IPilot

iPilot is the very first episode of the first season of the Nickelodeon TV show, iCarly. The first airing of the episode, at 8:30 on Saturday the 8th of September drew 5.65 million viewers, with the second airing at 11:30am on Sunday the 9th of September drawing 7.35 million viewers for a total of 13 mil. The 5.65 million viewers of the Saturday premiere is the 2nd highest of any Nickelodeon live action show, behind Victorious whose premiere episode drew 5.7 million viewers.

Plot
Carly Shay (Miranda Cosgrove), a thirteen-year-old student at Ridgeway Middle School, gets in trouble by taking the blame for her best friend, Sam Puckett (Jennette McCurdy), for 'Photodocking' their English teacher's, Ms. Briggs (Mindy Sterling), head to a photo of a rhinoceros. Carly is punished and is forced to spend her Saturday judging the school's talent show auditions instead of going to a concert of her favorite band, Cuddlefish. Carly decides to drag Sam along with her.

When Carly goes to borrow her 26 year-old brother Spencer's (Jerry Trainor) camera, she finds out that he had made it into a sculpture of a squirrel. Because of this, she asks Freddie Benson (Nathan Kress), her tech-wiz neighbor who claims he has a crush on her, to tape the auditions.



When Saturday comes, Freddie and the girls find most of the acts boring. After watching the audition of a boy who looks like Miss Briggs, Carly and Sam make jokes about her "crazy pointy boobs," which Freddie films. Later that night, Carly and Sam check SplashFace, the video sharing website where Freddie posted the talent show auditions, and find out that Freddie uploaded the video of them joking about Miss Briggs. Freddie gets dragged out of his apartment by Sam, and after questioning him, Freddie realizes he accidentally uploaded what he meant to edit out and tries deleting the video, but the video couldn't be deleted until the next morning. He goes through with deleting the video even though the commenters on the video gave it rave reviews.

The following Monday, Carly and Sam gave a DVD of the auditions (with the comments omitted) to Miss Briggs, but she had already seen the video. Miss Briggs bans all the acts Carly and Sam nominated to be in the talent show. As Carly thinks that it's unfair adults "rule the world," she decides to create a web show, with Carly and Sam as hosts, and Freddie as their Tech Producer. Freddie comes up with the name "iCarly" and both girls agree with the name.

For their first show, they invite all the acts they originally wanted to be in the talent show and have them demonstrate their bizarre talents. The show is an immediate success so Carly, Sam and Freddie have a "Crazy Hat" party to celebrate.

Trivia

 * This is the first episode ever aired.
 * Following this episode, every title for the episodes started with a lower case "i" meaIPilot.jpg "internet." However, in most episodes, it is used like it's referring to someone, although in some foreign countries the names are changed.
 * On iCarly.com this episode is called "iPremiere."
 * In a book adaption, the author cuts out the pointy boobs part, and replaces it with pointy ears.
 * In this episode it is shown for the first of many times that Freddie has a huge crush on, and may even love, Carly.
 * Sam says each show has a topic, but this tradition ended at some point during the series.
 * Photodock is a parody of Photoshop, while SplashFace is a parody of YouTube.
 * Sam makes a reference to the book Green Eggs and Ham when she says, "Sam I am," which refers to one of the characters in the book called "Sam."
 * Freddie's personality seems to be a bit different in this episode. At the start, he is greatly in love with Carly, while he still loves her in other episodes, he does not act out as strongly he did with her in this episode. He also seems to hate Sam a lot more in this episode than in other episodes, where in this episode, they couldn't be considered friends.
 * This is the only episode in where Sam, Carly, or anybody, for that matter, uses the word "chillax."
 * During the filming of this episode, Dan Schneider would laugh at every joke every time to remind the actors to leave a space for the laugh track.
 * After this episode was completed, it was shown to four groups of 8 eleven year olds in Teaneck, New Jersey. 27 out of the 32 kids gave "iCarly" a grade of 'A' or 'A+'. Production of the show took a six-week hiatus awaiting the results from this focus group.
 * Mindy Sterling was the only one with a speaking part that changed the way she read her lines with each take. Dan Schneider would have to ask the others to read their lines differently, but they didn't.
 * Nickelodeon picked up the show for thirteen episodes before this episode was written or outlined.
 * This episode aired three hours earlier on The N (now TeenNick, a channel owned by Nickelodeon that is geared more towards teen shows) then it did on Nickelodeon.
 * Ridgeway's team mascot is "The Bulldogs."
 * The first kid from the talent auditions, performs a scene from a French play called, "Là où est ma femme?" ("Where is my wife?")
 * The equipment that Freddie used for the talent show auditions was "a 3-chip high-def camcorder with a hyper-cardioid condenser microphone mounted on a carbon fiber tripod with a low-drag fluid head."
 * Carly and Spencer both live in apartment number 8-C at Bushwell Plaza.
 * Carly, Sam and Freddie attend eighth grade at Ridgeway.
 * In this episode we see the Japanese lamp even though Spencer didn't put it together until iPromise Not to Tell.
 * The URL www.splashface.com redirects to iCarly.com, as do all of the fictional URL's mentioned on the show.
 * It is mentioned that Carly's father is in the military overseas. He has often been mentioned throughout the series.
 * This is the first time Cuttlefish is mentioned.
 * Carly wears a jacket in this episode that she later wore in iGet Pranky and iGot a Hot Room.
 * An extended version of this episode can be seen on Netflix.
 * The cellist at the auditions is playing "Long Long Ago."
 * In this episode, and later in iGo to Japan, Freddie is shown looking out the peephole of his apartment door, waiting for Carly to come home. It was never explained why Freddie would assume that Carly would necessarily take the main elevator to her floor, rather than take the freight elevator directly into her apartment.
 * The shot of Carly throwing her hat into the air remains the only shot in the opening credits to remain in that credit the entire time.

