. And where I spangled it with random pictures of Jerry Trainor that were not in any way relevant.

But I don’t think Spencer would cross that line, and that’s what we like about him. (Gia was probably older.)

And I can’t back this up with any evidence except for the logic of my cunning mind and some experience with these sorts of people, but I bet (figure of speech, no money will be put at risk) that if you were to propose the idea of having a sexual/romantic relationship with a 16 year-old to a person who spends a lot of time with kids that age – not a parent of one, but maybe a youth group worker, a really involved teacher, a co-worker – basically someone who spends time with them at their level and not from the position of a “superior” – their immediate knee-jerk gut reaction would not be “I could never be attracted to someone that age or carry on an equal, partner-based relationship or enjoy their company in a ‘significant-other’ capacity and I would bring confusion and emotional manipulation to their life because I’m older and wiser,”, it would probably be, “Oh I couldn’t do that – what if I got caught? What if people knew?” (Wow that was the longest sentence ever – who am I? Charles Dickens?) But that would obviously only be for some of the younger ones. Some of them definitely aren’t mature yet.So, the next day, the trio comes home from school early to find Spencer meeting with his book club of housewives. Spencer is so embarrassed – it’s pretty adorable. (With his new haircut I just sort of want to jump him every scene, whereas before “iGot A Hot Room” I wasn’t even attracted to him – that’s how much difference proper haircuts make to me.) Even though he has more reason to be embarrassed of what Freddie (who looks to him for advice sometimes) and Sam (who is cruel and makes fun of everyone and everything) might be thinking of him, it’s Carly that he’s staring at.

He kicks out all of the women immediately.

Spencer really is just so genuinely embarrassed…I can’t get over it. And he focuses completely on Carly’s reaction, pretty much ignoring the other two.

He closes the door on the women, then just stands there for a beat staring at the door before turning back to them and asking about their day as if nothing had happened.

Carly is upset, and declares that she wants to talk about Steven her cheating boyfriend. Carly and Spencer are alone in the main part of the living room, on the rug in front of the TV (and you’re probably wondering why I’m even bothering to describe that but it’s like they somehow ended up islanded together even though Carly’s primary interaction in that scene is probably going to be with Sam and yet still there’s this chain that binds her to Spencer), and he says, “There’s nothing wrong with being in a book club,” defensively. And not comically defensively – for some reason Jerry Trainor decided to be really serious during this line. Almost during the whole scene.

“There’s nothing wrong with being in a book club.” —-You probably don’t even care but I’m telling you anyway: this GIF was cursed. From it’s inception to the moment I uploaded it. Everything that could have gone wrong did, at least once and sometimes twice. I’ve never had to work so hard. CURSED, I tell you.

Again, it’s really only Carly’s opinion that he cares about, and he seems to care A LOT. And she forgets about Steven and turns her complete attention to this conversation, and says, “I know, it’s just not the manliest thing in the world.”So much concern for Spencer’s manliness, Carly. Better buy him a nail gun. Hmmm…. So he responds, “It is too manly.”Which really it’s not something one would describe as manly whatever your feelings on men in book clubs is, but he wants Carly to think he’s manly and that’s important to him.Spencer discovers one of the women left behind a “make-up pouch” and goes chasing after her. Carly frowns.

Maybe Carly just doesn’t like Spencer hanging out with a bunch of women.

(Honestly I’m not thrilled either. We could have another Gibby’s mom on our hands. And the book club appears in 5×01 “iLost My Mind” for a second and probably not final time.)

So did you notice anything about Spencer in this scene, like, I don’t know, the fact that he looks AMAZING? They must have done his hair up special, and I can tell they spruced up his wardrobe a little. Meow. It was hard for me to tell if I was seeing chemistry between him and Carly or if it was just me wanting to rip his clothes off with my teeth.

Spencer spends, it seems, at least half this episode shirtless, fully cementing “iParty With Victorious”‘s award for Episode That Most Makes Me Want To Screw Spencer’s Brains Out, say what else you will about it.

Wow, Jennette McCurdy is really excited that iParty With Victorious won that award.

We worked really hard so that Spencer would be very attractive in this episode, and it just feels so good to be up here accepting this award.

He’s sore from making his Potatio Radio, and asks if Carly, Freddie, or Sam wants to rub lotion on him. Sadly, no takers. Obviously I wasn’t there.He calls Gibby up, because he knows the Gibster will be up for it. However, it’s not until the next day when they all come home from school, and interrupt the book club meeting, that it actually happens.If you thought the Gibby thing was a little weird, how about the fact that Spencer’s howling like a Tijuana hooker in front of everyone?

The keys to Socko’s van

Sam, after scouring the internet, decides the best way to prove whether Steven is a cheater is to catch him in the act at a party down in LA (at Keenan Thompson’s house). So Sam volunteers Spencer to drive them. Spencer’s only request is that he can bring “hands-of-a-goddess” Gibby. The crew is worried that they’ll be recognized from iCarly by the kids at the party, so Spencer suggests they visit his ex-girlfriend, Moni, who does make-up for the movies. At Moni’s house, we learn that Spencer broke her heart, and then her legs, as he backed over her in his car. Accidentally. He accidentally did it to another ex-girlfriend too. Hmmm.Moni is bitter. I kind of liked her, though. Miraculous, I know. But I think I like Moni best out of Spencer’s littering of exes. She’s really pretty, but quirky. And she admitted that Spencer broke her heart. I enjoyed watching Carly watch Spencer’s ex chew him out. Moni comes through, though, and does an amazing job making the trio look different. When I first saw it, I thought they were different actors for a second.Gibby then gets worried about being recognized – but he only gets a hat and a mole. For some reason, no one is concerned about Spencer being recognized, even though he’s been on the show, perhaps not quite as often as Gibby now that Gibby has been made a regular, but close.When Carly confirms that Steven is cheating on her, she is genuinely pretty upset (beyond what we would typically see on iCarly), but we have to remember that they’ve been together for 100 days, and that’s a long time. And after she gets a healthy dose of vengeance she seems just fine to me.

