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ireview-icarly · 6 years

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iPilot

How adorable are these lil fuckers?

There’s your warning to know that even if I’m talking about a kids show, I will not have kids friendly language.

So this review is going to be a little different from the others. For one, it’s my first one. Unless I’m perfect, a word never used to describe anything I do, I’m probably gonna change things up a little bit as I go with this. So I’m saying I don’t expect my last review to be like this one. For another, before I get started on the actual review, I’m going to be explaining some things. So let’s get started on that, shall we?

First of all, I’m watching the episodes on my tv. Therefore, it isn’t often that I will be taking screenshots. That also means I will be using images from the wiki and whatever I find on google. I figure, since they’re put online without a warning or a watermark, they’re free to use. So probably all of the images (and gifs, as I’ll be using a lot of those) I use for these reviews aren’t mine. It also means the consistency of the screenshots and images will be a little different, but I’ll try to edit them if they need to be edited. For this one, I broke down and found the episode on some illegal streaming app on my laptop and took screenshots for the parts I couldn’t find them, but I’m going to be trying to avoid doing that in the future.

Second of all, shipping. I’ve seen the wars, I know how crazy it can get. I’m hoping, as the series has been over for quite a few years now, it will have calmed down enough that we can be civilized about this? I’m not going to get deep into this until the review for iDream of Dance, that specific episode for a reason.

Third of all, my rating. Now, my system is pretty easy. At the end of each review, I’m going to rate it by giving it however many stars out of ten I think it should have. It’s going to be on plot, humor, character, conflict, and my own personal overall enjoyment of the episode. My rating for most of those will be done objectively but the last category is simply opinion. I’ll break it down even clearer in the end.

Now let me warn you, I’m in an intensive Creative Writing program and before that English was my best subject in high school and middle school. What does this mean? It means I’m long winded and I over analyze the shit out of things. Just be prepared for that.

I think that’s everything! Bout time we get started, no?

So we open up the show, not with one of the main characters, but of a man in his office laughing at something funny. This man, as we all know, is Ted Franklin, the principal of this here institution. He’s played by Tim Russ and he’s awesome.

The gif button on tumblr is honestly great, I’m so glad for it. I just type in iPilot and boom, we have Principal Ted Franklin laughing.

I love Principal Franklin, he reminds me of my old principal. Mean spirited teachers with sticks up their asses do exist (in fact, we’re about to meet one in the iCarly universe!), but some teachers don’t get into the profession of teaching if they hate kids (though I will admit some do it just to have a job to pay them bills). This is the first meeting we get of our guy Ted here, and it lets us know right away chill and appreciates humor. But we’re not here for him.

No we’re not here for her either.

So this woman, who we know to be Ms. Briggs, though she hasn’t been introduced yet, is played my Mindy Sterling. Briggs is obviously upset about something, but we don’t know what yet. “She is right outside,” Briggs says, and then we meet our action girl.

This girl is named to be Carly, so if you’ve never heard of or seen the show (and you don’t know that this show was made for Miranda Cosgrove), you know right away that this is the main character. After all, it is iCarly right?

Okay, let’s get right into over analyzing the scene. That’s what you’re here for, right? Now I’m going to be watching the show in a few different ways. I’m going to be watching it now, in 2017, at 20 years old, with the knowledge of what happens in the show as well as how successful the show ended up being. I’m also going to be watching it as if it’s 2007 and I’m watching for the first time. (Can we talk about the fact that the show has now been on for over ten years? Insane, right?)

So now, let us go back to 2007 when this aired. For the past few years, we have seen this girl as Megan, Drake’s evil little sister that likes to torment him and they’re step brother, Josh. Going back to the mind of myself in 2007, when Miranda Cosgrove steps through that door, all I see is Megan.

Now, Meagan- I mean Carly has been sent to the principal’s office. So, since she’s been sent to the principal’s office, we get this sense that Carly’s a trouble maker, kind of like Meagan, right? I mean, look at this smirk?

We can now see that Principal Ted was laughing at a picture of Ms. Briggs’ head photo docked (photo shopped) onto a very large animal, which is debated between a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus. And really, it’s obviously a rhino, come on Principal Ted.

