User blog comment:Lady Magique/Is there any way around the "out of order airing" issue?/@comment-3419321-20110506053625

Whenever I take or argue a position, I have always found it useful to double-check myself and try to come up with counter-arguments to my own arguments.

Prior to writing this blog, my siblings and I had stated (many times over) that Dan Schneider had indicated in the past that he was reluctant to create an ongoing relationship between the iCarly characters because of the way that Nickelodeon airs episodes out of order. We said that so many times that my brother once commented that we were sounding like a "broken record," and my sister wondered if people were getting tired of hearing us talking about it.

Interestingly, and much to my surprise, really, nobody ever challenged that argument ... except once. Somebody asked, "Well, what about Quinn and Logan?"

Now, I had never watched Zoey 101, so I really couldn't speak to that, but I pointed out that Zoey 101 ended its run in 2008, while the Q&A with Dan Schneider was posted on his blog in May of 2009, meaning that the latter represented his more recent view of the situation. I did acknowledge, though, as I did here, that Dan Schneider may have changed his views since then, or may do so in the future. Anything is possible.

As I said, I find it useful to try to come up with counter-arguments to my own arguments, at the very least if nobody else does it for me.

First of all ... It was a fairly short answer, yes, but it looked to me like Dan Schneider was set on viewing an ongoing relationship as a continuing (and developing) storyline, which would make Nickelodeon's out-of-order airings a real problem. At least, he didn't specify any possible exceptions to that view. Perhaps I misunderstood Dan, or perhaps that wasn't his complete view. As I said, it was a short answer.

Anyway, I tried to think of a way to have an ongoing relationship where it wouldn't matter what order the episodes were aired in, and the only thing I could come up with was a "stable" relationship that proceeds in a straight line, with no permanent changes or significant development. And I asked myself, "Would that work?"

I actually went back and forth on this for a while. Sometimes I thought it would, sometimes I didn't.

In the end, the reason that I didn't think a "backdrop" relationship would work was because it always seemed to me that two of the major themes of Sam and Freddie's relationship were change and hope.'

Sam and Freddie's relationship with each other grew and developed significantly over the past four years (change) and there was always the prospect for the future of their growing even more (hope). Some relationships on television are set in stone, but I always felt that the major strength of Sam and Freddie's relationship, for the audience to become emotionally invested in it, was the growth, how they went from enemies to close friends.

I had thought that if Sam and Freddie formed a long-term relationship, the audience would naturally view it as the next stage of their development, not the conclusion of it. The audience would want to see how they would grow and change during their relationship with each other, now that they were dealing with each other in a completely new context.

Now, Dan Schneider could just have them develop slowly, incrementally over time, as he had before. But I didn't think that he had time to do that. With only 26 episodes left, he couldn't make their relationship change very much at all that way, and in any case, I figured the audience would expect things to step up a notch now that the stakes were higher, so to speak.

In the end, Sam and Freddie wouldn't be all that different at the end of their relationship (meaning the end of the series, actually) than they were at the beginning. And I thought that might disappoint viewers, because Sam and Freddie's relationship had always seemed (to me at least) to be built on growth and development.

As well as hope for the future. That's why I said Seddiers might be asking, "What do we have to look forward to now?" if the relationship had essentially reached an endpoint in its development.

Now perhaps I was overanalyzing the situation, or perhaps I was just completely off-base in my thinking to begin with. I don't know. But that was the analysis I had come up with.

As I've often said, anything is possible. Dan Schneider may come up with a better way to get around the "out of order airings" issue, or perhaps, as some folks here have said, the "backdrop relationship" idea might actually work after all. Time will tell.