Meanwhile, Spencer finds a hot tub, and after Gibby recommends it for his back, Spencer climbs in. Are you ready for some gratuitous Spencer-in-hot-tub spam?His utterances of relief get a little…pornographic.

Watching the steam rising off the water makes we want to climb in one so badly right now. I can almost smell the chlorine.Spencer isn’t alone for long. One of the Victorious teachers has been hiding there, waiting to scare one his students as an acting lesson. He gives Spencer a pretty good scare.

The student in question and his girlfriend? show up and climb in the tub.She gets scared, but he doesn’t.Later some kids show up. And that was “iParty with Victorious”. Even though it aired first, I’m going to discuss 4×09 “iOMG” next, because that’s the order God intended.

How do I begin to describe “iOMG”? “iOMG” is flawless. I hear its original recording is insured for 10,000 dollars. I hear they use it as a car commercial…in Japan. Its favorite movie is Varsity Blues. One time John Stamos watched it on a plane. He said it was pretty. One time it punched me in the face…it was awesome.

I gave you a spoiler warning at the beginning of the Part I post, but it doesn’t truly apply until “iOMG”. Things really change in this episode. I don’t know where they’ll go, and if the writing is really bad it’s even possible for the entire arc to be whitewashed and things to return to the status quo forever, but from where I’m standing it doesn’t look like that will happen.

This episode is largely about Freddie and Sam, of course. And some viewers on both sides of the ship war argue that it came out of nowhere, and I actually have to agree, to a degree. While I think Seddie has been building for a long time now, there is a very sudden change between 4×08 “iPity the Nevel” and “iOMG”, which is a little frustrating. “iOMG” could have used a little bit more buildup. But I do have to say, on the other hand, I definitely wouldn’t have OMG’ed as hard as I did if there had been more buildup.

I’m a writer, and a writer of fanfiction, so I spend a lot of time thinking about possibilities and alternatives. Because of that, I’m never going to be perfectly satisfied with anything on screen, because I’m always going to know that there was a road not taken, and I’ll always have to wonder what it would have been like. So I can never say that this was a perfect Seddie episode, or the Seddie kiss was perfect, because a small part of me is always going to be thinking of ways it could have been different, and maybe better. But even taking all of that into consideration, “iOMG” was pretty great.

The Seddie moments up until this point – in “iKiss”, “iThink They Kissed”, “iTwins”, “iSaved Your Life”, etc., have been pretty even in terms of who came off as the one more likely to fall for the other one. But when it actually happens, you have to pick. One is going to be the instigator. It can’t be 100% mutual.

Well, the writers picked Sam. Sam is the one who realizes she actually likes Freddie. (Again, I have to express some frustration that it happens off screen, in a time limbo in between two episodes.) In a lot of ways that’s right and fair, because Sam has always terrorized Freddie, said she hated him, treated him like dirt. How much better is it that she’s the one who plants a surprise kiss on his lips?

But I’d always kind of hoped it would be Freddie. Isn’t the shipping payoff that much greater when despite the way Sam has always treated him, he falls for her?  When even though he’s had a crush on Carly all this time, with almost nothing logical to support it, he realizes it’s Sam he loves?

We’ll never know what that path would have been like. Sam will never get to know what it would have felt like for Freddie to choose her over Carly without Sam being the one to force it.

But I can’t complain about “iOMG”, because the Seddie execution is truly magnificent, even if the pear pad moodface app which propels the story forward is practically supernatural in its powers.

And I really have to compliment Jennette McCurdy on her acting. Sam is still Sam, but it’s so obvious that something subtle is up with her in this episode. It’s very well done.

Another note on the build-up issue: there are a couple of things they might have milked a little bit more. I would have loved to see Sam be jealous of Freddie flirting with another girl, but not being able to understand her feelings or show it. Stuff like that. Stuff that you see all the time but that you enjoy so much when it’s done right.

I just had to say all that, to get that out there.

Back to your regularly scheduled Sparly.

Carly comes home from school, and asks if Spencer wants to have dinner that night. Totally ignoring the fact that it sounds like she’s asking him on a date, it’s kind of interesting that she even bothered to say it at all. But then we find out that she had plans with Sam, which Spencer knows about, because he says, “I thought you had plans with Sam,” or that’s the non-verbatim gist anyway. Spencer must really know every detail about her life if he knew from that morning, or possibly even earlier, that she was hanging out with Sam (which I assume she does almost every day) and they were going to have dinner together (again, probably a daily occurrence).

Carly informs him that Sam is hanging out with Freddie and Brad. Brad is the iCarly intern, who made one appearance earlier that season to try out for the job, but ended up not being hired because Carly and Sam hired a very hot but stupid guy instead, in “iHire An Idiot”. In this episode he serves as a red herring. I sort of wonder how long he’ll be around, or if we’ll ever even see him again.

Some seddiers have picked him to ship with Carly, others Gibby (she must needs have a match, LOL). There aren’t very many of us shipping her with Spencer, no doubt, but I feel pretty good about it because at least I’m not shipping them together because I feel like Carly needs to end up with someone, or like Seddie won’t be invulnerable until Carly is taken. I ship them because they’re perfect for each other and make me giddy with their perfection.