Gallery
View Gallery for this episode here

Quotes
Carly: [angrily] Hi!

Sam: Did you get in trouble?

Carly: Of course I got in trouble! Teachers tend to get upset when you put their heads on the bodies of big, fat animals!   Carly: You know, anybody but me would punch you right in the head.

Sam: Which is why you are my best friend!

Carly: Good to know. Now, why are you mine?

Sam: Because I'm a lovable person! [pushes kid into his locker]

Freddie: [to Carly] I am over it! Seriously! I'm in love with you, you just wanna be friends, and I'm totally cool living with that constant pain!

Carly: Oh, God...

Freddie: [to Carly] I also brought you juice and a bagel!

Sam: Hey, you invited the doof.

Carly: Sam...

Freddie: Aw, man! I didnt know that was gonna be here!

Sam: She. I am a she, Freddie, as in "girl."

Freddie: Barely...

Freddie: Just keep your hands  off  my A-V equipment!

Sam: You mean I can't play with the white balance on your super-dee duper-dee camcorder?

Freddie: [sarcastically] Oh, sure! Everyone jokes about the white balance 'til the skin tones go magenta!

Sam: Ahem... Carly will never love you.

Freddie: THAT'S IT! I'm takin' my stuff and goin' home! [Starts to pack stuff before Carly says something to him]

Carly: [smiles at Freddie] Please stay...

Freddie: Okay...

Carly: It's on SplashFace!

Sam: Okay, okay! Chillax. Look. See the view count? Only 27 people have clicked on it.

Carly: Oh. Okay, good.

''[silence, Carly observes the video]  Carly: [calmly]'' Sam?

Sam: Yeah?

Carly: [screaming] THAT'S 27,000! [Sam falls off her chair]

Carly: Where's Ms. Briggs? What if she saw it?

Sam: The video was off by yesterday morning.

Carly: What if she saw it before it was off?

Sam: It was Sunday! She was probably in church!

Carly: What church would let Ms. Briggs in the door?!

[on the iCarly webcast]

Sam: She's Carly!

Carly: She's Sam!

Sam: Sam I am!

Carly: [pointing at herself, then Sam] Carly, Sam...

Sam: I think they're clear'''. '''

Carly: Okay, this first kid we're gonna show you can take a glass of milk-

Sam: -this is so deliciously gross-

Carly: -snort the milk up into his nose-

Sam: -It's the best thing ever!-

Carly: -And then make the milk squirt out of his eyes!

Sam: I wanna marry this boy!

Freddie: Hey, you wanna go out in the hallway and kiss? Carly: No... Freddie: Okay...

Related iCarly.com blog posts
Sam's blog I Kinda Started The Whole Thing! (This blog is technically incorrect, Mrs. Briggs started the whole thing.)