My Review of iCarly (2007)

My TV Show Rating Score:

5/5: It is an awesome show!
4.5/5: it is a great show albeit not perfect
4/5: It’s a good show with minor flaws
3/5: It’s overall okay/guilty pleasure
2/5: It’s bad but not awful
1/5: Look, up in the sky! It’s super bad!
0/5: MY EYEEEESSS!!!

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Greetings, folks. This is Mr. J back with another TV show review for today. This afternoon, I will be reviewing "iCarly" which aired from 2007 to 2012 on Nickelodeon. This was one of the sitcoms shows I grew up watching as a kid besides "Drake & Josh", "Everybody Loves Raymond", and a couple others. Because I loved D&J so much, I was looking forward to seeing this show back in 2007. Plus, seeing Miranda Cosgrove and Jerry Trainor become some of the leading characters was both surprising and exciting for me as l loved their previous roles of Megan and Crazy Steve respectively.

I remember watching the first and second seasons of iCarly as well as some parts of seasons 3, 4, & 5, but I never watched the sixth season. So in preparation for this review, I re-watched all five seasons of the show before I fully watched the sixth season for the first time. To put it simply....this show didn't age well. Watching this show as an adult, I somewhat forgot "iCarly" is filled with poor acting, cringe humor, and over-the-top dialogue.

This show is basically about a trio of teenagers making a webcast show where they do random things, stupid things, and weird things just to make kids laugh. See? And honestly, I can see kids liking this show at first until they grow up and see how foolish and ridiculous it is.

Let me just say something about our main characters: Carly herself isn't that good of a protagonist. In fact, she's very annoying, always has to cling to a random cute handsome boy (don't care that she's a teenager, that doesn't make it funny!), rude, and inconsiderate. She arguably stays the same towards the end of the show which prevents me from ever liking her as a character.

Sam, on the other hand, is the only one who went through actual character growth throughout the whole show. She and Freddie have always been at each other's throats non-stop until they had their first kiss that one night at the balcony. Later on, they would show hints of romantic feelings for each other until they would start dating...for a short period of time. Honestly, I'm kinda glad they broke up because Sam is toxic to Freddie. But despite their flaws, I still appreciate what they were trying to do with these characters.

Jennette McCurdy displayed remarkable talent in persevering through the harsh shit she went through. After hearing the story of what happened to her during the production of this show, I was shocked and it made me want to read her book one day so I can learn more about her unpleasant experience.

Spencer is one of the few characters of the series I genuinely liked and that's thanks to Jerry Trainor's acting and comedic style. He really carried the show without setting it on fire--if you know what I mean.

As for Freddie...well, he's a decent character. I can't find anything unique about this guy other than the fact that he's a computer geek who's into technology and stuff like that. And he isn't that funny either.

As I mentioned already, the show has some bad acting that makes it unbearable to sit through. It's a lot more noticeable in the first season which made me wonder how the hell I didn't notice it as a kid. Admittedly, they got slightly better in the following seasons, but their performances (except Jerry Trainor) still felt dull and boring for the most part. Maybe it's just me, but I barely laughed at most of the jokes as I found them to be forced and cringeworthy.

Speaking of jokes, I found some of them to be a little offensive when it came to stereotypes, festishes, and foreign countries. For example, in "iGo to Japan", during the last thirty minutes of the TV film, Carly and her friends wasted so much time in trying to make the Japanese security guards understand them although they don't speak English and Spencer attempted to talk to them in broken Japanese...and that was played for jokes. The way they made fun of their language (dragging it for too long) in the third act made it seem like it's weird to speak in a foreign language.

Even worse, throughout the show, there were moments that seemed inappropriate or out-of-line. Does Dan Schneider have a thing for foot fetishes or something? Or Gibby constantly taking his shirt off for nearly two or three seasons in a row? Or making someone smell your arm pits against their will? Or having a homeless person sneak around in a hotel room and fiddle with someone's hair? Dan, you are a creep. Please stay the fuck away from children, thank you very much.

Lastly, the sixth season of iCarly is the most boring season out of the six. It was heavily clear to me they wanted to be done with the show and had no clear idea how to end it. But I do admit that the series finale "iGoodbye" was actually well-done. It tied up all loose ends and gave each character a satisfying end. Other than that, the final season is at least 90% forgettable in my opinion.

So yeah, this show didn't age well. Whatever nostalgic memories I have of the show have now been altered after watching "iCarly" as an adult. This gets a 2/5: iStink. But if you like this show, good for you guys. But for those of you who haven't seen this show, I recommend you watch other sitcoms that are much more hilarious, charismatic, and intriguing than this.

Peace.

Comments

[A Man Undercover]

Honestly, I still believe that “iCarly” is a better 21st century sitcom compared to others I’ve seen, and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it at all. For me, it’s definitely more fun to watch than “Last Man Standing”, “The Office”, “Malcolm in the Middle”, and “3rd Rock from the Sun”.

But, I respect your opinion on the show, and I’m sorry that it wasn’t as great as you remembered.

[Darth Wrex]

I always wondered if the Special 'iPsycho' is based off of scientific evidence.

[Dianabel]

Ah, this show was my childhood. I loved watching it on Nickelodeon, my dad hated it though because they were always yelling . But yeah, it didn´t age well. I didn´t watch the ending either.

I was shocked and it made me want to read her book one day so I can learn more about her unpleasant experience.

Oh hoh hoh, I haven´t read it but I know her story, and oh boy you´re in for a ride. She does talk about Dan´s dirty business too...

The way they made fun of their language (dragging it for too long) in the third act made it seem like it's weird to speak in a foreign language.

I find funny that people in the US (some people not everbody) forget that in other countries their language is foreign or that they´re not the centre of the universe, and though 90% of the population speaks English on a certain level, most will have some trouble speaking it, something that upsets karen and their male equivalent tourists. What they have no idea is that we make fun of them in return . In fact, in my country we have a nickname for those kind of tourists (guiris).