“Sam wants to hang out with them?”

“I know. Weird, right?”

I love Spencer, because like I mentioned earlier, he totally loves gossiping about Carly’s friends, and he knows them well enough to be totally surprised by this news.

Spencer has apparently reached his “maximum number of calls” with the fire department, so he’s setting up a fire extinguisher. That seems ridiculous because we’ve seen him use one before, but it’s a Spencer/Carly scene and I’m OK.

While he’s explaining this to her, Carly pulls a carrot out of the fridge, puts whip cream on it, and starts eating it in front of him.

Am I the only one who…I don’t know…THINKS THINGS about that?

(I know I’m not because I’ve seen comments and a dirty manip GIF even I wouldn’t post here.)

Munching away on the phallic carrot probably would have given me a little giggle, but the whip cream is too much. I mean, it has become such a sexual food, and that Mean Girls quote I used that mentions Varsity Blues just became incredibly apt because isn’t there a scene in that movie where a girl comes out wearing only whip cream? I think there is (*she singsongs*).

As if that wasn’t enough, in an earlier episode, Spencer actually sprays whip cream on Carly’s face.So, Spencer totally notices she’s eating a carrot with whip cream on it, even stopping mid-sentence to make a puzzled face:And Carly doesn’t just bite the carrot. She licks the whip cream off of it at least once while the camera is on her, and another time she gets whip cream all over her lips and has to lick them off.I’m not going to point out that she looks at Spencer, and then down lustfully at her carrot. Oops, just did.And while this is going on, Spencer, referring to the fire extinguisher, says he’s going to “mount it on the wall.”

And Carly says, “Seems like a good place to mount it.”

Could have said “hang”.

Didn’t.

This is Spencer looking at the “good place to mount it” after Carly has made the comment, and agreeing with her.

(What is wrong with my mind? Do they have pills to fix this?)

Just so we’re all clear: I could say that Carly asked Spencer if he wanted to grab dinner, and then licked whip cream off of a carrot, and I wouldn’t have made it up.

I want you to come with me somewhere. We’re going to stay there ALL night. I want to study you.

Carly asks him to help her and Gibby out with their school project. They could have used anyone, but I guess Carly wanted Spencer with her at the lock-in where they stay up all night at the school and work on the projects. And the parallels here are again too perfect, because you’ve got Freddie, Brad, and Sam working on one project, which ends in a Freddie/Sam liplock, and then you’ve got Carly, Gibby, and Spencer working on the other project. Two primary couples, one male third wheel. No liplock for Spencer and Carly, though…

Wait for it

Wait for it

…yet?

And guess what the project is? Testing Spencer’s reactions to different kids of stimuli. Is one of the stimuli watching a girl lick a carrot covered in whip cream?

Sorry. Too busy watching Cops with Socko’s grandmother.

Come on.

OK. How can I say no to a girl licking whip cream off of a carrot?

Spencer wants to demonstrate the fire extinguisher for her, so she’ll know how to use it. He does an impression of her flailing about not knowing what to do:Of course, it ends up causing a fire.I don’t mind about that. But then Spencer flails around, not knowing what to do, and Carly puts it out with a blanket, then gives him a superior look. Spencer knows how to put out fires. We’ve seen him do it – no exaggeration – a billion times. So I just found it very stupid.

Actually, I don’t care for the rest of the Sparly in the episode because honestly, those stimuli are evil. Either Carly has a cruel Nazi scientist living inside of her, or she was releasing some pent-up rage against Spencer. Carly and Gibby put Spencer into a sensory deprivation chamber (that’s not what they call it) and visit horrors upon him, Gibby recording his reactions.During the credits they show a really random assortment of videos. Sometimes it’s fans doing crazy stuff. Usually it involves the actors. Sometimes they’re in character, sometimes not. Sometimes you just don’t know what’s going on. The one at the end of “iOMG” is so adorable. Jerry Trainor is playing a clapping game with Ethan Munck, a.k.a. Guppy Gibson, Gibby’s little brother. You can tell he’s not in-character because of the cutest little smile he gives the little boy.SUB SECTION E: SEASON 5

So, fifth season. Woo hoo! (I never thought this glorious moment would come. I’ve been writing for four lifetimes.)5×01 “iLost My Mind” picks up a few days later after iOMG. (Even though iParty with Victorious aired in between them.)Carly comes home, and Spencer is trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans. He’s worried he’s getting fat because they don’t fit. He dances around, waving his butt in her face to show her that he can’t get the jeans up past his butt slabs (I guess having a flat butt is no longer a concern of his). Then she reveals that they’re actually her jeans. Then he says, “I know.” Which, obviously he’s not serious, but like that’s any less embarrassing or weird?What would you say about a man who likes to put on his little sister’s clothes?Spencer says to her, “these jeans are squeezing me in ways that you can’t understand.” Another reference to Spencer’s penis (and testicles). You thought I was exaggerating, making something out of nothing, didn’t you?

But I wasn’t.

Carly is upset because Sam hasn’t been seen in three days, and Freddie never told her that they kissed. Spencer knows all the details, and Carly is confiding her frustrations to him.

It’s just like “iThink They Kissed”, with Seddie action driving Spencer and Carly into these conversations.Then Freddie shows up, and, not for the first time, is startled by what he sees and probably wishes he could just back right on out.Spencer explains that he’s wearing Carly’s jeans. “Mistakes were made,” he says. Sounds like they had mistake sex and then did an accidental sexy pant swap.Freddie’s response is, “maybe you should take them off.”