So yes, it seems that Carly is quite the troublemaker. Very similar to her twin, Meagan. Only... there’s something here we don’t know. In the beginning, Carly seemed hesitant to admit to doing this, and she’s fidgeting in her chair, and looking downright uncomfortable. If she was really a trouble maker, wouldn’t trips to the principal’s office be just a Tuesday for her?

Briggs brings up her father, and we find out through some dialogue exposition that her father is out of the picture, at least for now, because he is in the military and is stationed in Europe. She is being looked after by her older brother, Spencer. Who is an “artist”.

Interestingly we see here Carly loses her composure when Briggs mocks Spencer’s chosen profession. So we see that she is protective of her brother. And interesting difference between Carly and Meagan, who her brothers usually needed protection from.

Sigh. I like Carly but sometimes I miss Megan.

So Principal Franklin lets Briggs decide on Carly’s punishment, and she assigns Carly to tape the school auditions on Saturday. Carly, who has a Cuddlefish concert she was looking forward to attending, does not like this. As she basically pees herself running from the office after correcting Briggs on the animal she was turned into, we get the sense that maybe Carly isn’t like Megan.

The screen goes black and the theme song starts. Let’s talk about the theme song, as there won’t be many other times where we’ll do this. Dan Schnider, the creator of this show, also created All That, Kenan and Kel, The Amanda Show, Zoey 101, Drake and Josh, and more. All of those shows had great theme songs. Everyone knows the All That theme song, as well as the Drake and Josh one. iCarly continues this trend with Miranda Cosgrove singing Leave It All To Me with the help of her older tv brother, Drake Bell. You know it’s coming when you hear a character (that has not yet been introduced) say “In 5... 4... 3... 2...” and you can’t help but sing along.

As for the visuals, we see someone typing in the iCarly web address into a browser, and then... what’s this? Interestingly, for the first time, I notice that it doesn’t actually go to the iCarly website, but some sort of video player.

I mean, that’s just not iCarly.com.

But I did use the this picture as a reference when I was decorating my blog, tell me how you guys like it.

We see the player zoom to different videos, and little mouse clicks the Actor’s names up. It’s cute, it matches the show, I feel ten again.

I’ve only done one scene so far. It’s very possible I’ll be the only one to read this, but if not, tell me if you think I should shorten these reviews! I do think this one is going to be much longer than the others, as everything is introduced and I’m talking about things I won’t always be talking about (like the theme song, the settings, the transition from D&J and more). It’s my first review, so just tell me what you all think.

So the next scene is in a school hallway where we see a blonde girl pushing a boy up against some lockers.

She seems nice.

Apparently our boy in the yellow called who we know to be Sam aggressive, and she did not like that. How interesting, I always thought Sam prided herself on being aggressive. She wants to be called “Pretty” and “Sweet”, and while pretty is fine, sweet doesn’t seem to be the type of descriptor I would think she’d want. I’ll keep this in mind for later, though, as I could be wrong.

Sam IS aggressive, we see it for ourselves. She also seems to be pretty intimidating. So how funny is it that Carly can bring her down in no time by pulling her by her hair? Could anyone get away with this? We know, because we’re from the future, nobody else can do this. It’s a good way of setting up their relationship.

What we find out next is that Carly DIDN’T put the teacher’s head on a fat animal, it was her blonde friend. Carly took the blame for her because Sam might have gotten expelled. That’s a harsh punishment for a little prank, but perhaps she was on disciplinary probation. ...Do high schools have disciplinary probation? I only heard of that in college. I also only ever got detentions in high school and a warning at college, so I don’t know much about this trouble making life.

Anyway, I liked the way they introduced Carly. They did it in a way that made it seem like she was more like Meagan, and then you see that she’s actually the opposite. We already know within the first five minutes of the show that she’s a good kid, as she could take the fall for Sam’s prank and not get into too much trouble. And we can also see that she’s loyal from the way she sticks up for Spencer and takes the fall for Sam. She’s a little skittish and high strung, but from the first scene we know it’s not so much that she can’t have a laugh. Cool girl, that Carly Shay.

Sam hasn’t been introduced as Sam yet, but she’s played by Jennette McCurdy. We already know a lot about her from her first scene too. As I said before, she is aggressive and intimidating, but not to Carly. By her fashion, she’s a bit of a tom boy. She is the troublemaker, and when she’s not slamming nerds against lockers, she’s a pretty chill bean.

