User blog comment:Cartoonprincess/Was The Arc a Mistake?/@comment-4196911-20110821150625

Hard to say "was the arc a mistake" when we've only seen 25% of it. Nathan and Noah both said to pay attention because "every episode is important." I'll judge it when it's over. But there are clearly issues with them becoming a couple which have far-reaching effects on other characters. I think you need multiple episodes to address that. Dan's been hinting at this since iKiss. When it finally happens, it needs to be big, and not glossed-over. The reason you need a major ship-emphasis now is that you're putting together two major characters that are part of a trio. That wasn't the case before - Zoey 101 was more an ensemble like Victorious, and Mindy was a minor character but Josh wasn't. This is different.

Dan isn't required to throw any kind of shipper a "bone", and the series is still the #1 scripted show on TV and doesn't need "saving." It's not in danger, and next season will be the last no matter what the ratings are.

The message of iSAFW was basically "the show is mainly about comedy, so enjoy it mostly for that, and don't get so wrapped-up in what happens with the ships because the show is still great even if you ignore that." Dan knew he was about to make one ship happen and basically kill the other one. He still wants fans of the "losing" ship to keep watching, so I'm convinced that whole episode was an attempt at before-the-fact damage control.