And Spencer agrees. What I love is that it’s like it didn’t even occur to Spencer to take them off. I guess he just wanted to keep wearing Carly’s jeans. Maybe he really did know they were hers.

Spencer asks Carly where the olive oil is,

“Where’s the olive oil?”

and she says, “In the bathroom where you left it.”

“In the bathroom where you left it.”

WTF?

Like I said, numerous mentions are made of Spencer doing odd things in the shower, but olive oil is almost going too far. The fact that he’s now in this scene going to use it as a lubricant just makes it all that much worse.

In “iParty With Victorious”, when Spencer is working on his Potatio Radio sculpture, the glue isn’t holding. Carly picks up the bottle and informs him it’s not glue, it’s “ball and joint lube.” I don’t know if she’s more embarrassed about saying it, or about the fact that Spencer is a dum dum and was using lubricant instead of glue.

There’s another WTF here: despite the fact that Spencer has been seen in boxers every single time in the show when it has been possible to know what sort of undergarments he was wearing, for some reason he’s wearing briefs in this scene. Little white undies.

Freddie and Carly leave, and Spencer comes chasing after into the hallway with no pants, and asks if she could bring back some more olive oil. The perfect combination of an old lady, a little girl, and a nun happen to be standing in the hallway.

They all think he and whatever lady just left are engaged in some perverted sex games.

I love it.And if Spencer had caught Carly in time as he’d intended, she would have gotten a pretty good view of him in his tighty whities, just like the viewers did.Later in the episode, Carly, Gibby, and Freddie arrive back at the apartment after seeing Sam in the mental hospital she checked herself into. They walk in on Spencer meeting with his book club, only today they’re exchanging recipes. Once it is revealed that the recipes are for fruit tarts, Carly and the other two laugh, and Spencer sends his book club a-packing. He just can’t quit them.  But he doesn’t want Carly thinking he’s not manly.

“Just…don’t.”

Spencer ends up dressing up as Sam’s mom – at his own insistence – later in the episode, which makes one wonder whether he truly did know those were Carly’s pants.

“But I wanna do it!”

One of the patients at the mental hospital believes he is from the future, and he tells Carly that she will be Vice President. Have you seen Prison Break? Because the lady villain of the first season happens to be the Vice President and happens to have been shtupping her brother. Coincidence?

I think not. Yeah, OK. Probably.

Or maybe Dan Schneider is reading this right now, incredulous that I saw through his veiled tale of incestuous destiny.

Anyway, on the Seddie front, I have to say I’m ridiculously pleased with “iLost My Mind” as well. The two episodes complement each other perfectly. Even though Sam made a move in “iOMG”, she’s still very confused, and still feels some of that original repugnance towards Freddie, and she can’t think and can’t eat (except actually she can, because she’s Sam), and when she and Freddie are forced to talk, she’s just as mean to him as ever.

So when at the end of the episode he yanks her into a declarative kiss, his decision to go after her is almost as pure as it would have been if the kiss in “iOMG” had not happened. I still got that wonderful shipping feeling in my stomach, even though it was their second kiss (technically third), because it was Freddie’s epiphany and it felt fresh and new, even if it did take a kiss from Sam to get it jumpstarted.My OTP is so beautiful.

This episode also features the return of the valiant Goopy Gilbert, fighting the good fight.OK, I’m writing this in the third week of September. Episodes 5×02 and 5×03 have already aired, but I hadn’t watched them yet because I wanted to finish my rewatch first. Which I just did, ending with “iLost My Mind”.

So I just now, just a few minutes ago, watched 5×02 “iDate Sam and Freddie”.

And I’m not sure how I’m even capable of coherent sentence forming, because fjaklfjdklajlfjda hfdalkfjd hfdhsakljfdl jfdkajfl;dja fdhsakfhdaljad. Hmm, no I guess I’m not capable.

This episode. This flipping episode. My God. My beautiful, beautiful God in Heaven.

I was actually much more OK with the Seddie stuff than I had feared (I love watching them fight just as much as I love watching them kiss), but that’s not even what I’m twitterpated about.

Spencer/Carly.

Spencer/Carly, my friends.

I didn’t know. What a shipper-virgin I was compared to now. I started writing this whole flipping article and I didn’t even know what an insane shipfest episode 5×02 would turn out to be. Holy Mother of God. Sweet baby Jesus.

I’m overhyping it for you, I’m sure, and yet for me these words are accurate.

Have you seen this episode? Chances are you have, but if you haven’t, you have to remember that this is a kid’s show on Nickelodeon, so it’s not like Spencer and Carly had sex or anything. It’s not Rome, you know. But it’s hard to get much more bro/sis shippiness out an episode than we get out of this one.

I literally went outside and went for a jog because that’s how excited I was. And it’s 2:00 AM.Spencer has built a greenspace in the living room. It’s a large rectangle of sod, surrounded by a wooden border. A “lawn”.

He’s very excited about it.

And I actually think it’s one of the less crazy things he has done. It’s so appropriate I just mentioned Rome, because Atia, Octavian, and Octavia live in this awesome house with an interior courtyard, and I just love interior courtyards. Also, have you seen Splash? Tom Hank’s character gets a fountain in the middle of his living room. It’s awesome. (My inability to find pictures was disheartening.)

Anyway, I think it’s a great idea. Relatively, anyway.