The Brunnette and Blonde duo where one’s more girly (usually the brunette) and one has qualities that are more typical for boy characters (usually the blonde) has been beat into the ground, I mean we even had Miley and Lilly at this point. It’s not like this is new and refreshing. It’s almost standard for a female lead children’s show. I don’t mind, it’s just something I can’t help but notice or point out.

Carly wonders why Sam is her best friend, my guess is it’s because Sam’s the yin to Carly’s yang. Sam says it’s because she’s a lovable person (as she pushes the kid again).

Alright dude, now you’re just being dramatic.

So now school’s over and Carly seems to live in an apartment building. As she’s getting out her keys (since when do the Shays lock their door?!) she drops her water bottle. Out comes a little blue blur to pick it up and we meet this guy.

This, is Freddie, Carly’s neighbor. This tiny lil muffin is played by Nathan Kress, and he grows up hot. Huh? What? Who said that? Anyway, he’s speaking very quickly so you wonder if he’s overzealous or if he just has to pee. Apparently Freddie likes to look out his peep hole and watch Carly go home. That is creepy and I know he grows out of it eventually. I’ll be glad when he does. I won’t be using this blog to talk about these sort of topics, but can we stop normalizing creepy stalker behavior for boys? That would be great, thanks.

Anyway, it’s lighthearted, it’s funny, well it’s supposed to be anyway, so whatever. Carly is quick to set him straight but he says a quote that I see every so often on this website with 100s of thousands of notes.

At least he’s not saying “You will love me Carly Shay! I won’t take no for an answer!” so I’m cool with that. Also the way Nathan delivers the line so casually causes me to giggle every time. He also offers his camera to be used for recording the auditions. Carly totally glosses over the fact that it’s weird that he knows this. I like Freddie. I like Freddie a lot. But I don’t like Freddie in this episode, at least not so far. Freddie having a crush on Carly is a very well known part of his character, but he’s not quite as obsessive in the series as a whole as he is in this episode. I don’t know how long this will last but it’s not quite as funny as the laugh track will suggest.

Speaking of, let’s talk about the fake audience. I don’t quite remember it being so obvious when I was young, but it is for me now. I just spent the past couple of weeks re watching another show I’m a fan of, Boy Meets World, and they also have fake laughter in the background. But even that isn’t quite so obvious. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but I wish it weren’t there in the first place. I know Zoey 101 didn’t use a laugh track, and D&J may not have either (but I’m not sure). I wish iCarly didn’t use one as well.

iCarly is very good at introducing characters. The first time we meet Spencer, he’s hanging from the ceiling taking a picture of a robot made of empty soda and water bottles. It’s a pretty cool robot, and it’s iconic as it’s in, I believe, every episode of iCarly ever. This is the only time I can think of where it’s not in it’s usual spot.

I want the story of the Shay family. I don’t think we ever know what happens to the mother. Carly says she’s in eighth grade and Spencer is 26. This means Carly is probably around 13 or 14 years old, which means there is at least a 12 year gap between them. That’s a pretty big gap! Who was a surprise? Were both of them a surprise? We’ll never know for sure...

I’m pretty sure Spencer’s character is consistent throughout the show, which is cool. And he and Carly seem to have a pretty good relationship, which is even cooler. Carly can’t use Spencer’s camera because he turned it into a squirrel. Spencer is played by Jerry Trainer, who at this point we knew as Crazy Steve. We hear it in his yelps of pain. I’m so glad we got more of Jerry Trainer because he’s such a good comedic actor. The way he laughs before showing the squirrel makes me laugh every time.

So Carly shows up on Saturday for the talent show and is surprised to see Freddie there with way more technical equipment then strictly necessary for a school talent show audition.

What an adorable little peanut. He’s so small. So now we know Freddie is a bit of a tech nerd, and I mean that in the nicest way. We also get the first glimpse of a pear laptop, which I always found amusing. He’s still hyperactive in this way that makes it seem like he has to pee, and it’s cute, it’s just not funny (to me).

