Portlandia - Nostalgia for Generation Y

Show: Portlandia

My Rating: 4 stars

I was really excited for this humorous sketch show based on the advance version of the opening musical number I saw on Youtube.  While I thought that the rest of the sketches didn’t really hold up to the strength of that first one, I still think the show is really funny and worthwhile.  This show comes to us from the great comedic minds of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, and the theme is the strange quirks and affectations that are unique to the lovely residents of Portland, Oregon.  In the show, the residents are still holding onto the whole grunge movement from the 90s, and have only adapted it very slightly since then.  This is a super fun walk down memory lane for anyone that came of age in the 90s like I did.  They have all kinds of characters up there.  There are the dirty hippies, the snobby, indie music aficionados, the uber-political-activists—and all of them are very self-righteous about their own, little, chosen battlefields.  For the most part, these two writers really capture the intensity of the Portland residents’ particular vanities, although sometimes the sketches do feel l little too self-conscious.  But, that’s normal, I guess.  In any sketch show there are always going to be a handful that aren’t quite as successful as the others.  But, the weaker ones are still anchored by some really strong material, so the overall product is really enjoyable.

It’s also possible that some of my less-than-warm feelings toward a few of the sketches stem from my tendency to watch this sort of show a little faster that is ideal.  The show is available for streaming now, but I watched it on DVD.  This means that I felt a sort of artificial pressure to get through all the episodes in a few sittings, so that I could return the rented disks.  In retrospect, that was a mistake, and it definitely affected my enjoyment of the program.  You can’t really enjoy comedy when you’re feeling kinda tired and cranky (especially when the show is about difficult people).  So, I recommend slowing down and enjoying this show only a couple episodes at a time.  And, now that you can stream them individually, it’s much easier to do that.  This is a must-see for anyone from Generation Y.  Some of the references are so targeted toward people that were in high school during the whole grunge movement that I’m not sure that the Gen X-ers will really appreciate some of the specific jokes.  But, I think other parts of the show are still funny enough for a general audience