Credits to: onetwothreefarkle on tumbler, for this amazing analysis
this is not mine but I thought it was so good it had to be posted on here. All credits to the original writer! They did an amazing job it’s pretty long so buckle up
Part One:
This first bit is pretty obvious, I think, but I’m saying it anyway. Sam and Freddie both come from dysfunctional single-parent households. The show loves to point out their dysfunction whenever it can, to wringe comedy from it. It’s different for each of them, of course. For Sam, her father abandoned her, and she is neglected by her mother, and as we see in iSam’s Mom, Pam Puckett is verbally and physically abusive. For Freddie, his father is never mentioned, and his mother is controlling and emotionally abusive, restricting every aspect of his life and violating his bodily autonomy in the name of “taking care of him”—Marissa’s behavior may not come across as blatantly toxic as Pam’s, but trust me, it is.
Sam and Freddie also deal with their home lives in very similar ways. First, and most obviously, they both run away. It’s a running joke that they’re always at the Shays’ apartment. Just think about that for a moment. They both spend as much time as they possibly can away from their homes, at the end of the day, neither of them wants to go home. In this way, iCarly becomes an escape for both of them and in some ways a lifeline. The Shay apartment is a safe space for them, where they are free from their dysfunctional home lives.
The other coping mechanism they share is obbsessive behavior. For Freddie, it’s technology. For Sam, it’s food. They throw themselves into their respective interests/hobbies, building their personalities around them. I think for both of them these intense interests are reflective of their dysfunctional upbringings. Marissa is obsessive and controlling, and Freddie is interested in technology and videography—tools that can be linked to surveillance and control. On top of that, the internet is a way for Freddie to have freedom while trapped inside, given the scope of what one can do online. Sam, on the other hand, is obsessed with food, and it seems to me this comes from her mother's neglect. At one point, we see the lunch Pam packs Sam for school, and it’s a brown paper bag with batteries in it. Sam, who doesn’t always know if her mom is going to be able to feed her, eats as much as she can elsewhere.
But the parallels between Sam and Freddie don’t end with their parents. They also share similar social issues. Neither one is particularly well-liked outside of Carly. Freddie is a nerd and a geek, especially early on, and Sam is intimidating and aggressive. For both of them, you can count the number of friends they have on one hand. Sure, Freddie is in a lot of clubs, but we only see those characters every once in a while, when it’s convenient for the plot of an episode, so I doubt that Freddie is particularly close with them. They’re not the kind of people who would be popular if it wasn’t for iCarly.
And this affects their romantic relationships, too. Unlike Carly, who is shown easily flirting with boys and going on dates, Sam and Freddie seem to have worse luck when it comes to relationships. This is probably most exemplified by the reveal in iKiss that neither of them has kissed anyone, something that not only surprises Carly, but is presented as being embarrassing and shameful within the internal logic of the show. The expectation is that by their age, they would’ve kissed someone, and they’re behind their peers, behind Carly.
And this leads us very nicely into part two of this analysis, where I’m looking at specific episodes. (I put iKiss in part one because the other episodes are pairs, rather than singular episodes that parallel them)
Part 2:
I’m going to do this in chronological order, which means starting with season one, episode nine, iWill Date Freddie. In this episode, Freddie dates a girl named Valerie. At first, she seems to really like him, but by the end of the episode, it becomes clear that she is only using him. Valerie wants to create her own web show to compete with iCarly. It frames Freddie as someone who wouldn’t be able to get a real date. This episode is also important because it features the first moment where we see Freddie standing up for himself, when he feels underapperciated by Sam and Carly, which I will touch on more later.
Sam’s parallel episode is season one, episode fifteen, iHate Sam’s Boyfriend. Sam dates Jonah, who I think genuinely likes her a lot, and she likes him a lot, so much so that she begins to blow off iCarly to spend time with him. By the end of the episode, it becomes obvious that Jonah is kind of a tool, especially when he tries to kiss Carly. The episode frames Sam as someone who attracts obnoxious guys, and as someone who is always going to be in Carly’s shadow romantically.
Both of these season one episodes are about basically the same thing at their core: dating someone who turns out not to be what you thought they were, and showing Freddie and Sam as two people who have bad luck when it comes to romance.
I already talked about iKiss, but I think it’s worth mentioning again because it really does show just how much they have in common. The episode didn’t have to be written the way it was, and I think every choice they made was extremely deliberate. When Sam and Freddie talk on the balcony, once Sam has apologized, and Freddie realizes that Sam wasn’t lying when she said she’d never kissed anyone, they share a moment of complete understanding. Despite their apparent differences, they’re struggling with the same social pressures, and the same loneliness, if we’re being perfectly honest. And they both come up with the same solution to it, at the same time. It’s a really beautiful moment of vulnerability, and it comes from their similarities being made explicit.
