As kbwood wrote, if you don't specify the dataType and you don't have the right content headers sent back with the data jQuery won't know how to handle it.
thank you for your response, kbwood... and thank you also Chrazy.... stupid question... oh brother...
I had thought it came in as JSON already, this is why I hadn't thought of it.. but of course what the PHP spits out is a string that just looks like a JSON, yes??
I also tried using parseJSON, but it returns null:
I especially liked the list at the end that shows for what to use each method, and the table at the very end showing exactly what params you can pass to each method; do you agree with the info on this page?