Featured TV on DVD Review: iCarly: Season Three
August 29, 2011
iCarly: Season Three - Buy from Amazon
After splitting season two of iCarly into three volumes, Season Three is coming out on one DVD. Season two was 45 episodes long, while season three was only 10. Granted, there was a double-length and a triple-length episode in the bunch, but it is still much shorter than season two. Does this mean they've concentrated the quality? Or were they running out of ideas?
Episodes start with...
There are three short, short extras. Jennette McCurdy gives a behind-the-scenes tour of the new bedroom. Jane Lynch is the subject of the second featurette. The final featurette is about Jack Black's guest appearance. In total, it's just over five minutes of extras, which is sadly average for Nickelodeon's releases.
iCarly continues to be one of the best shows aimed at teenagers on TV and there are only a couple episodes on Season Three that are not great. The two-disc set has very little in the way of extras, but it is still worth picking up for fans.
The Show
After celebrating Carly's birthday, Spencer gives her her gift, a lamp shaped like a gummy bear. Nope, not shaped like a gummy bear, made out of gummy bears. This turns out to be a bad idea and it burns down destroying her room. Even worse, an expensive piece of jewelry was lost in the fire, but Spencer decides to make her the best room ever.
It's a good episode with a strong balance between the humor and the heart. The goofiness of the initial party leads nicely in the loss of the fire. Overall, it's an excellent start to the DVD.
Freddie's mom's cousin's next door neighbor's brother wants to get get married and he wants to propose to his girlfriend on iCarly. Carly agrees and the plan works. However, when the big wedding day is upon them, his fiancee decides she's rather marry Spencer.
This one is not as good as the previous episode, as the main story didn't have as many laugh out loud moments. But it is still better than the average show aimed at the same target demographic.
After selling a lot of junk that was seen on iCarly, the gang decides to start selling Penny Tees as a side business. And like any good apparel line, they use child labor. Meanwhile, Spencer has a date with a woman from Uzbekistan, who can't speak a word of English.
Another strong episode with two storylines that both work. On a side note, the episode starts with one of those jokes that makes you wonder if the writers are trying to see what they can get away with.
After one of their fans send in a clip of a prank they pulled, the gang learns Carly never pranked anyone and start bugging her. She enlists Spencer to help her, even though he vowed to never pull a prank after a terrible mustard incident many years ago. It was supposed to be just one prank, but it gets out of hand almost immediately.
This episode has great energy and lots of goofy laughs. In many ways its a perfect example of the show. It does get perilously close to too silly, even for the high standard iCarly has set in that regard.
After Sam gets into a fight with her Mom, she moves in with Carly... without asking first... and at 4:00 am. Sam's as bad of a roommate as you would expect, so Carly decides to force them into therapy, but getting in-between two crazy Pucketts is too much. Meanwhile, Freddie records a robber stealing money and when the robbery finds out who he is, he comes looking for him. This causes Freddie and his mom to panic so much that they hide with Spencer at their place. So Carly has to deal with two crazy Pucketts and Spencer has to deal with two crazy Bensons. Harsh.
Another fun episode, even if it is not quite up to the level of the last one. The A-plot and the B-plot have to walk a tight balancing act between complimenting each other and being too similar and thus repetitive.
Nevel Papperman is caught in a viral video berating a little girl and it ruins his reputation. At first the gang loves this, as he's been their nemesis for a long time. However, the start to feel sorry for him and try and rebuild his reputation. It turns out to be as hard a task as you would imagine. Meanwhile, the gang makes a vampire parody starring Freddie as a vampire, and suddenly girls think he's hot.
Disc one ends on a high note. There are many fun scenes of Nevel's dejection and his struggles to pretend to be a nice person. On the other hand, Nevel had a reputation that could be ruined?
iCarly has become so popular they need hire an intern. As you can tell by the title of the episode, that doesn't work out. Carly and Sam hire a good looking, but incredibly dumb guy and refuse to fire him after he screws up repeatedly. Freddie gets revenge by hiring an equally hot and dumb woman as a second intern. Meanwhile, Spencer has a week to get a sculpture into a real museum or he has to go back to law school.
While there are admittedly a little too many easy dumb jokes in this episode, enough of them work that the episode is fun.
The iCarly gang go to Webicon and appear on a panel. Sam starts a fight between the Creddies and the Seddies. Those are fans who think Carly and Freddie should be a couple and the fans that think Sam and Freddie should be a couple. Meanwhile, Spencer is also going to Webicon to hang out at the World of Warlords booth, but he runs into his online nemesis there, Jack Black.
The first double-length episode of the set was actually quite controversial when it first aired, as it was advertised as settling the Creddie vs. Seddie debate, and it didn't. That said, it is still a great episode with both the A-plot and B-plot generating a lot of laughs. Even the C-plot (Gibby trying to get to Webicon with his grandfather) had a few laughs.
The romance angle from iStart a Fan War continues when Brad, one of the prospective interns from iHire an Idiot begins working for the show. Sam first asks to help working on a school project with Brad and Freddie, and then goes to the movies with them, Carly starts to think Sam has feelings for Brad. (He does make fudge, so it is natural romance would follow.) However...
That's a spoiler for season four, so I'll end in there. It is a great way to end the season. (While iParty with Victorious is the final episode, it doesn't follow the same narrative. It's a one-off story.) It had the best character development out of any episode this season, but that didn't interfere with the humor. Although, Carly's experimentation on Spencer was a little over-the-top, even compared to the average iCarly episode.
Carly is dating a new guy, Steve Carson, and she's super happy about, beyond obnoxiously happy about it. That happiness takes a hit when Carly sees Steve online, with another woman, Tori Vega. Carly is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and the whole gang travel to Los Angeles to see if it is true. ... In L.A., the gang from iCarly meet up with the gang from Victorious and Carly is able to prove to Tori that Steve is a cheater, so they work out a plan to expose him live on iCarly.
There are two problems with this episode. Firstly, because you are combining two shows into one episode, there's a lot of plots threads going along. There's the A-plot (Steve cheating on Carly and Tori) and arguably as many as five B-plots (Cat Valentine losing her voice and having to talk through her phone, Spencer hurting his back, Erwin Sikowitz trying to scare Beck Oliver to improve his acting, Trina Vega trying to babysit while at the party, and Andre Harris trying to keep the party from getting out of hand.) It's a little crowded. Secondly, it gets in the middle of the iStart a Fan War, iOMG, and iLost My Mind storyarc. Besides that, it's one of the better episodes on the DVD. The two casts don't interact enough to really justify the crossover, but there's a lot of laughs to be had when they do. The Extras
The Verdict
- Submitted by: C.S.Strowbridge
Filed under: Video Review