Surviving Summer

The show was beloved by late millennials and early Gen-Z-ers in its day, so in an era where every streaming service is courting nostalgic audiences and mining familiar IPs, it’s no surprise that it now has a sequel series on Paramount Plus. But what is a surprise is how iCarly 2021 keeps the tone of the original series, while elevating the content for the audience that grew up with it.The new show picks up nine years or so after the original left off, with most of the original cast back to take up their old roles. Carly (Miranda Cosgrove) is back in Seattle, now sharing an apartment with her roommate Harper (Laci Mosley, who’s new to the show). They live in the same apartment building as Carly’s older brother Spencer (Jerry Trainor) and her former tech producer Freddie (Nathan Kress). Carly believes her boyfriend is going to pop the question: “Will you create a web channel with me?” He ends up dumping her instead. After waffling about whether she can create something on her own, Carly decides to go ahead and revive her old show.Paramount Plus launched the show with three episodes, with new installments releasing on Fridays. The focus in the initial episodes is less on the web-show content (probably for the better, considering how of-its-time the original show was) and more on how Carly’s team fits into the new web ecosystem. Carly is not entirely clueless to the ways of the web, but as she tells Freddie in the second episode, it was easier to do iCarly (the in-universe web show) back when it was “the only web show.”