I was really thrown off at first because I didn’t realize it was going to be sketch comedy. Once I caught on, it was easier to watch.
I do like the show, and it made me laugh. I love seeing Portland featured like this. But overall…it was lacking something. Really, it’s all been done before. Portland isn’t the only city with hipsters (and they don’t just make fun of hipsters).
The best part is the intro vid, and I think if they had just left it at that they would have been successful.
Overall, the show has the feel of someone trying too hard. They’ll run out of material and ideas soon.
One thing I did like was reading the NY Times (which totally has a crush on Portland) article on the show. They interviews with the “oh, we’re so not impressed” hipsters were hilarious. (I suppose I sound like one, but A. I’m not a hipster and B. I wasn’t offended by the show.)
One thing I was disappointed in was the lack of real biting satire on the women’s book store sketch. If I wrote how I would have written that skit I’d get taken to the Pit, so let’s just say I thought it was pretty tame and not all that funny.
They could break the vibe and do vignettes of Portland long ago, portraying the Carrie and Fred characters as callow, blasé hipsters while everybody else acts “period.” They won’t, of course, but they could.
They were walking on eggs. If you had written the skit and it was too irreverent, you’d probably be skewered on at least one blog by now.
My theory: hipsters don’t do bite. The humor they relate to best seems to be totally situational and social, and steers clear of anything too zany or clever. Some of it is so low-key it barely jiggles the laugh meter for the rest of us.
We recorded it and watched it last night. I’ve never been to Portland, but had no problem ‘getting’ any of the humor. I suppose there may have been a whole separate Portland-specific level that went completely over my head, but it didn’t detract from the show as far as I was concerned. We thought it was great.
As to whether it will last? Who knows… It wouldn’t stand a chance on network television, but what kind of ratings does IFC need to pull in order for the show to be considered a ‘success’?
Could you explain it to me? I get that PCC is a community college and presumably has a library, but was there another level (beyond the absurdity of adults playing hide & go seek) to it?
PCC is a college downtown, but if you didn’t know it existed you’d probably just pass right by it. The buildings all blend into the rest of downtown, and unless you go to school there you would never know when you enter the campus or not.
I was hoping for an actual series, not sketch comedy. I don’t think it’ll last long in that format. I wanted to watch it again since the first time I watched it on Hulu I was really drunk, but the bastards took it down :mad:
Okay, A) Anyone who bothers to claim they are not a hipster is a hipster. That’s the first rule of being a hipster and B) what interviews are you talking about? There is one person in that article who doesn’t like the show and they just say it shows “too narrow a subset of people.” Which other people in this thread have commented on.
I don’t understand the “People won’t get Portland-centric humor” comments. Consider the New York-centric and Los Angeles-centric humor of so many wildly successful movies and television shows.
Not every character in Portlandia was a hipster. Many characters seem based on the extreme crunchers one might encounter in Berkeley, Boulder, Ithaca and similar “enlightened” towns.
I lived in Denver and Austin. I spent several days in Portland a while back, and I can best describe it as having Denver’s body and beer, and Austin’s soul. Urban growth management policies in Oregon created a built environment that appeals greatly to the “Stuff White People Like” demographic, and its mountainous location is a bonus; earthy people like topography.
PCC is not a college in downtown Portland, you might be thinking of PSU (Portland State University). PCC has three main campuses, the closest to downtown is the Cascade campus in North Portland, the other two are Rock Creek and Sylvania. If you are thinking of PSU, you’re right that most of their buildings blend into downtown.
That attitude is based on NY and LA being centers of the culture industry, which supposedly gives them the franchise on funny for the whole country. Anything anyone does to go against that is probably a good thing.
Oh right, it is PSU downtown. I get all the colleges confused since I don’t go to any of them. I remember reading that Christian Lander (the guy who wrote Stuff White People Like) is from Portland, but of course I can’t find anywhere to validate that. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s true.
Oh man, this week’s episode was miles funnier than the first one. Hilarious, even. Beats anything on network TV, IMO. I wonder how they talked Mayor Sam Adams into playing the mayor’s assistant: funny stuff. The bicycle bit was fall-down funny. I’ve become a fan of the show in two eps, which is a personal record.
Portland is not a college town, it’s a post-college town. "Well I got this degree that cost me $100K, should I put on a suit and work for the man or hang out and try to make a better espresso maker.
This. Portland has a spectacular microbrew beer scene, one of the largest used bookstores in the world, rents that are lower than Californian cities, great public transportation, and Oregon’s lax medical marijauna rules and good, cheap local and Californian weed. Portland also has a disproportionately large number of colleges (Reed, Lewis and Clark, University of Portland, Portland State, PCC, George Fox) and many of the graduates don’t go far after graduating. U of O, OSU, Williamette, Whitman, and the various Seattle schools all feed graduates into Portland too. Add that to the fact that Portland really isn’t that large-- only half a million, smaller than Austin, which has a similar reputation-- and you get a city loaded with old hippies, hippies who made it financially and yupped, and their hipster kids who go to their liberal arts colleges, get their degrees in political science, and never leave.
appleciders, PNW liberal arts major who will might move to Portland shortly. It’s a nice town.
You left out that there is a vibrant arts and music scene, with an annual jazz festival, blues festival, and several film festivals. And then there’s the wine . . . mmmmm.
I’m laughing, and I haven’t lived in Portland in 20 years.
Apparantly nothing at all has changed.
Also, 3 minutes in, the word ‘Slackster’ came to mind. Slacking hipsters.
Are hipsters just the new slackers or what?
Well, this week’s ep gave me some pause for thought. Very weird, especially the Japanese tourist bit, which had me cringing. I don’t really see how it had anything to do with Portland; it was just a skit that allowed Armisen and Brownstein to dress up in odd clothing.
Well, IFC is running a Portlandia marathon today so I am bumping this thread. I am finding alot to be amused by here. I’m really enjoying the Aimee Mann/Sarah McLauglin cameos among others.
I don’t understand the “People won’t get Portland-centric humor” comments either. In Chicago all you need to do is hang in Wicker Park/Bucktown/Logan Square and to a lesser extent Andersonville and most of these characters will be familiar.
In fact, knowing Armisen lived in Chicago for several years I find the similarities between the Women and Women First bookstore to have more than a passing similarity to this place.
Overall I have enjoyed what I’ve seen. No idea how long they can make the concept work.
