User blog comment:IEmbargo/iCarly - What Do You Think?/@comment-24341760-20140317151119

I think the Creddie kiss in igoodbye was probably written to be ambiguous to placate both ships-after all, you have to admit it is completely inconsistent with the phone call thing immediately before it, and that phone call was definitely NOT ambiguous. I also think because it was a kiss on the lips and because of the way Freddie reacted, it looked romantic. This is completely contradicted, however, by what I perceived as awkwardness on the part of both of them afterward. The aftermath was definitely NOT romantic, more like awkward throat-clearing. (The fist-pump was a mistake on the part of the writers, who just thought it would be funny and added it last minute without thinking about how it would make Freddie look in the context of the rest of the episode. I can only surmise that it was toward the end of filming and everyone was getting a little sad/punch drunk.)  I think Dan and the writers thought to themselves they could have the best of both worlds- give Creddie a sweet romantic scene to close out the show, but then easily justify/explain it away as a goodbye kiss, because there was no explicitly romantic dialogue or explanation to accompany it. That was on purpose. I think they thought they could do it and not get in trouble with either fandom. Unfortunately, the way the kiss was intentionally presented, acted, and directed makes them look incredibly disingenuous on that point. Could they really have believed it wouldn't look romantic? No. They wanted on some level for the Creddiers to believe that, they just wanted to leave themselves an "out" so they wouldn't look bad to the Seddiers. And that's the only explanation I've got. I think that any actual in-show, character-based explanation would not and could make any sense given the obvious inconsistency with the phone call.

Finally, Seddie is not an abusive relationship, it's slapstick. Nobody believes a relationship like that could survive in real life- Freddie would be dead by now, (as would the Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, Kermit the Frog, etc.) But he's not, because it's not real, it's just funny. We're not meat to take it as a realistic depiction of a relationship. We have to suspend disbelief. Same way we have to suspend disbelief that a girl could live with her cool older brother in a cool loft and do a webshow. Same way we have to believe these kids could insult their teachers and break into their homes without consequences, or that they could get their Principal fired and then rehired by basically destroying the school. I do believe that they escalated the violence on Sam's part toward Freddie a bit in Season 4 leading up to the arc, and I don't think that made sense. They had been getting much friendlier toward each other before that.