iCarly

Ah, Nickelodeon. How far you've come since the days of Double Dare and You Can't Do That on Television. I decided to watch a little tween TV this week, to see what's out there these days.

(Side note: I seem to wax poetic about the tween books and media of my youth, and, although I don't remember any vampires dressed like streetwalkers, I can't say anything was objectively smarter or more wholesome then. So I am a curmudgeon. And I digress.)

So here's what I found out. Carly is a girl who creates a web-based show with her sassy best friend, Sam, and loveable sidekick, Freddie. She lives with her spacey older brother (kids are smarter than grownups!), and she and her friends get into laughable scrapes. The particular episode I watched centered around Sam, the dentist, some (professionally administered) nitrous oxide, and confessing secrets. Also a prison break involving an oversized sculpture of a pair of pants-- glad to see Nickelodeon hasn't lost its surrealist edge.

And? It was pretty funny. The kids talk at an annoyingly fast, gum-cracking pace, but are otherwise endearing. The heroine is not blonde. Everyone keeps their clothes on. The slapsticky laugh track is predictable. In my opinion, it's no Clarissa Explains it All, but then again, I'm not 12. Laugh track aside, it seems pretty harmless. Perhaps harmless is the best we can hope for, when it comes to tween TV?