He shows it excitedly to her and Gibby as they come home from school.“See!” Carly declares. “This is why I don’t like to leave the house.”There are so many other ways that sentence could have been phrased: “See, this is why I don’t feel comfortable leaving the house”; “See, this is why I don’t like to leave you alone”; “See, this is why you should never be left alone”; “See, this is why I wanted to get you a babysitter”; etc.

But no.

Carly has now literally stated the fact that she does not like to leave the house.

Do you know who else spends most of his time at the house? Spencer. (Yeah, they live there, I know. Whatever.)

This means something. This is concrete.

And she obviously sees it as her role to keep him out of trouble.

She slaps him in the stomach and asks them what they’re going to do with it. But she’s smiling. Spencer is never going to meet a more perfect girl for him than Carly. She believes in him so much, and puts up with all his crazy chizz, even enjoys it. They’re both just so one-of-a-kind, and they just fit together so flippin’ perfectly.

Wow, I’m worse than a sailor tonight. But I need strong language to illuminate my strong feelings.Spencer has lots of ideas about what to do with it – everything people ought to do on their lawns but so sadly, rarely do. I kind of fall in love with him even more while he talks about barbecues and lying under the stars.

And let’s talk about the fact that there’s a part of him reaching out for a house, for maybe settling down, but what he talks about is all the activities he could do in that house with the people he cares about, i.e. Carly.

Spencer asks where Sam and Freddie are.

“Probably making out,” Gibby replies.

And I sigh a happy little sigh, because I could probably spend the rest of my life watching Sam and Freddie make out and die a damn well satisfied woman.

But the ship roller coaster moves on. Spencer’s response is “ew.”“Why ‘ew’?” Carly asks.You probably won’t see it, but I swear there’s a little sexual tension in that little exchange. There’s something in Carly’s eyes when she asks him the follow-up question – an investment in his answer, a prurient curiosity. Not the question itself, which seems reasonable enough, but IN HER EYES. (Tell me your inappropriate shipping secret, Miranda!)

I’ll never tell. (XOXO Gossip Girl)

OK, even I don’t see it anymore. But I did when I first wrote this. That means something!

Stop scoffing and laughing at me!Spencer explains that he doesn’t like PDA couples. And A-frakking-men to that. Couples of the world: get a room. (Freddie/Sam: this does not apply to you.)Spencer then does an imitation of a couple making out, holding up his arms like they’re around a woman and moving his tongue about.Carly argues that it’s nice to see Sam and Freddie being a cutesy couple with each other after spending years at each others’ throats. (Carly ships Seddie so much. I love this girl.) Then she does a comedic imitation of making out. (I hope this isn’t her kissing like a princess.)Spencer finds her making out inadequate and takes it upon himself to school her in the art of love.(You know that teaching your sibling how to kiss is a fiction-incest staple.)He takes a couple of steps towards her, and does his impression again. She starts hers up, trying to imitate his example.They spend at least 30 more seconds doing this. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that they stand there and vicariously make out with each other for almost a minute. They’re looking at each other while they do it. THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING. THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THIS GLORIOUS EPISODE.The segment lasts ridiculously long, from a writing, editing, directing standpoint. It stops being funny pretty quickly. I enjoy it, thoroughly, of course, but only from a shipping standpoint.And within the diegesis, Spencer and Carly only stop because Gibby says something. And while Gibby does technically speak, he doesn’t any say anything of any import, so I have to wonder if he was just getting uncomfortable and wanted them to stop. Who knows how much longer they would have kept doing it? It was like the equivalent of Gibby clearing his throat. Maybe Gibby has a problem with vicarious PDA.

And Spencer and Carly actually did something quite similar to this back in “iDate a Bad Boy”, though it’s not nearly this ridiculous.

Now I think it’s sweet when Spencer shows how much he cares about Sam and Freddie, but I can’t help but enjoy when he gets annoyed with them always being around. It separates them from Carly. As in, “Carly belongs here. You don’t. Leave me alone with my Carly.”

Sam comes walking in, and Spencer shouts, “You don’t live here!”

I love it.

(Although, in this particular instance, he probably just doesn’t like that Sam didn’t knock, just walked right on in.)

But he gets his “awww” face on, when Freddie and Sam resolve a little tiff and end up in each others’ arms.Later in the episode, Spencer comes upon Carly preparing a piece for a “blue butt bit”. When Carly takes the finished product upstairs, Sam says, “nice butt”. I guess that was a little bit too much for a Spencer/Carly exchange.Spencer had been shucking corn on his lawn (and could that be any more perfect for me because I have all these picturesque ideas about shucking corn and we’re just huge corn eaters in my family, but anyway…damn that haircut I’m so in love with him now), and he decided to juice some corn and give it to Carly after wondering why no one ever thought to juice corn. Carly snaps, “Maybe no one ever thought to juice corn because most people have brains that function normally!”You see, Sam and Freddie have been bugging her relentlessly to referee their relationship. Including all hours of the night. And she’s stressed out, tired, and totally on edge.

Well, Spencer’s feelings are hurt by her words and her tone. He starts whimpering and crying. She breaks immediately, and approaches him slowly saying she’s sorry with this gorgeously repentant look on her face, and she pulls him into her arms, and tells him he didn’t do anything wrong, and strokes his shoulder.

These graphics I made are ridiculous. Ridiculous and beautiful.

Then he dries his eyes with her hair.

Yeah, that’s right. He just reaches out and grabs her hair and touches it to his cheek. I thought he was going to smell it at first, but we’re not quite that lucky.

