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I couldn’t have planned it this way. At the end of a week in which I wrote exclu­sively about iCarly, often in ways far too seri­ous, a spe­cial double-length (if there’s one thing about watch­ing Nick­elodeon shows that makes me feel self-consciously old, it’s how they call hour-long episodes “movies,” and how irra­tionally I respond to that) episode aired, in which Carly, address­ing a con­ven­tion full of super­fans, deliv­ered a mono­logue that con­tained these words….

iCarly’s about com­edy: stu­pid, point­less com­edy, just to make peo­ple smile and laugh. […] Some­times you should just watch iCarly, laugh, and share an apple with a friend.

This is true, and it’s a good reminder of what I’ve always loved about iCarly, which is stu­pid, point­less com­edy, and the fact that a char­ac­ter would wax sen­ti­men­tal about “shar­ing an apple with a friend.” It’s not how the show addresses mor­tal­ity, explores the dif­fi­culty of parent-child rela­tion­ships, employs metaphor, or makes state­ments on human value or fear. It’s about the jokes that never get old, the wacky turns of phrase, the occa­sional and ran­dom usage of out­dated words and expres­sions, the unapolo­getic zani­ness that I can’t find any­where else.

Then again, iStart a Fan War is a shifty episode! Even as Carly makes her heart­felt state­ment about what iCarly is, things are hap­pen­ing that sug­gest that it’s also about a lot more than laugh­ing and shar­ing apples. Two dif­fer­ent plots explore the same theme, which, I guess, is best sum­ma­rized as fanati­cism and control.

Carly, Sam, and Fred­die address a room­ful of “Webi­con” atten­dees, who quickly divide into two camps: the Cred­die ship­pers vs. the Sed­die ship­pers. I hap­pen to be famil­iar with these terms, hav­ing tra­versed an embar­rass­ingly thor­ough expanse of the world­wide web. “Ship­per” refers to a group of peo­ple who become pas­sion­ately inter­ested in the poten­tial rela­tion­ship of fic­tional char­ac­ters. “Cred­die” is a fan who hopes for a roman­tic rela­tion­ship between Carly and Fred­die, while “Sed­dies” are pulling for Sam and Fred­die. A sort of tunnel-vision can (but does not nec­es­sar­ily) take over for some extreme ship­pers, where aspects of the show that add noth­ing to the “ship” become annoy­ing to the fan. Some turn to fan­fic (short for “fan fic­tion”) to fill the void, and, sud­denly, the purity of enjoy­ment is com­pro­mised. This makes the “apple” metaphor par­tic­u­larly sharp. Sure, there are many ways to pre­pare an apple, but none can match the expe­ri­ence of enjoy­ing an apple sim­ply as it is.

The sec­ond plot fea­tures Spencer who attends Webi­con as his favorite World of War­lords (for the obliv­i­ous, this is a spoof of the pop­u­lar MMORPG, World of War­craft), Aruthor. His cos­tume (“stume”) is amaz­ing, and is rivaled only by that of an unnamed con­ven­tion attendee dressed as Aspar­ta­may, played by none other than Jack Black. With Jerry Trainer (“Spencer”) and Jack Black, the writ­ers chose wisely in focus­ing pri­mar­ily on phys­i­cal com­edy, but in doing that, they sent up mean­ing­less obses­sions in a hilar­i­ous fashion.

The iCarly writ­ers and creator/executive-producer Dan Schnei­der seem to alway be say­ing some­thing. One of my favorite scenes of this episode occurs when Carly promises, with all sin­cer­ity and ratio­nal­ity, that none of the iCarly kids are dat­ing each other. She is inter­rupted by a red-faced, middle-aged, white man in cheap suit with a bad com­bover who screams, “You lie!” It’s pos­si­ble, if not likely, that the writ­ers put this one in strictly for the laugh, but I can’t help but read more into it. Specif­i­cally, I inter­pret as a state­ment that polit­i­cal dis­course is every bit as gen­teel and sophis­ti­cated as ado­les­cent web-geekery. How sad that this state­ment could be made with a direct quote, not even in SNL-style hyperbole.

In a strange way, though, maybe like the oppo­site of every­thing else, it’s that “stu­pid, point­less com­edy” that grounds the state­ments being made. With regard to com­edy aimed at adults, I often find myself demand­ing that it meet some cri­te­ria of “intel­li­gence.” iCarly reverses my expec­ta­tions. I find pro­fun­dity lurk­ing in the sub­text, but the rea­son I’m there is because of a senile old man (Gibby’s grand­fa­ther) singing, “My old lady’s got no teeth, doo-dah, doo-dah” (to the tune of “Camp­town Races,” of course) and so many other aspects of the episode that, “stu­pid” and “point­less” or not, encour­age me to laugh and smile with­out hav­ing to think about it too much.