Portlandia

Anyone watching? I love the women's bookstore owners!

The first episode was okay. Not a classic, but some funny bits.
The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland!
I watched the first season, even though I found the show quite annoying. Are Portlanders really narrow enough to think the city is the only place in the country with a pretentious overemphasis on locavore dining and overly proud of its live music scene? Seattle, Brooklyn and even Austin can claim both.
I watched it for the first time last week and thought it had some funny moments. The bit where Fred Armisen and that woman he hangs with went to a restaurant in L.A. and got into an insane back and forth with a waiter about their menu was very funny.
[quote]Seattle, Brooklyn and even Austin can claim both. Don't forget Athens, GA!
Hipster%20Doofus
I thought the first season was very good overall. Also love the women bookstore owners.
Put a bird on it!
I can never decide of I like this. At times, brilliant, very funny. Other times, so consciously aware of itself and just lame.
Skits suffer from the SNL syndrome. They always last just a little too long to be truly funny.
R3: Have you been to Portland? They take it to the next level.
Yes, R10, I've been there many times. I found it most amusing that they decided to satirize the Ace Hotel (rechristened as the Deuce), considering it's a mini-chain that originally started in Seattle (and the NYC outpost leapfrogs over both in terms of taking it to another level - it's like the entire neighborhood of Williamsburg uses it as its massive communal living room). Austin doesn't have an Ace, but it has the Hotel San Jose, where one can find similarly precious vinyl albums and old-school typewriters.
R3
I hate Fred Armisen. So fucking unfunny and so ugly he's hard to look at.
Agree r12,Fred Armisen is too fugly. They should have picked a different lead.
[quote] Fred Armisen is too fugly. They should have picked a different lead. It's his show.
[quote]Are Portlanders really narrow enough to think the city is the only place in the country with a pretentious overemphasis on locavore dining and overly proud of its live music scene? No. If the show were funnier, we wouldn't care how annoying it is. But it's not very funny. (It definitely does have the SNL defect of wringing one joke dry for much too long.)
Portlander
People of a third tier town with nothing else to offer except Portlandia
Honestly, Portland is just the setting. The humor is about satirizing different groups of self-important people. (For example, the kind of useless turds who think that looks somehow equal talent.) I like it, and am particularly impressed by how committed a minor-legend guitarist like Carrie is to doing comedy. This show has also made me like and appreciate Fred Armisen (another professional musician turned comedian) way more than anything I've ever seen him do on SNL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Brownstein
Aside from 30 Rock and SNL, it is the greatest show on television now.
We can pickle that.
Are Portlanders really narrow enough to think the city is the only place in the country with a pretentious overemphasis on locavore dining and overly proud of its live music scene? Seattle, Brooklyn and even Austin can claim both. It's not something that came out of Portland, really. Of the two co-creators, Fred Armisen is from Mississippi and lives in Manhattan; Carrie Brownstein lives in Portland now, but she spent her childhood and much of her adult life in the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia area, which is hours away.
neither%20was%20%22The%20Wizard%20of%20Oz%22%20filmed%20by%20Ozians
Awwww, what's with the Fred hate? He's sweet. I haven't seen it, but heard the Chicken/Menu bit on NPR. I live near Ithaca and it's pretty spot-on for this type of person. They're all over the place here.
J'adore Fred Armisen for his Prince impersonation alone.
R17 is correct. People like R3 don't get it.
Born in Mississippi, moved to Long Island as a baby, raised there. That doesn't count as being from Mississippi.
I think it's pretty funny although I would agree there are some real misses. The best scenes this season for me have been with the guy who played the cell phone salesman and then the waiter in SoCal.
It's over!
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DYlGqN3AKOsA%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player
It's too bad that the character/impression Armisen is best-known for sucks on every possible level because I think he's pretty weird and funny otherwise. I always forget he was married to Sally Timms before he was on TV; if not for that I would assume that he was the world's most obvious desperate nutjob closet case
Fred's not a closet case. He's fucking madly in love with Carrie. That became obvious after reading the New Yorker piece on season two.
[quote]Born in Mississippi, moved to Long Island as a baby, raised there. That doesn't count as being from Mississippi. Of course it does. What a bizarre assertion.
Funny!
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DErRHJlE4PGI%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player
Alas Carrie make les les, R28.
I loved that Battlestar Galactica bit.
I finally saw a clip that made me laugh out loud: season 2's "helicopter parents."
I have so many mixed feelings about Portlandia. I like what they're trying to do, I do. Not everything has to be same and catered to a broad audience. My reaction to the shows is all the fuck over the place. I genuinely find it laugh out loud funny at times, other times a smile and giggle after the fact as the sketch unfolds. But, also other times where I roll my eyes and think it's just not funny, and sometimes annoying to the point of wanting to change the channel.