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Besides sport­ing what must be either the worst or the best title in the show’s run, iSam’s Mom also fea­tures iCarly’s best ever guest appear­ance in Jane Lynch, who plays, as the title sug­gests, Sam’s mom. As always, Jane Lynch is incred­i­ble. She has great on-screen chem­istry with Jen­nette McCurdy (“Sam”), and man­ages to deliver the line, “Hug me, you lit­tle turd,” in a way that’s heart-warming and gen­tly funny. The fact that Lynch’s per­for­mance is out­stand­ing should not be a sur­prise, nor should the zani­ness of the char­ac­ter she por­trays. What may be sur­pris­ing is just how much iSam’s Mom says about the dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion of hav­ing parents.

In spite of the title, Sam’s rela­tion­ship with her mom is only one half of a fairly bal­anced episode. The other half is about Freddie’s rela­tion­ship with his mother (a recur­ring role played by Mary Scheer, who also does a great job). The focus lands on Carly’s and Spencer’s apart­ment when Sam moves in after hav­ing a fight with her mom. Then, Fred­die and his mom both move in after Fred­die helps iden­tify a vio­lent crim­i­nal (“The Shadow Ham­mer”) only to have his own iden­tity com­pro­mised on the evening news (prompt­ing Carly to ask, “Who watches the news?”). This point of inter­sec­tion helps to pro­vide an inter­est­ing com­par­i­son and con­trast between Sam’s neglect­ful mess of a mom and Freddie’s over­pro­tec­tive mess of a mom. While Sam and her mom are locked in the “ther­apy box,” under­go­ing ther­apy that is “a bit unortho­dox” — don’t worry, Sam assures the ther­a­pist, “ah, it’s cool, we’re not Jew­ish” — Fred­die, his mom, and a hired body­guard (“I hired him to guard Freddie’s body,” says Mrs. Ben­son) named Gun­smoke, are tak­ing over the Shay apart­ment, boil­ing sil­ver­ware, chok­ing down unwanted mush­rooms, and watch­ing “The Killing War” and/or Full House.

Mean­while, we’ve got Carly and her brother Spencer. Their father is on an Air Force sub­ma­rine and is never seen by the audi­ence (and, pre­sum­ably, by the char­ac­ters). Their mother — if mem­ory serves me — is never men­tioned. Carly has been more or less raised by Spencer, who, besides being under 30, is some­thing of a goof­ball. In many ways, Carly is often the one look­ing after Spencer.

This sets up the irony, then, that the peo­ple who resolve the con­flict in the dual sto­ry­lines are Carly and Spencer. Carly con­vinces Sam and her mother to rec­on­cile, observ­ing that even though they’re both hor­ri­ble in their own ways, they still love each other. Spencer’s res­o­lu­tion is half-as-baked; he switches the Benson’s apart­ment num­ber (8-D) with a down-the-hall neighbor’s (8-H), which puts their minds at ease and their bod­ies back in their own apart­ment. Of course, the episode con­cludes with The Shadow Ham­mer walk­ing down the hall, swing­ing his ham­mer, mut­ter­ing, “8-D, 8-D….” Regard­less, the sal­va­tion of these parent-child rela­tion­ships is ren­dered by essen­tially par­ent­less children.

On the sur­face, this irony is pretty stan­dard teen/tween fare. It has been true that “par­ents just don’t under­stand” since Wally & The Beaver, at least. Under­neath the ser­vice, though, is a greater truth, one that I learned after about three decades of life: hav­ing par­ents, and hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with them, is a life­long nego­ti­a­tion. It can be ardu­ous and frus­trat­ing, and the hard­est stuff is usu­ally a result of our shared love, and not in spite of it. The hard­est stuff makes it ardu­ous and frus­trat­ing, but the hard­est stuff also makes it worth it.

Also, maybe most impor­tantly, iSam’s Mom is hilar­i­ous. Truly. It’s one of the fun­ni­est sit­com episodes I’ve seen in a long time. And I con­sider it only the sec­ond fun­ni­est episode of the fourth sea­son of iCarly.