That being said, when Sam walks in, his whole persona changes. Before he reminded me of Colin Creevy from Harry Potter. Colin was cool, but he wasn’t a main character in any part of the books so we didn’t get so much of him that he became annoying (to us). Freddie is a main character, he has to have more to his personality then “overzealous kid with a crush on Carly” and in this scene we get to see more of it. He’s into technology so he’s probably smart, and the excited little kid seems to be who he is when he’s alone Carly but not all the time. Cool, I can deal with that, considering from here on out they’re not alone that often. And like I said, he grows out of this eventually.

He does scream a lot though.

This scene, however, sets up the next seasons of iCarly. Freddie is techy, Sam is mean, they bicker, Carly watches. I wonder why Carly doesn’t say anything to make it stop. She does look annoyed. By their interaction, we know Sam and Freddie know each other. Maybe at this point Carly knows it’s inevitable and just waits for it to die down.

Sam crosses a line and Freddie’s ready to pack up and go, but all Carly has to do is smile and bat her eyelashes and say “Please Stay,” and he does. It’s deliberate, you can see she’s putting on a face and voice and knows it will work. Not my favorite thing about Carly, it’s sort of manipulative. But I like that our girl isn’t perfect.

So some guy named Jeb who is like a cross between Sinjin and Robbie, both from Victorious, does a one man skit. It’s weird, there’s no context, it’s like 5 seconds long. Sam and Carly make fun of it, it’s pretty funny stuff.

The bad auditions continue until a girl starts to play the trumpet while hopping on a Pogo stick. Which is actually pretty cool, cause I can’t stay on a Pogo stick for longer than two seconds. The next kid tells a joke that is apparently not that funny, he looks a little bit like Miss Briggs so now it’s open season on the lady. They focus on her crazy pointy boobs, and I remembered that before so I was looking to see how crazy pointy her boobs were in her first scene. They don’t seem that bad to me. When I hear crazy pointy boobs I think of Madonna’s famous bra... or Kim Possible.

Freddie thinks they’re funny, he records them, but they stop pretty quickly to get to business and keep watching the auditions. One of them is the beat box kid. Beat boxing is actually really cool, unfortunately this guy sucks. Still made me laugh though.

Sam and Carly are at her house and Carly puts her foot on Same’s face to wake her up. They must be REALLY close because, personally, I wouldn’t let anyone put their foot on my face. I think I read somewhere that Dan Schneider has a foot fetish... feet do make a lot of appearances in this and Victorious...

Carly checks to see if Freddie put the audition videos up on... Splashface. Splashface sounds like it would be a knock off Myspace, which might have still been a thing when this came out, or Facebook, but the way it’s set up is like YouTube. So most likely it’s a combination of everything.

The casual way Sam says she hates Ms. Briggs, I love. It’s so real to me, just the way I would start a conversation about hating someone. Carly discovers Freddie did not put the audition videos up, but instead put up the video of Carly and Sam making fun of Ms. Briggs’ ta tas.

Carly is freaking out while Sam keeps a cool head and points out only 27 people have watched. Apparently Sam doesn’t know that 27k actually means 27 THOUSAND as Carly informs her in the loudest way possible. I always love when Carly screams so loud that Sam falls out of her chair, it’s hilarious.

How did it get so many views? 27,000 is a lot for a short little video of the girls making fun of a teacher. My theory? It was known that the auditions would be up that night so the participants went online to see their auditions and found Carly and Sam being funny instead. Ms. Briggs is probably a teacher that most students dislike, so it wouldn’t be surprising if some friends started to send the video to their friends like “Hey this is so true!”. Alums would see it too so getting a couple thousand isn’t that surprising. From there I guess it takes off. It probably helps that the picture is so clear, with Freddie’s HD camera, and the girls are pretty.

So now Sam’s freaking out along with Carly who says she can’t remove it without Freddie’s password. Sam learns Freddie lives across the hall, which is interesting so I have to analyze it for a second. Sam and Carly are best friends, Freddie and Carly are neighbors, Sam and Freddie know and don’t like each other. That’s the extent of the relationships within this trio right now. I have no idea when Freddie came into the picture but it would have to have been sort of recently, right? Unless Carly and Spencer just moved into the apartment, wouldn’t Sam be over enough to know that Freddie lives across the hall? Maybe Freddie was new to town and that’s why Sam didn’t know? I’m just figuring out the origin story here.

Wait, before we move on, Carly is doing a lot of typing on that computer. What on God’s green earth could she be typing? Someone tell me.

