Nathan Kress, Jeanette McCurdy, Miranda Cosgrove, Jack Black, courtesy Nickelodeon
iCARLY: iSTART A FAN WAR
Friendly Rating: All ages
Safety Rating: Some questionable behavior and lots of slapstick fighting
Quality Rating: Fun for regular fans and new ones.
Special one-hour episode premieres on Nickelodeon at 8 p.m.
The fun part about the iCarly series about Carly (Miranda Cosgrove) and her friends Sam (Jeanette McCurdy) and Freddie (Nathan Kress), a trio of young teens who do a web comedy show, is that there’s often sufficient grown up level humor tossed in among the prat falls and general teen angst.
This particular episode is basically a take off on the whole fan convention or con syndrome. Carly, Freddie and Sam are asked to attend a panel at Webicon, only to lose control when fans hoping that Carly and Freddie are dating each other start fighting fans hoping that Freddie and Sam are the big couple.
At the same time, Carly’s older brother Spencer (Jerry Trainor) has gotten hooked on a multi-player role playing game online and decides to attend Webicon as Aruthor only to come face up against Aspartamay (Jack Black), Aruthor’s deadly rival. Okay, someone else dressed as, but tell that to these guys, who immediately start sparring.
Safety-wise, there’s a fair amount of slapping or gut punching between Carly and Spencer, but it’s the light, no one gets hurt kind. Then, of course, there’s the fan war at the iCarly panel, not to mention the fight between the two mighty gamers. Oh, and somebody should have told the writing staff that chlorine is actually pretty nasty stuff and would have killed Aspartamay.
While the series, in general, can get a little uneven, this episode nails it across the board. Part of that is Black, who is one of the few actors out there who can pull off that kind of over the top nonsense without making it embarrassing (and isn’t Aspartame a sugar-free sweetener?). The other nice thing about the episode is that it does spend a fair amount of time setting up the characters and who they are for those of us who don’t watch the show regularly.
Like most Nick shows, iCarly can dance on the edge of appropriate and a lot depends on who your kids are. But overall, this episode, at least, might provide some fun family viewing.
Let us know – do you or your kids like iCarly? Do you have issues with it?