And even though this scene makes him seem childish, I still just really like. I like how upset Carly gets when she realizes she has hurt him. How upset he gets, when all she did was be a be a little critical in a curt tone.

Then she explains why she snapped at him. And she drinks the corn juice, which is nasty, but Spencer already knew that.

Well, Gibby shows up, and they have this whole storyline in this episode where he tries to get her to be co-parents with a puppy. I’d say the degree to which she rejects him in it is almost cruel, but he’s extremely pushy and delusional about the whole thing, so no blame goes to Carly from yours truly. Anyway, she snaps at him too, and he starts crying, and she basically does the same thing to him as she did to Spencer with the apology and the hug and the stroking of the shoulder.See, I’m fair and balanced. I don’t ignore things because they hurt the shipping point I was trying to make.

But… (LOL), Gibby was crying a lot harder than Spencer, so a hug was definitely called for. And she calls herself a monster while she’s hugging him, her eyes drifting off. I think she was thinking a lot more about herself and about her Sam and Freddie problem than she was about him, where as with Spencer she focused more on him.

And the final scene to the episode sure isn’t Carly and Gibby.

Clearly I’m right about this.During iCarly, they show a video of Spencer flirting with a watermelon while Carly sorts out a fight that has just started between Sam and Freddie.Carly is totally just like the watermelon because…

No, I’m just messing with you. I got nothing.

Actually…I do have something. He does this in Carly’s room. CARLY’S BED ROOM. Oh, you need me to flirt with something? I’ll go do it in Carly’s room. And I’m going to play creepy porn music in the background while I do it. (I’m serious – go listen.)

The watermelon is now a substitute Carly.

And the watermelon is blond, just like the substitute Carly in “iSpace Out”.

And that’s why Mrs. Benson killed President Kennedy.

QED

Moving on.

Sam and Freddie invite Carly to come on a date with them to mediate, to another “ini” Italian eatery.Carly comes downstairs from her room, looking all cute because she’s dressed up for the restaurant. (Sometimes Carly dresses the way I wished I dressed.)Spencer is barbecuing chicken on his lawn, and a strange girl is sitting on a lawn chair.

Who’s this chick?

He offers Carly some chicken – “It’s moist”, but she declines because she’s about to go out to dinner.

She inquires about the girl. Spencer knows nothing about her, except that he met her at the hardware store and she likes chicken.Carly definitely doesn’t find that amusing, but I’d say her traditional “jealousy” (as in-my-head as that may be) is a little understated compared to other instances, but she must be so totally unthreatened by this girl that it doesn’t even matter. (*can explain anything away*)Sam and Freddie have Carly sit at another table. Freddie has never treated Carly this insensitively ever, not even close. He’s got it bad for Sam.While Carly is sitting there, a man named Paul comes and sits across from her, obviously trying to pick her up. This guy looks mid-late 20s. And Carly tells him to hit the road, but she never once says, “I’m only 17,” or anything like that. In the past, anytime a reference has been made to her being in a romantic situation with an older guy (such as when the doorman Lewbert’s girlfriend thinks Carly wants Lewbert for herself), Carly has said, “I’m 15!” or something to that effect. This is the first time she doesn’t use her age to end the conversation.And Miranda Cosgrove is looking much older now.

Sam and Freddie get into two fights within a matter of minutes, and Carly loses it on them.She rants for a little while about how they’re both horrible, and then says, “Do you think I want to be here sitting at a table by myself trying to fix every little problem you have? I could be at home right now eating moist chicken with Spencer and some icky chick from a hardware store.”

“I could be at hoome right now, eating moist chicken with Spencer……………………..and some icky chick from a hardware store.”

How perfect is that?

Freddie and Sam’s date is at a very nice, classy restaurant famous for its amazingly delicious lasagna. (So good that when Carly storms out, she takes both Freddie and Sam’s plates of it with her). That doesn’t sound so bad, right? And even though she’s at a table by herself, Sam and Freddie were regularly involving her in the conversation, so it was sort of like she was hanging out with them as she normally would. And the fighting must be super annoying to her (even though I enjoy it, because I see it more as fire than conflict), but still. Doesn’t sound so bad. But Carly would rather be at home with Spencer.

And Spencer offered her a piece of chicken, but his phrasing doesn’t actually include an invitation to join him and his lady friend (though his language does not preclude it), but Carly’s description of what she could be doing obviously includes crashing his date. She’d rather be dating Spencer and icky chick than Freddie and Sam. (Re: Title of episode)

But the ending scene is worth more than anything else Sparly in this episode. It is the single most Sparly scene in the entire run of the show (ignoring demonstrations of a pure sibling love, like “iWanna Stay With Spencer”, of course).

Jfjaljfdlsa jfdajlfdjakls jkfdjaljklfdja jklfjdl;sajl sajkhkhlkhkj

This scene! This f–king scene. Gah, words fail me.

It’s night now, and the lights are turned out in the apartment. The camera pulls back to reveal Spencer and Carly in outdoor chaise recliners on the lawn, staring up at the ceiling.

Spencer has even put up little solar-looking lights at the corners. That’s so adorable.

Discarded plates and napkins are at the edges beside them, so clearly they ate something together, though whether it was chicken or lasagna or both we’ll probably never know. (I’ll be the crazy fan at some con, asking Dan Schneider whether in episode 5.02 at 20 minutes 34 seconds, the plates to the left of Carly and Spencer are the lasagna or the chicken, and whether Carly returned the plates to the restaurant. That’s how you’ll know me.)

