A case study of why and how woke can destroy beloved intellectual properties I'm just going to be blunt here, this revival was a complete insult to everything that made the original iCarly great. I'm 25 years old and was in the target demographic for the original iCarly when it was on and I loved to watch it. It was my favorite show and I've seen every episode. I could barely slog through 2 episodes of this awful revival.
What made the original iCarly magical and such a good show was it was like Seinfeld for Gen Z when the older gen z people like myself were in the 12 - 16 age bracket. Even now, it would hold up to kids currently in that demographic because it covered issues that every generation of teens and tweens have had to and will have to deal with such as dating and relationships, bad parents, bad teachers, bullying, peer and social pressure, and friendship troubles. It handled these topics in a way that tweens and teens would understand and relate to with a cast of likable, relatable, and interesting characters and this revival destroyed it all.
Freddie went from being an Awkward but still optimistic and intelligent tech genius to a hollow sad sack, Spencer went from being the goofy and eccentric comic relief but sometimes voice of reason to your standard arrogant rich guy, etc. It should tell you something that Jeanette McCurdy and Noah Munck refused to reprise their roles from the original show.
The new characters are insufferable especially Millicent who just seems like she is a horribly negative gen alpha stereotype that talks down to people in her generation. However, the number 1 issue by far with this revival is it is too political. The original iCarly never dealt with politics. This revival feels like an old man thought that extreme wokeness for the sake of wokeness was what appealed to the under 30 demographic. Harper isn't as annoying as Millicent and in fact she is a pretty likable character but she does not play well at all with the other returning characters, she is not capable of being like Sam.
Carly and Freddie played the straight man to Sam's pushy, aggressive, but still lighthearted and loyal character. There is no similar dynamic in this revival with the characters. It's one thing to have a diverse cast in a series, it is another to completely change the personalities of the characters and shove a diverse cast of new ones in there that have nothing new to bring to the table nor ability to gel well with the returning cast. So they're just there to be there. No creativity whatsoever, no magic whatsoever, just a shameless attempt to desperately pander to the gen z who liked the original iCarly.
Nickelodeon, we get it, you want your network to stop subsisting solely on beating the long dead horse that is Spongebob but there is a better way to do it than fumbling a revival of one of your best shows. Dan Scheinder is gone (rightfully so,) you can't capture the lightening in a bottle like he did.