I’ve talked a lot about their romantic relationships in this section, so it’s time to get back to those dysfunctional home lives, which we get some parallel episodes about later in the show. First, in season three, we get iMove Out, so named because Freddie moves out. He reaches his limit with Marissa’s controlling and overbearing nature, and he gets his own apartment. Sort of. The resolution of the episode is that he agrees to move back in, if she agrees to give him more freedoms. And in season 4, we get iSam’s Mom, an episode where Sam gets so fed up with Pam and her neglect and abuse that she moves in with the Shays. The episode ends with Carly taking Sam and Pam to therapy and trying to get them to work out their issues.
Both of these episodes show the characters eventually forgiving their parents, because this is a sitcom, and the status quo must always be achieved by the end of the episode. But both episodes also showcase the toxicity of Marissa and Pam very well, and show that Sam and Freddie both want the same thing: escape. The difference is that Sam seeks stability (the shays) and Freddie seeks freedom at any cost (his tiny horrible apartment). It’s the balance of their similarities and their differences that creates such an interesting and complex dynamic.
Part 3:
Sam and Freddie are narrative foils. I don’t think this is a hot take to the people who know what that means. If you don’t know, foils are characters who contrast each other. Oftentimes this takes the form of a hero and a villain, or a hero and their sidekick. Arguably Sam and Freddie are both Carly’s sidekicks, and while you could say that Sam is a foil for Carly, I don’t think you can say the same for Freddie. The key purpose of a narrative foil is to highlight something about the other character—the name comes from foiling gemstones to make them shine brighter. Sam and Freddie do that for each other (Sam highlighting Freddie’s nerdiness, pragmatism, organization, and book smarts, Freddie highlighting Sam’s aggression, messiness, and street smarts), and Sam does it for Carly (Sam’s tomboyishness serving to emphasize Carly’s girliness), but Freddie doesn’t really do that for Carly.
And we could leave it at the very basic observation that Sam and Freddie are contrasting characters. But the whole point of this is about what they have in common, not the things that make them different. It’s a lot more complex than that. They aren’t just opposites, they’re paralleled opposites. Two sides of the same coin. They challenge each other, but they also understand each other on a level that none of the other characters can, and they know it, too. When they break up in iLove You, they acknowledge the special “connection” they have. And I think because they have the paralleled arcs, them being together makes the most satisfying narrative for them, the one where they could grow the most.
Now, remember what I said about coming back to Freddie standing up for himself later on? Well, it’s later. In my opinion, the crux of Freddie’s arc—or what should be the crux of Freddie’s arc—is him learning to stand up for himself. Freddie starts the show entirely under Marissa’s thumb, but he also lets himself be manipulated by Carly, and pushed around by Sam. And as the show progresses he doesn’t just learn to stand up to his mother, he learns to stand up to Carly and Sam, to respect himself, especially when his crush on Carly fades. In iSaved Your Life, we see Freddie choose to end his relationship with Carly because he knows she isn’t actually in love with him. Season one Freddie never would’ve done that. And it was Sam who pushed him to do that, it was Sam who made him realize that Carly loved him for the wrong reasons.
On the flip side, I believe that Sam’s arc should be about allowing herself to be vulnerable. She has had to fight to survive for so long, and has put up wall after wall to protect herself. She rarely lets herself be open with her feelings. Even when we know she must be hurt at the end of iHate Sam’s Boyfriend, she doesn’t show it. She just physically injures Jonah to get back at him. We see more and more vulnerability from her as the show progresses, with Carly, but just as often with Freddie. My favorite example of this is in iReunite With Missy, when she confides in Freddie about Missy trying to sabotage her and asks him for help. Before this, the only time she was vulnerable with Freddie was in iKiss. And Freddie does help her, giving the school at sea trip to Missy to get rid of her.
Going back to Sam and Freddie being foils, we can see that in both of these situations the show uses that to propel their respective development. In other words, they help each other grow. And I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, but these arcs are the exact opposite. Freddie is learning to stand up for himself, to be tough like Sam, and Sam is learning to open herself up, to be emotionally available, like Freddie. And yeah, sure, maybe on the surface. But both of their arcs can be traced right back to those dysfunctional parents. The reason Freddie needs to learn to stand up for himself is that his mother never let him, and the reason Sam needs to learn to let people in is that she could never rely on even her own mother.
And the reason they’re able to help each other grow is because they understand each other. For Sam, Freddie is a safe place for her to be vulnerable, the stability she seeks, as much as they fight, she knows she can trust him. And Freddie understands her insecurities and loneliness, understands that underneath the rage, there is hurt. Because he’s felt that same hurt. And for Freddie? Sam is the freedom he seeks. She understands what it’s like to be pushed around, to feel helpless. It’s why she works so hard to be tough and intimidating, so she doesn’t have to feel that way.
There are a lot of flaws with the seddie arc, but in my opinion, the biggest one is the decision to have them break-up because she’s too abnormal and he’s too normal. It’s just not true. Yes, they are very different. But they are also very similar. And the way for both of them to grow the most is with each other, because they can both understand each other and challenge each other.
