Unpop The Bubble
"Where's the remote?" Sam groused from her position. The iCarly crew were slouched lazily on the sofa with a popcorn bowl, their slack-jawed faces pointed at the television. It had been an exhausting day; Gibby had gotten a howler monkey from somewhere and thought it would make a hilarious bit for the show if they sang a power-ballad duet together, but Carly had vetoed the idea as verging on animal abuse. It had taken hours to get him down from the ceiling. Meanwhile, the monkey was perfectly well-behaved.
"I think you left it in the fridge when you went to get that packet of turkey bacon," Freddie replied, without taking his eyes off the screen.
"Go get it, Benson."
"No," Freddie frowned, "you get it."
In the past, such insolence would've forced her to jack-slap the taste out of his mouth, but she was prevented by two things; first of all, Carly sat between them, and Sam was too tired and cosy to even lift her arm, never mind get around her. Secondly, she and Freddie had recently broken up; they were still redrawing the sketchy boundaries of their relationship, and she wasn't sure they were at the level of friendly beatings yet. Sam craned her neck around to the kitchen, many miles in the hazy distance.
"Never mind," she said, slumping back down and trying to focus back on the television. "What the Hell Michigan are we watching anyway?"
"It's a rerun of 'Moonshining,'" Carly chipped in.
"Is that that Eighties show Bryce Wallace was in?" Freddie asked.
Carly nodded. "My dad loved it."
Sam slumped further down in her chair. "What's it about?" she mumbled, shovelling another fistful of popcorn into her mouth.
"It was about a private investigating firm run by this guy and this girl, and they got involved in all these wacky cases and stuff," Carly filled in, dusting the spattered popcorn crumbs off her sleeve. "It was kind of a comedy-detective-type-show-thing."
"Looks to me more like they're just flirting with each other," Freddie commented, folding his arms.
"Well, in the later years, they got away from the screwball plots and concentrated more on the URT between the two leads."
Sam raised a finger. "URT?"
"Unresolved Romantic Tension," Freddie supplied.
"Thank you, Fred-Wiki."
"You're welcome, Scrappy-Doo," he smirked.
"Then, of course," Carly sighed, "they got together and the show just sort of fizzled out after that."
"Why?" Freddie asked, nibbling on his popcorn.
"Because it's always more fun to watch people do the romance-dance than it is to watch them in an actual relationship," Carly said. "It's even called 'Moonshining Syndrome;' boy and girl hook up, audience loses interest, show gets cancelled.
"Couldn't they just have broken them up again?"
Carly shook her head. "Too late. They lost the URT. You can't unpop that bubble."
They stared in silence a few moments longer at the bickering couple on the glowing TV screen.
"Scrub this," said Freddie finally, pulling himself wearily off the couch. "I'm getting the remote."