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Part of the appeal of iCarly to me, as an adult fan (a good 15 years, give or take a cou­ple years, from the old­est of the tar­get demo­graphic) is that it can be enjoyed at var­i­ous lev­els. At its most basic, iCarly has some of the best jokes on tele­vi­sion, some of the best turns of phrase, and some of the purest wit. The writ­ers are top notch, and, as far as comedic act­ing goes, Jerry Trainer — who plays Carly’s big brother, Spencer — is as good as any­one on TV. I mean this in all seri­ous­ness: iCarly is a funny show. But there’s more to iCarly than just fun­ni­ness. This week, I’ll be tak­ing a closer look at the first five episodes of the cur­rent (fourth) sea­son of iCarly, start­ing with iGot a Hot Room.

First, for the unini­ti­ated, here’s a quick sum­mary of the plot. It’s Carly’s birth­day and Spencer, a sculp­tor, makes her a lamp out of gummy bears, which causes a fire that destroys Carly’s room. Spencer meets with an insur­ance agent who informs him that, because of the value of a fam­ily heir­loom watch, he will be receiv­ing a check for $82,000. Spencer keeps Carly in the dark in order to sur­prise her with a major room “makeover,” the coolest teen-room ever. Mean­while, Carly gets a job at The Groovy Smoothie in order to make money to replace her lost pos­ses­sions. Hilar­ity ensues, naturally.

As an exam­ple of the afore­men­tioned humor, there are two jokes that I espe­cially appre­ci­ate. The first involves Carly’s watch, which the insur­ance agent iden­ti­fies as (pho­net­i­cally) “Robair Julay,” which, of course, is a ref­er­ence to Robert Goulet. The other joke is a sim­i­larly dated ref­er­ence. When Spencer con­venes his team to work on Carly’s room, he calls role. He calls out, “the car­pen­ters,” and a man and a woman who look like a young Richard and Karen, answer, “Here!” These jokes exem­plify, at least in my opin­ion, why iCarly is funny. The writ­ers are obvi­ously writ­ing things that make them laugh instead of pan­der­ing to a demo­graphic. I really doubt that a 12 year old will get these jokes.

I think this is some­thing sig­nif­i­cant for the episode, because aging is its theme. Most obvi­ously, the episode takes place on Carly’s birth­day. In a sec­ondary plot, Spencer gets a hair­cut from a man so old that he can barely see, who talks about tak­ing a bul­let in Korea when things don’t go his way, and who requests a glass of plum juice. Carly gets her first real job and learns about putting tacos onto a stick from her wise boss, T-Bo. A run­ning joke is an allu­sion to her age-innappropriate pre­vi­ous birth­day party, when Spencer took her to a pet­ting zoo. Obvi­ously, Carly would’ve been too old for a pet­ting zoo, but some­thing trau­ma­tiz­ing hap­pened that involved a goat. Despite many peo­ple ask­ing, “What did the goat do,” what the goat did is left to our imag­i­na­tions, but it has clearly taken a toll on Carly’s sense of inno­cence (it is estab­lished in other episodes that Carly is extremely prud­ish, in general).

Aging is only one aspect of a big­ger con­cept: mor­tal­ity. When Spencer reveals the room to Carly, he explains that he was able to afford it because of their grandmother’s watch. Carly says, “We should’ve gone to her funeral!” Tem­po­ral­ity is con­sid­ered when Spencer admits that spend­ing $82,000 on the room is “so stu­pid, ’cause we rent this place, but who cares!” And, of course, all loss is per­ma­nent, as Carly’s friend Gibby expresses when he points out that Carly’s “old pho­tos and per­sonal items […] can’t be replaced.” The episode con­cludes with another zany quote by Gibby, who poses the ques­tion, “Man, is there any­thing money can’t do?” Is it a boast, a taunt, or an ironic nod to the words of the Preacher, “all is van­ity”? Never heavy-handed, iCarly leaves that for the audi­ence to ponder.

Dark themes run through­out iGot a Hot Room — aging, loss, toil, dete­ri­o­ra­tion, destruc­tion, death, and some pos­si­ble vio­la­tion by a goat — but, like Carly’s new room, the episode is adorned with bright col­ors, zany humor, and fun. Such nuance is rare in any episode of a tele­vi­sion show, regard­less of the aver­age age of the demographic.