iCarly needs no defense

I was gonna go off on one of my rants here, about the shriveled little bags of hate and resentment in the comments here showing what unique sophisticates they are by complaining that a website reviewed the finale of a very popular and beloved show, despite the fact that they probably sit at said website hitting refresh over and over so that they can momentarily distract themselves from their drab, empty lives of misdirected self-hatred and congealed defensive apathy as they wait for the inevitable moment when they realize that they've gone grey and gotten varicose veins and lost the last shreds of their youth without ever once bothering to feel an unguarded emotion, so consumed were they with the fear that some fuckface will make fun of them for actually trying and in so doing cost them a social currency that was absolutely worthless to them in the first place, and sob quietly in the night for having thrown away the only gift life gives us, the gift of being emotional creatures capable of experiencing feelings so intense that they can ruin or save your life, if you only leave your beating human heart open enough to risk the pain that is the price of everything and anything truly worth experiencing.

 But, some commenters have gotten on me recently about how I should apply my time and efforts in more noble pursuits, so I'm not gonna do that. (Don't let anyone ever say I don't listen to comments.) More importantly, iCarly doesn't need such a defense. It's a great show, one that's attracted a whole mess of dedicated fans the old-fashioned way, not by playing to some self-pitying nerd wagon-circling impulse but by appealing to the human desire to create. iCarly is a show about young people who are dealing with shit, and respond to that shit not by shooting up the school, or by conforming a la The Breakfast Club, but by creating something. Something small, at first, and something silly, but something their own. And they do so not in a spirit of pessimism or petty judgment but in the spirit of friendship. And the show's understanding of friendship is beautiful and true, which is that one of the deepest and best parts of being friends is the recognition of true difference, annoying difference, exasperating difference. It's a show about the sacrifices people make in order to be with each other, to be unguarded with each other, and about what a fun, goofy, energetic, glorious time you can have when everybody allows each other the space to be their weird and dysfunctional selves.

It's a great show, and while I can hardly ever see it, I'll miss it.