As Anthony stated earlier in his review of The Daily—the first tablet “newspaper”—it SUCKS. He also revealed the “paper’s” unsurprising conservative bias, as noted in their review of Portlandia. Anthony reprinted a tidbit of the review… but I really want you to read this. Here’s more.
Armisen and Brownstein capture this familiar flavor of strident liberal logic perfectly, from its neurotic roots to its hints of hysteria.
But then, almost everything about “Portlandia” is satisfying and delicious, maybe because this peculiar-hippie/hipster backwardness isn’t Portland-specific at all, but covers a much wider swath of self-righteously lefty little college towns, from Olympia to Boulder to Chapel Hill.
The dream of the ’90s is alive across this great nation of ours, in other words. Those humorless, heritage-breed, woodland-raised liberal hipsters are everywhere, infesting our coffee shops and our schools and even our shopping malls! They might not find IFC’s “Portlandia” remotely amusing, but the rest of us sure will.
For all those commenters who told me I was being ridiculous for assuming that Republicans would LOVE Portlandia? Here’s my official invitation to SUCK IT.
Seriously. And by “infesting our coffee shops” I think they mean “making our coffee shops not suck like Starbucks.”
A Least One Portion of Your Headline is Right Fucking Off
Ha! That’s what I get for gloating! Thanks, and fixed!
Mr. Wm. Steven Humphrey, when you say, “For all those commenters who told me I was being ridiculous for assuming that Republicans would LOVE Portlandia? Here’s my official invitation to SUCK IT,” can you describe precisely what you are inviting your detractors to suck? I’m confused.
Oh, and you’re forgetting all the other answers to your criticism of the show, including the simply fantastic idea that if you dislike the show, you’re “afraid to question the world around you.”
Republicans? Hell, who cares? We’ve got plenty of home-grown delusionaries making awful noises right here. I wish someone would make a show about it, except it would still have to be Good.
Oh, and lessee…”I’d like to see you do better!” Someone used that old chestnut. As if when something sucks, it immediately becomes contingent upon the people who have noticed that it sucks to suddenly become producers of the same medium of art under discussion, or their opinion is invalid. This is Not True, but it sure is an attractive argument. Almost as attractive as the many variations of the “Get Over Yourself” argument.
Ha ha, the Republicans find it funny, but for the wrong reasons. They clearly don’t get it either.
One of the people who liked it the most was indeed a Republican, except they spelled it “Republician,” which I thought was pretty tasty.
I’m damn tempted to go through and just repost every shitty argument I saw in that thread. They are legion.
Really? You write a terrible review of a funny show. You get called out on it. And then you use a Rupert Murdoch publication as proof? Who the hell cares what they think? Oh, that’s right, you do…
I don’t necessarily think the review was conservative – Heather Havrilesky was the TV reviewer for the noted conservative rag Salon.
The kind of people skewered in Portlandia irritate the ^$%$ out of *me*, and probably Carrie Brownstein as well.
Funny thing is: me too. These are indeed the people who annoy the fuck out of me in the city where I live. I just want someone to do a much better job of skewering them.
I’ve seen the show, it’s not nearly as funny as it could be. Maybe that will change in future episodes, but for now i give them credit for trying… making fun of people who can’t laugh at anything is almost good enough in itself. I have witnessed a great deal of backlash toward the show by people who have not even seen it because, “how dare anyone make fun of sweet lovable Portland?” I think a key word in the article above is “humorless”. I’ve encountered Moonies that have more personality than half the fuckers within the confines of this so called culture. At least people are starting to notice.
OK, the attention/froth this six epidose IFC sketch show has garnered has officially reached “bewildering.”
I watched the first episode last night and I thought it was, overall, pretty hilarious. I don’t know why people are saying it isn’t funny…
FYI–This show isn’t really parodying Portland as much as it’s parodying the current liberal youth culture. (In fact Carrie Brownstein says as much in this interview. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte… And Fred Armisen says it here: http://www.blackbookmag.com/article/fred-a… “The show is really about me and Carrie, it’s about our relationship and that’s just the framework around it. So with that said, it could take place in Williamsburg or Austin or Silver lake. And that’s where the aesthetics come in, that darker look, that cloudier look that helps it.”)
I live in Austin and found myself cringing at how close to home the jokes were in this show. (For example, “Keep Portland weird.” was stolen from “Keep Austin Weird”– a battle cry that used to be cool, but makes me roll my eyes now that all the hipsters have moved here, twenty some years later.)
The song featured in the third episode called “The Dream of the 90’s is Alive in Portland,” was so disturbingly right-on, you could easily replace the word Portland with the word Austin and the jokes all work just as well.
It took me about three episodes to get over my embarrassment and now I’m hooked. Not because Portlandia is wall to wall laughs, but because the absurdity is sublime. The couple who are played by opposite gendered actors. The creepy ladies at the Women And Women First Book Store. And the “It’s Over!” guy with the chin beard. He was the best.
I also really love the theme song. I’m surprised by the amount of high quality detail Armisen put into this show for presumably a low-budget cable series.
Being that Armisen’s from New York, (raised on Long Island and lives in NYC), I don’t think any of his observations are specific to Portland. Portland is just close enough to LA for showbiz folks to have some experience with and I’m sure Carrie had a lot of influence over them picking Portland as their setting. I’m thanking God they didn’t decide to call it Austintown.