Anyway, Sam runs across the hall even though Freddie would be asleep because, according to Carly, it’s after midnight. Sam breaks in anyway and pulls Freddie by his feet while he’s screaming. Where? Is? His? Mom? We know she wouldn’t just sleep through Freddie screaming like that, maybe she’s working late? Anyway, this is, to me, the funniest part of the episode. TOO MUCH FRICTIONNN!

And then,

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU??

I can’t breathe, and ten year old me is rolling! I’ve seen the pilot a lot, probably more than any other episode they have. I’ve been mouthing some of their lines with them, but this is one I have to say with him every time. I love that line, it’s never not funny.

Also he is adorable, so small with his matching pajamas and everything, I love it. A little cabbage patch kid. (How many different things can I call Freddie before he grows and his voice gets deep in season 2 hmm?)

Freddie swears he edited them out before he uploaded and goes to the computer to check (doing a lot of typing and I don’t understand what he could be typing because isn’t it already up) and discovers his mistake. It’s a plausible mistake. I do a little video editing and he likely made two files with very similar names and put the wrong thing up.

Freddie works to get it removed, which it will be, tomorrow morning. Why... does it have to wait until morning? And does it mean it will be removed later on that same day, as it’s technically morning if it’s past midnight, or the next day?

Freddie reads them the nice comments people left on the video. I wonder what the mean ones say... ‘cause we all know there are mean ones. Appealing to the girls’ egos certainly helps them calm down. It makes sense as the girls are attention seekers. I don’t mean that to be a bad thing, but you have to like attention to upload yourself online every week for views, so it fits with what we know of their characters as long time viewers of iCarly, and it introduces an important aspect of their characters for first time viewers.

At school on, I’m guessing, Monday, the girls give Ms. Briggs the auditions on a DVD. Remember when those were a thing? Anyway, she hints that she saw the video but not much more comes of that. When they tell her about the interesting performances, she shuts them down without a moments hesitation.

(Also Beat Box Boy comes back, and he still had a microphone! Why? I have no idea.)

Carly and Sam get back to Carly’s apartment and Carly is ranting about Ms. Briggs not giving some talents a chance. So we learn that something that really gets to Carly is how controlling adults can be. Interesting aspect of her character that I’m sure is going to play a big part in the show. Look at who she has as a guardian? Spencer is pretty chill and probably lets her do a lot of things she wants to do.

We also introduce Sam’s love for food and ham that stays with us until the end. Freddie comes over too, and it’s a more casual hang out. No one addresses this but I have to because is this something Freddie would have done a week ago? Are they already starting to be closer? I can see the forming of the trio already.

Carly then gets the idea to put on a show for themselves, which is awesome. I love that Ms. Briggs says no so Carly gives people another opportunity to express themselves and they can still show it to their friends and family. It goes in line with what we just learned about Carly, she likes for her and others around her to have the freedom to express themselves. Sam’s down, so long as she doesn’t have to do much work which conveniently puts Carly as the lead (but in the actual webshow Carly and Sam pretty much share the lead).

Freddie wants to have a part as the technical producer, and, in my opinion, Freddie plays a HUGE role in why their web show becomes as successful as it does. Some advice to up and coming Youtubers? Editing has a large part in your success. If it was just Carly and Sam standing in front of a camera with no editing or effects or camera work, iCarly wouldn’t be as big as it gets in this universe, I promise you. Freddie’s importance gets brought up later on in the show, and I’m glad. In this scene it sounds like they’re doing Freddie a favor, when they should feel lucky Freddie wants to have a part. I also think it’s says something that he’s the one that names iCarly.

So I’m watching both the extended version and the cut version, and for the most part the shorter one is usually a couple of lines cut from a scene. This one, however, is different. In the shorter one, when Sam insults him, Freddie flips his shit and starts screaming again, but it’s funny because he calls Sam “Lady”. I’m amused (I’m easily amused). In the long one he says the same line, “You got a big mouth, lady!” but he doesn’t yell it, and Sam and Freddie continue to bicker until they start just making nonsense sounds at each other. Carly soon joins in. This is the first time I like the shorter one better. The long one is weird, the way the trio make weird sounds isn’t that funny, and I like Freddie’s delivery of his line in the short one better.

