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Released by: VSC
Released on: September 25, 2012.
Director: Jonathan Krisel
Cast: Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, Kyle MacLachlan
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
Portlandia, the low-fi indy comedy that airs on IFC, was created by former Saturday Night Live alumni Fred Armisen and Sleater Kinney's Carrie Brownstein. The series takes place, not so surprisingly, in Portland, Oregon (combine Portland and utopia and you get Portlandia!) - a beautiful city that sort of exists in its own little bubble. If you've ever spent any time there you'll know that Portland is an odd city. It's picturesque, clean, easy to get around and sometimes overrun by left leaning types, be they aging hippies or crust punks or hipsters or what have you. The series pokes fun at various aspects of life in Portland, and while it does a good job of working in much of that city's local flavor (it's all shot entirely on location), a lot of what Armisen and Brownstein go for here isn't all that specific to the city itself.
The first season was fun, quirky and unpredictable. This second season, now on DVD and Blu-ray, offers up more of the same but somehow feels a little more restrained, almost as if those responsible for the series are playing it safe. There's still a lot to like about the show - many of the recurring characters that made the first season work are still here, like the feminist bookstore owners, the concerned citizens that hassle the mayor (a show stealing Kyle MacLachlan), the crusty punks, among others. A lot of the pop culture references that the show slips into its sketches are also pretty funny, leading to one of the best episodes of the entire season - one in which a couple get so wrapped up in Battlestar Galactica that they eventually lose their jobs as they try to get the writing team back together and wind up doing a reading with Edward James Olmos. The musical numbers can also be pretty amusing, particularly when Kyle MacLachlan takes center stage as the mayor and croons out the city's non-existent anthem with such infectiously strange enthusiasm that you can't help but love it. Another sketch about one woman's issue with her potential boyfriend's Eddie Vedder tattoo is also amusing, particularly when Eddie himself shows up for a cameo.
Some of the guest stars work better than others this time around. Vedder and Olmos, as mentioned, are both very funny but in the last episode of the season we get Tim Robbins cast as a sort of Ozzy Osbourne-esque Fagan lording over a line up in front of the city's most popular brunch spot. When he kidnaps Carrie to punish her for cutting, it's just a little too much, though it is amusing to watch Fred cut through the Mad Max style compound to save her. Geoff Goldblum pops up here as the owner of a knot store while Lavern And Shirley fans will get a kick out of seeing Penny Marshall show up to cause some unintentional stress at the anniversary celebration of the Women And Women First Bookstore. Johnny Marr is also amusing as a man who gets frustrated with incompetent bike valets.
The opening scene of the first episode, in which a musical number reminds us that the dreams of the 90s are still alive in Portland (that'd be the 1890s, not the 1990s, the hipster moustaches make this clear), sets things up nicely. From there the series is still more hit than miss but some of the characters are repeating themselves here, almost all of them so concerned with being hip or cool that they get to be a little hard to differentiate. The stories spread this concept out quite a bit by showing us varying degrees of this obsession, be it a pair of parents taking their child rearing to ridiculous extremes and making their young son a promo video or a record shopper insisting her boyfriend don't get Muddy Waters Greatest Hits album or a mailman debating the merits of a woman's Netflix choices, insisting she go back to square one and watch The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, but it often comes back to the same basic premise. This does hurt season two a bit - you could make the argument that it's more focused and that she show has found its niche, but you could counter that and say it's a bit repetitive this second go round.
Armisen and Brownstein are easy to like though, and they get enough to work that we can forgive the slips here and there. Again, MacLachlan steals every damn scene he's in, playing his wacky mayor as inspired, passionate and eager to please his constituents as he kayaks his way down the Willamette River to meet them for lunch or as he listens intently to their hopes that the Olympics will never come to Portland (a bit that leads to a goofy guest spot by former Olympic star Greg Louganis). The show has been renewed and is slated to air once again on IFC starting in 2013.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Portlandia is presented in AVC encoded 1.78.1 widescreen in 1080p high definition and it looks pretty good even if it's not going to knock you to the floor. Detail can sometimes be a little bit soft but skin tones look dead on and color reproduction is strong. There are no compression artifacts nor are there any edge enhancement issues. If you've seen it broadcast on HDTV, you'll know what to expect as this is about on part with a good high definition television broadcast, but it's not the best that the format has to offer. The no frills look and feel of the show is replicated well here, however.
The only audio option on this release is an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Clarity and quality of the track is strong across the board, with the dialogue always easy to understand and the music and musical numbers both sounding very good. Optional English closed captioning is provided for each episode. It would have been nice to get a lossless audio option on this release but that didn't happen - but what's here sounds just fine.
The bulk of the extras come in the form of the commentary tracks that accompany four episodes and come courtesy of Armisen and Brownstein who are joined by director Jonathan Krisel. The episodes in question are: Mixologist, One Moore Episode, Cool Wedding and Brunch Village. The commentary tracks are a decent mix of humor and information with a lot of emphasis on where ideas for certain skits came from and on the recurring characters. There's discussion here of the different locations, themes and ideas that are used throughout the show as well as some of the process behind the creation of each episode.
The second disc includes some other fun extras, starting with the 'Director's Cut' version of the Brunch Village episode which runs quite a bit longer than the version that was shown on TV and which features an awesome introduction from Kyle MacLachlan and some odd afterthoughts that play out after the episode proper has finished.
We also get a lengthy featurette entitled Inside Portlandia which allows Armisen and Brownstein to talk about their respective musical backgrounds, how Armisen wound up on Saturday Night Live and how Brownstein became a bit of an indy rock darling with Sleater Kinney and then how they met. We get some fun behind the scenes clips and some interesting stories about what it's like to work on this show, where a lot of their ideas come from and more. Aside from that, we also get a brief preview of the Portlandia: A Guide For Visitors book, a single deleted scene from the Feminine Bookstore episode, and a short clip of the Portlandia The Tour stop in Seattle in which Kyle MacLachlan and Dan Savage show up. Menus and chapter stops are also included. Like the first season, this new release is also packaged inside an appropriately environmentally friendly cardboard package that suits the show but which is actually kind of a pain in the ass.
The Final Word:
This second season of Portlandia isn't quite as funny as the first season, it seems to have reeled things in a bit and opted for a more structured and therefore predictable style this time around. With that said, there's still a lot to like about the series and it is still worth seeing, particularly on Blu-ray where it looks and sounds quite nice and contains some pretty decent extra features too.