Let’s talk about the music now, because it’s half of what makes this scene so special. It’s not the typical iCarly music. I don’t know the exact titles of Michael Corcoran’s score, but there’s the scene-transition theme, and the end-of-the-episode-launch-the-end-titles theme, and the what’s-going-on-here theme, and the Spencer-builds-something theme – you get the idea. These musical themes are – as is typical with kids shows (especially Phineas and Ferb) and even most shows in general (Arrested Development is a great example), and movies too (Lord of The Rings comes to mind) – tightly built into the narrative, and its flow, and your perception of what’s going. The music (working with the laugh track) tells you what to think, and how to feel. Is this a good scene? Is this a bad scene? Is this a friend? Is this an enemy? Is this a real fight or just banter? Is this going to end with a kiss? Is this supposed to be funny or did things just go horrible wrong? The music tells you so much. And we’ve only had a few scenes on iCarly with long stretches of serious music – mostly it has been Sam and Freddie kisses in “iKiss” and “iOMG” – those two stand out. And “iWanna Stay With Spencer”, of course.

But in this scene we’ve got this slow, serious guitar stuff going on. I’m not making this up. Listen to it. It reminds me of church camp, when we’d be at campfire, and after we’d do the fast, rambunctious songs, then the leaders would play some slow guitar music to calm us down and segue into the more serious stuff.

The music completely sets the mood for this scene, and the mood it sets is…just so different. It’s so much calmer, and peaceful, and sincere, and reflective/pensive and quiet. That’s perhaps the most important thing – it’s a quiet music. Much more in the background. It’s telling us to watch the scene, and listen to the dialogue.

And perhaps the best thing about the music is that it isn’t soundtrack – it’s the music Spencer and Carly are actually playing in the apartment. Why are they playing soft, smooth date music? Huh? HUH? And if I recall correctly, that stereo system has almost always been used for dates – “iWill Date Freddie”, and another episode later on when Spencer has a date over. (To be fair, I can think of one exception: when Spencer and Carly throw paint on one of Spencer’s sculptures. But he played loud rock music that time, if I recall correctly.)

I can’t say enough about the music, but you’re probably thinking I’ve already said enough, so I’m going to stop, and hope that what I’ve already said has done the job.

I’m also going to take this moment to mention again that it’s dark. iCarly is such a bright and colorful show, so the fact that this scene is in the dark also sets it apart. I am not joking when I say I could probably list for you every scene that takes place outside at night, or inside at night with the lights turned off. Not. Very. Many.

Carly quietly and softly says, “This is nice.” What an accidental date sort of thing to say and feel. Basically, Spencer and Carly are on an accidental date, and they act accordingly.

And her tone! Miranda – I want to kiss you. Your tone when you deliver that line. Gah!

ACCIDENTAL DATE!!!!!

She just sounds so sincere, like all of her walls are down and everything that’s wrong has been put aside and she’s just here in this moment and it’s perfect to her.And it’s the little things, as it always is with them, that add up. Look at Carly’s feet – she’s twiddling her feet. People don’t say that, do they? What do you call it? I don’t know. But she’s moving her feet, in that nervous way that girls do when they’re with guys they like.

Disclaimer: this GIF does not do the foot-twiddling justice.

I’m not making this up! I’m not making something out of nothing here. This isn’t like the “mount” thing. LOOK AT HER FEET!

It’s a nervous thing. Why is she nervous? Well that’s the frickin’ question, isn’t it?

(Seriously, the feet thing screams ACCIDENTAL DATE more than anything else in this magnificent little scene. And right now Miranda Cosgrove is reading this and thinking, “Damn it. I knew I shouldn’t have moved them so much.”)

“Yeah,” Spencer agrees quietly and softly. “It’s a lot more fun hanging here with you than with that dumb girl from the hardware store.”

Yes. He actually said that. I mean we know that’s true. It’s almost painful in its obviousness how much Spencer prefers the company of Carly (and even the rest of the trio, and Gibby) to his dates (“iWon’t Cancel The Show”, anyone?). But here he is actually stating it to Carly while they romantically lay under the stars.

And just the fact that he said it. I mean, why? Why include that perfect line? But they did. And I want to kiss everyone responsible on the mouth.

Oh, and dare I forget to mention that she’s still wearing that ridiculously cute (and short) dress that she wore to the restaurant. That date dress.

ACCIDENTAL DATE!“Thanks,” Carly replies.

Does that strike anyone else as odd? Did she really need to thank him for what he said? Of course she’s better company than the icky chick (who we soon learn is also a thief). She had a bad night where she was neglected and taken advantage of by Sam and Freddie, so of course it was nice to hear Spencer say that to her, but still. And isn’t that the whole point? Everything was going horrible, but this moment with Spencer, it’s perfect.

Well, she thought she needed to say it. And what’s even more important is that she doesn’t just thank him out of courtesy (she’s a polite person, after all), she means it.

She’s flattered.

FLATTERED!

That is her reaction – her tone and face make that clear.

F.l.a.t.t.e.r.e.d.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“I’m sorry she stole your wallet,” Carly says, reintroducing the humor: inevitable but still disappointing. (But now we know we’re definitively done with the icky chick from the hardware store. Like all of Spencer’s love interests, that was not meant to be.)

ACCIDENTAL DATE. PERFECT COUPLE.

Another thing about this scene is how soft and quiet all of the dialogue is. Even the humorous lines, like that one, and Spencer’s reply: “That’s OK. There was only four dollars in it.” He would normally say that in two seconds, but he takes at least six to say it in this scene, with a long pause in the middle. I love that Jerry and Miranda didn’t break the seriousness of the mood even though the dialogue was humorous.