Spencer runs in with a weird mannequin thing and Carly asks if she can use the third floor as a studio, which he... sorta agrees to. He looks like he’s struggling with the “Parent” part of all this, which makes sense because he’s not a parent. He’s her brother.

So, let’s talk about the Shay apartment.

This is another iconic part of the iCarly universe (and just so you all know, when I say iconic, I mean iconic for those who watched iCarly). If you see this set, you know it’s iCarly! It’s so cool and fun and energetic and colorful, and there are dozens of little knickknacks, it was probably really fun to decorate!

It’s also big as hell. I’ve seen some big apartments, I’ve LIVED in some big apartments, but none of my apartments had THREE floors and an elevator! Well okay, one of the apartments I lived in had two floors, but there were only two rooms on the second floor. And we didn’t have an elevator!

It makes me wonder about the layout of this building. Are all of the apartments like that or certain ones? If her apartment is on the fourth floor but she has three floors, could she also get in on the fifth and sixth floor? Or did the Shays maybe get a deal where they could use the apartments above them on the fifth and sixth floor for more space? (That’s what my mom and I did, although, as I said, it was only two rooms). More questions I’ll never have an answer to.

It’s the night of the first show now and a lot of time has passed. We’re missing a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. Because, let’s see. They had to make the website, which was mostly Freddie but i’m sure Carly and Sam were there to put in their ideas of what they wanted it to look like. Not to mention, when did they decide to make it its own website in the first place instead of just uploading videos on Splashface? They had to confirm the date with all of the talents and they had to put together, if not a script, then a basic outline of how the show will go. Plus, they had to do promoting online, in their school, on the street, and in more areas to let people know they were doing this so there were probably flyers and such. They also had to set up the third floor and decorate it to how they wanted it to be. This is probably weeks, maybe months later and we missed all of that set up. I’m not really complaining, that would be hard to fit in, I’m just observing.

Carly and Sam talk over each other while explaining the plan, it’s cute, I remember thinking it was impressive on my first watch. When Carly and Sam run out of the elevator, Carly throws Freddie a bottle of juice. It’s a small thing and it’s easy to miss but I like that it was added in. It was smooth and it shows that they’ve all hung around each other long enough to be able to pull things like that off.

So the first webcast starts and it’s clear they have at least a little bit of a script going. I think it’s impressive that there’s a clear difference between when Miranda and Jennette are acting as Carly and Sam, and when they’re acting as Carly and Sam doing the webshow. Carly and Sam are still themselves, it’s just different enough that you can see when they’re putting on for the camera.

We also get our first glimpse of the website.

Freddie must be a prodigy because I couldn’t set up something half as cool now, let alone at thirteen. I’m no tech wiz, but I’m not too bad with technology. Either way, the website looks great. It’s bright and fun and energetic, which is good as it goes with the theme of their webcast. Spencer’s picture is up there with them, which is cool but surprising as he never really plays that big a role in the webshow and likely had no plans to join it as this was being set up. As Freddie is just the camera guy, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just Carly and Sam up there. It’s cute that they’re included, though, considering Spencer was probably the funds behind everything.

We can also see the little “LIVE” at the top of the screen, and their watermark at the bottom. You can see a little notice where people can send in their videos, so they opened it up to more than just the students at their school. It’s clear a lot of work went into this.

They did the random dancing button without the random dancing voice. My eye is twitching, this is blasphemy.

There’s a small interaction where Sam goes off script and Carly tells her to stop it and it’s, again, very real and like I said before, I appreciate that you can see the difference in when they’re putting on for the camera and when they’re not.

I’m not going to go into the details about the talents, they’re all cool and abnormal. Like the Figure It Out talents when that was on. It seems like a fun show, I think I would like it if it were real and I was younger. Because we can’t just look at the show, we have to look at the show inside of the show. Carly and Sam’s reactions are part of what makes the show (inside the show) fun and entertaining, so I can see how people would want to see more of them after the first episode.

Their sign off is a little long but I had a small smile on my face the whole time, I like it better than most of the ones I see on Youtube. Carly and Sam are cute and fun to watch. I can see why their show takes off. When the first episode ends, they’re all rightfully excited when the show ends and they jubilantly talk about how much fun they had (and pogo girl is included how cute).

