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While it’s not among my favorite episodes, iDo is an appro­pri­ate end to my week of writ­ing about iCarly. After all, it focuses on a cou­ple of 30-something (pos­si­bly 20-something) iCarly fanat­ics. Obvi­ously, this res­onates with me a great deal, and lets me know that the writ­ers believe that I exist. On the other hand, this episode is in line with a long tra­di­tion of sit­com episodes that focus on one-time char­ac­ters about whom I sim­ply can­not care. Namely, the episode focuses on Gor­don Birch (screen-name: “Big­Birch”) and his girlfriend/fiancé/wife, Jody Flueger (screen-name unknown), adult iCarly fans from Wis­con­sin. The plot is sim­ple: Gor­don pro­poses to Jody live on iCarly, Carly and Sam are invited as brides­maids, Fred­die and Spencer are invited as grooms­men, Jody falls in love with Spencer, and the wed­ding is delayed until Carly sings a song that Gor­don wrote for Jody, thereby con­vinc­ing Jody to marry him after all. Also, Gibby tries to get a $5 bill out of a tree, even­tu­ally reach­ing it by get­ting on the shoul­ders of a senior cit­i­zen named Hazel.

The episode explores one major theme, via Gor­don and Jody, namely fear. Gor­don, who isn’t afraid to call his woman “doll” or “baby” or “my honey” and so on, is afraid to express his feel­ings. He writes a lovely song, but lacks the courage to sing it. Jody is afraid of com­mit­ment, afraid of set­tling. And how can she be sure she’s not set­tling if Gor­don lacks the courage to prove that she’s not?

Con­trasted to all this hes­i­ta­tion are Gibby and Hazel, who will stop at noth­ing for a mere $5 and an oppor­tu­nity to “go grab some cof­fee, or some­thin’.” Of course, Hazel falls on her back, tem­porar­ily uncon­scious, and Gibby flees with a guilty con­science, but courage doesn’t alway end in suc­cess with regard to achiev­ing goals.

Truth­fully, iDo lacks the depth of other sea­son four episodes, rely­ing more on humor. Iron­i­cally, it’s less zany (except for Gibby’s antics) than other episodes, too. Nev­er­the­less, it’s a fun episode. The only other shows I watch reg­u­larly are the NBC Thurs­day night come­dies, and I never com­plain that 30 Rock lacks metaphor, so why should I do it with iCarly? The answer, most likely, is fear.

Admit­tedly, iCarly con­tains ele­ments that are inten­tion­ally appeal­ing to young­sters and inci­den­tally alien­at­ing to adults. A good deal of the demo­graphic dis­tinc­tion, though, is a result of mar­ket­ing, more than any­thing else. This brings me back to the Gen­er­a­tion Bub­ble quote I men­tioned before, which states that “con­sump­tion has replaced pro­duc­tion as the key aspect of one’s iden­tity.” I have a very sober, “grown-up” job, one which I exe­cute with matu­rity and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and, yet, I can be very reluc­tant to admit that I watch a lot of tele­vi­sion that is “brought to you by” Lit­tlest Pet Shop and Lunchbles.

Truth­fully, I think iCarly has con­sis­tently been one of the fun­ni­est and most fun tele­vi­sion shows in the past few years. It’s funny. It’s fun. It’s easy to watch, and it’s easy to watch again. It’s so full of jokes and funny lines that I feel like I’m con­stantly find­ing some­thing new. I think it’s as good as any­thing on tele­vi­sion, and bet­ter than most things. I like other Nick­elodeon shows, too, but none of them are on the same level. Nei­ther are most net­work shows.