VC - Ok, that's good
By making these spin-offs, it feels like they're almost milking the other shows. Before you know it, it'll turn into Spongebob where it feels like the show will just never die and you'd rather pay to see them killed than pay to watch anymore new (stupid) episodes (and I mean the show, not the actual people haha). It also reminds me of the episode "iCarly Saves TV" (or whatever it was) where they looked at the ratings and found out kids really like dinosaurs so they added a dinosaur to their bit. And if that was the case, I can almost imagine some production team meeting going like this:
Production Guy #1: "Well, looks like both iCarly's and Victorious' ratings are going way downhill. Any ideas?"
Dan: "Hmm...well, I mean, iCarly has been going on for quite some time now. Maybe it's time to end it. As for Victorious...it's hard to say...."
Production Guy # 2: "Well, sir, we've looked through several statistics on these two shows."
Dan: "...And...?"
Guy #2: "Well, everyone's favorite characters from the two shows seem to be Cat from Victorious and a tie between Sam and Gibby from iCarly."
Dan: "Ok, so, maybe we could get the actors together and start a new show."
Guy #1: "But, sir, so many people really like those three characters."
Dan: "...So? What's the problem, then?"
Guy #1: "We researched it a little more and found out that it's not the actors the viewers fell in love with."
Dan: "Come again?"
Guy #1: "Well, you see, we looked at what other people thought of the actors' other roles and apparently no one's taken too kindly to any of them."
Dan: "I-I don't understa--"
Guy #1: "What I say we do is make a spin-off starring the actual characters instead of our usual 'using favored actors for star roles'!"
Dan: "Bu-but how can viewers judge - I-I don't think those guys have even had any other main ro--"
Guy #1: "Oh! And, of course, they can all sing their own theme song!"
Dan: "Y-yeah, but I don't even know if Noah can si--"
Guy #2: "No, wait! Instead of just one spin-off, why don't we make two! That way, we can milk our ratings. I mean, two is better than one, right?!"
Dan: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down a sec. You do realize that Victorious is still in production, right?"
Guy #1: "Yeeeaaaah....But it's rating's are steadily going downhill, soooo...I figured we'd just cancel it."
Dan: "...." -_-
That's my take on it. And it's not meant to be offensive in any way, either (like, I know Noah Munck has sung a little bit on iCarly before as a filler or something for their webshow, but I have absolutely know idea if he can sing or not...heck, for all I know, he could have the voice of an angel). Btw, I definitely had way too much fun creating that dialogue xD
Anyway, as for the Sam bullying thing, the thing is, I haven't seen many episodes from this past season so I really can't judge. But there were some times I thought it got annoying. However, I usually overlooked it since, I mean, it is her thing. As for the Cat thing, I agree with you there. She's kind of annoying. Like, I know what you mean about the whole laughing thing. And it just makes her seem stupider. I don't know why they did this, but I don't particularly care for it. My favorites from both shows are probably Andre and Spencer. I used to really like Freddie and Gibby. But there are a lot of things about Freddie that started to get on my nerves and, to be honest, I liked Gibby as more of a background character. Freddie wasn't too bad. And I liked his nerdiness. But his lack of backbone got kind of annoying. I mean, yeah, that was part of his character too, but the way he defended his self against Sam (or anyone for that matter) was, like, come on....It was more like he played around with the insults rather than actually defending himself. I don't really know how to describe it. Though, there were times that he actually did defend himself, and I didn't mind that so much. I used to like Beck from Victorious until that "Tori Goes Platinum" episode. And same with Cat (only not because of that episode). And since I'm kind of stating my favorites and such, I'll just go ahead and add that I do not care for Carly, Tori, or Trina and never have. Ok, Carly isn't terrible, but she really has her moments. Again, same with Tori. I mostly don't like her, but she's ok. And Trina's just annoying. I know they can't do this, but I swear if she was my sister, I'd drop-kick her like a ninja or something.
Oh, and you've gotta point with the whole "parents being dumb" thing. hahaha
And, yeah. Mary Sue's get annoying and I'm glad it's nothing like that.
And it seriously took me, like, 45 minutes or so to write this, so...I'll get to reading the other posts some other time. Heh heh...laziness....