The next scene has them look at the view count, which has 10k more than it did before. It’s a cute scene, we see the parallels between their reactions to having a lot of views the first time and their reactions to having a lot of views this time. Spencer just sort of watches as they jump around and scream.

But he joins in eventually, which I think is pretty much what his role in the webshow is as well.

I take back my earlier comment. the funniest moment in the show is when Sam suggests they have a party and the other two are all “Yeah that’s such a great idea! That would be so cool!” and Spencer’s just “Yes. Yes we should.” It’s the delivery. Watch the episode lol.

So they have a “Crazy Hat Party” which is cute (ten guesses what my favorite word is), we keep skipping time and I want to know how these things come about. I know it would be too hard but I’m still interested in knowing. That’s my own problem, not the show’s.

Sam has the best hat, she really took the theme seriously.

Sam and Carly are approached by two girls at their party who ask for their autographs, it’s the weirdest part of the episode to me. I’m not going to say it’s impossible that they get popular enough with one webshow to already be signing autographs, even if I think it’s a little weird. But don’t these girls know Sam and Carly? They were invited to their Crazy Hat party at least. It’s not like they’re random girls off the street. I don’t know, it’s weird. I get what they’re trying to do but... meh.

Carly and Sam are a little thrown by this too, but sign it anyway and talk about the possibility of becoming famous from this. Two boys approach them and they’re all giggly. The boys call their webshow “hot” and it’s weird again. What was hot about it, exactly? Was it the boy squirting milk out of his eye? It was the boy squirting milk out of his eye, wasn’t it? Also they’re wearing normal hats. It’s not a normal hat party, it’s a crazy hat party. Geez.

Spencer chases a kid around the apartment, it looks like it might be the Ms. Briggs looking kid. Carly’s dancing and tosses her hat, it’s a well known little clip.

So what are my overall thoughts on it?

I’m going to breakdown the way I rate the episodes even more now, I hope it makes sense. So I’m going to score the episode in different categories on a scale of one to ten. For each category if I rate it a 4/10 or higher it gets at least one star. If I rate it an 9/10 or 10/10 it gets two stars. Not overly complicated right? Who knows, I might change that.

Plot: solid. Sam does something bad that gets Carly and Sam spending their afternoon recording the school talent show auditions. One thing leads to another which leads to Carly and Sam, unimpressed with their teacher’s dismissal of other students’ talents, decide to make their own web show. I think it’s plausible, I’m going to score it a 10/10. I’m not going to always be so nice, but there’s really nothing wrong with the plot. ★ ★

Humor: WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU really does get me every time and Jerry Trainer is great. There were other moments in the show that made me laugh, but I couldn’t help noticing there was a lot of scream based humor. There’s nothing wrong with it, when done right I love it. (See the quote above and anything Spencer says in the future). But sometimes it was funny and sometimes it wasn’t. And Freddie’s crush still does nothing to my funny bone. I’m going to give it at 7/10. ★☆

Character: All of the main characters were great. They were well rounded, we didn’t get the sense that they were suddenly created, but more like they had lives before this episode. Aspects about their characters were introduced that stay true throughout the run of the show. I don’t mean to harp on the subject, but I can’t give it a perfect rating because of Freddie. 9/10. ★ ★

Conflict: It seems like in the middle of the episode the main conflict is going to be taking the video off the web, and what comes of Miss Briggs finding out about it. However, nothing really comes of that. I would say a conflict present in this episode is trying to find a place for the characters to express themselves. Still, everything was pretty much smooth sailing for the crew. They didn’t have to find the equipment, Freddie already had it. They didn’t have to find a studio thanks to the convenient third floor. They didn’t even have to think of a name or who would be the main girl. With all this in mind, I’m gonna give it a 3/10. ☆ ☆

Finally, Overall Enjoyment: I have watched the pilot episode more than any other episode of the show. I think I can safely say I enjoy it. It’s a favorite of mine, so I’m giving it a 10/10! ★ ★

So the overall rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ 7/10.

This may seem like a little bit of a complicated rating, but I’m doing it this way because I feel like if I only did five stars all of the ratings would be 3/5 or 4/5. For example, this episode would be a 4/5. This shows my opinion a little bit more. I’m still deciding on things so this rating system may change.

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