We don’t know what happened with the icky hardware chick. She successfully stole the wallet, so we can assume the theft was not discovered until after she left. She either left on her own, or Spencer got rid of her. I’m going to fanwank that Spencer sent icky chick away when Carly got home. Maybe she only stole his wallet because she was angry he ended the date? It’s possible. Carly wasn’t gone for too long, especially depending upon how close the restaurant was to her building and how quickly the food was served. So she came home, Spencer sent the icky chick away, and then they had their picnic ACCIDENTAL DATE.

“Those stars you put on the ceiling look so cool,” she compliments.

He put stars on the ceiling so that they could lie out and look at them! Adorable.

Even though Carly has almost endless patience with Spencer’s “schemes” and inventions and sundry, this time she truly enjoys and appreciates what he has done. In fact, it becomes her refuge when her life is full of stress. This is a scene of refuge.“Good,” he says, “because it was not easy.”And then they talk about the moon he also hung, which was large and heavy.Of course it falls on them.I don’t mind the scene having a comedic ending like that (again, inevitable), but I hate that it had to end with a demonstration of Spencer’s incompetence. They could have had Gibby’s dog relieve himself on the lawn, or something like that. At least nothing caught fire, though. Although we already had an explosion-related incident in this episode.

That’s right. There was a whole other Spencer/Carly scene I DIDN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT. Amazing, right?It involved Spencer mowing his “lawn”. (Without sunlight, I doubt the grass grew very much. Especially not in one day. But whatever.)

(They could have been killed by that falling moon.)

This moon is a metaphorical blanket, because…

I’m sure they were a lot more comfortable on the chaise lounges but it’s a lot easier to imagine this scene turning into a kiss if they were both lying right on the ground. Maybe Spencer lifted the moon off of them, then sat down right on the grass next to Carly’s chaise. And then they kissed.

I haven’t seen 5×03 yet so for the next few minutes I even get to believe that happened.

I have one more thing to say about this scene: let’s talk about what this scene is about. (That’s a lot of “about”s for one sentence.) This episode is called “iDate Sam and Freddie”. It’s about Sam and Freddie needing Carly’s help to settle their frequent arguments. And in the scene before this one, Carly had a complete freak out on the both of them, and not only had a horrible time on the date, but said some pretty horrible stuff (though I think it was hyperbolic enough to not actually have been hurtful to Sam or Freddie). But the scene that follows, the LAST SCENE OF THE EPISODE, doesn’t even mention Sam or Freddie. Doesn’t mention Carly’s freak out. Doesn’t mention how stressed she has been or why. This last scene doesn’t mention any of that. It’s not about those things. It’s about Spencer and Carly, and them enjoying each other’s company, and them being on an ACCIDENTAL DATE, and how a large, decorative moon falling on you is foreplay.

OK, maybe not the last one.This scene reminded me a lot of the scene in the Wizards of Waverly Place movie, when Justin and Alex are sitting around the fire in the jungle, and he’s confessing that he’s jealous about how easily magic comes to her, and he’s only out for his own glory, etc., etc. That scene is pretty infamous for making that brother and sister pair look like love interests, and I swear this accidental date scene did the same thing.Remember when I mentioned the formula of the “iDo” and “Rain King” episodes, and how there’s usually a conclusive scene at the end with some significant content about the relationship of the two characters in question and where it’s headed? Well, this felt like one of those scenes, even though this episode in particular had no build-up towards it.

This was one of those scenes.

Sigh.

Dan Schneider – why are you so cruel as to actually make me think that you ship Spencer/Carly a little? Jerry Trainor and Miranda Cosgrove – you’re not off the hook. And director Steven Hoefer – you also owe me for making me get this excited.

Just a note: it has come to my attention upon a rereading that I might have exaggerated slightly. But give me a break: I’m never going to get anything more than this.

5×03 “iCan’t Take It” doesn’t have much Spencer/Carly worth mentioning (that is to say, anything exceptional), but there are a few things I wanted to note. 1) excessive use of the word yeast. (I fully support wardrobe’s decision to dress Spencer in flattering plaids. I wasn’t kidding when I said they spruced up his clothes.) 2) Character continuity about Spencer not liking to lie. Sam tries to teach him how to do it in, I believe, a season 2 episode. He fails completely, and ends up confessing that he was lying, and saying he doesn’t like to lie and that he tries to teach his little sister that it’s wrong. Of course, in “iTake on Dingo” he lies super well and it’s never remarked upon, but whatever. 3) Spencer spraying donuts with whip cream and eating them. 4)Carly walking in and saying, “Honey, I’m home”. Then Spencer saying, “Let me guess, Sam and Freddie are with you.” And then screaming after Carly confirms. Literally screaming. 5) Spencer’s almost pornographic relief at getting ice down his pants after Sam kicks him. 6) A big musical number at the end that didn’t annoy me – Gibby’s. He’s got a GREAT voice. A little raw – but you can hear the talent in there.

7) Spencer crying and eating yeast while he watched Sam and Freddie reconcile. He ships it. (And not just because Freddie and Sam need to be together, but maybe also because this means that Freddie and Carly aren’t at all meant to be!”)Well, this is embarrassing.

It would seem this Post has gotten too long. It keeps crashing on me. So there are two episodes left that have aired that I have yet to discuss, and unfortunately, an entirely separate post will be needed to discuss them. Come on, Word Press! I only have 650 images uploaded for this post. Man up. (I joke. It’s ridiculous. I’m amazed I was able to make it this long.)

The conclusion is here.