PORTLAND, Ore. -- In
the last season of “Portlandia,” the mayor of this
sustainability-obsessed city vanished in shame after he was singled out
as Portland’s “No. 1 electricity hog,” Portland went into a blackout,
cats barked, creepy music played, and a bizarre Australian who calls
himself “Birdman” told guests at a bed and breakfast “there is no
civilization.”
Carrie and Fred —
about the only characters in “Portlandia” with any grip on reality —
tracked down the mayor at a compound in the wilderness where he was
leading a band of savages, a la Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.”
“Do you come as assassins?” asks the muddled mayor, played by Kyle MacLachlan.
It’s
impossible for Fred and Carrie to get through to him, until they reveal
that Seattle — Portland’s archrival for hipness and progressivism — is
about to take over their fair city.
“Under
the cover of darkness, they might erect a Space Needle in Portland,”
says Carrie, rousing the mayor from his stupor and prompting him to
return to his office to get the lights turned back on.
And so ended Season Three of “Portlandia.”
There
is a line from the first season of “Portlandia” that quickly became the
show’s trademark: “Portland is a city where young people go to retire.”
That’s
not the case for the creators and two stars of the show — Portlander
Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen of “Saturday Night Live” fame. They
are always looking for new ways to keep the show from getting stale.
Season Three, which ended this past March, was driven less by short sketches and more by narrative and character development.
The
cable channel IFC said Wednesday it’s picking up the show for two more
seasons. They will premiere early next year and in 2015. Brownstein says
the show will continue on the longer-narrative path, with more
exploration of the dark side.
It’s too early to say what’s going to happen after 2015. But that might be the end of the road for “Portlandia.”
“I’d
like to develop and write other shows, comedy of some sort,” the
38-year-old Brownstein said in an interview at a Portland coffee shop.
“Five
seasons intuitively feels like the right amount of time for
‘Portlandia’ to be around,” she said. “I always think people overstay
their welcome. It’s better to leave people wanting more. But you never
know.”
If “Portlandia” is a sendup
of overzealous progressives and hipsters, it’s become hip to watch the
show. It’s the most-watched series on IFC, whose targeted audience is
the age 18-49 range.
Everyone
has a favorite episode of “Portlandia,” which debuted in January 2011.
It might be when a cyclist (Armisen) asserts his rights by hollering,
“I’m on a bike. I’m in a bike lane here” and says “Cars, man, why?” It
might be the couple in a restaurant who are about to order chicken. They
ask whether the chicken is USDA organic, Oregon organic or Portland
organic. The waitress brings the chicken’s papers and tells the couple
it had a name: Colin. The couple visits the farm where Colin was raised
to make sure it had been a good home for him.
“Portlandia”
fans are able to recite lines like fans of “The Rocky Horror Picture
Show.” People use the TV show as a yardstick to measure quirky events in
everyday life: “That’s just like a scene out of ‘Portlandia.’”
Brownstein
said Portland is not “the sole inspiration for the show,” but that the
city serves as a “signifier for an emotional landscape people are
traversing.” In “Portlandia,” that emotional landscape is largely
populated by sanctimonious humans whose obsessive pursuit of a
sustainable lifestyle can clash with the desires of others. Somehow,
“Portlandia” manages to portray such types with warmth.
Last
year, “Portlandia” won a Peabody Award for being “a funhouse mirror
reflection of Portland, Oregon, a city that takes its progressivism —
and its diet — very seriously.” This past February the show won the
Writers Guild Award in the Comedy/Variety category. The show has pulled
in some big names for cameo roles, including Jeff Goldblum, Roseanne
Barr, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny and George Wendt.
Portlanders
for the most part seem good-humored about the show, laughing at the
caricatures of themselves and welcoming the attention. Tourists come to
Portland to see local landmarks on the show. “Portlandia” walking and
cycling tours have sprung up.
“Portlandia”
put a number of locals in the show, including then-Portland Mayor Sam
Adams, who played assistant to MacLachlan’s fake Portland mayor.
”‘Portlandia’
has been worth millions in free advertising for Portland,” Adams told
the AP. “It is a loving spoof that has also allowed us to laugh at
ourselves and allows others to do the same.”
You
hear grumbling among some locals about Portland being stereotyped, and
about the stereotype being beaten to death. Still, locals will admit
Portland is ripe for satire. If you go to a Portland potluck party,
don’t be surprised if nearly everyone brings a kale salad. And try not
to get embarrassed if a group of nude cyclists zips past your car in
broad daylight. And yes, Portland does have a vegan strip club, and
another club where strippers do their thing while customers sing
karaoke.
“Portlandia” was born
from an earlier creative adventure written by and starring Armisen and
Brownstein — an Internet video series under the name ThunderAnt.
“It
took those videos to realize we were portraying a certain kind of
person,” people with a “stunted maturity … who are flummoxed by the
ever-changing rules of progressivism,” Brownstein said.
When
the Washington state native was a guitarist and vocalist for the riot
grrrl-inspired trio Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein already had a measure of
celebrity in rock music circles.
And now Brownstein is a household name, if your household watches “Portlandia.”
If
your household does not watch “Portlandia,” you may have seen
Brownstein in a new American Express ad. She plays a businessman with
oversize glasses licking an ice cream cone, a hipster who’s just made a
rare find in a record store, a sitar player and a grocery-shopping mom
who puts her foot down when one of her kids tries to add two more
near-human-sized jars of peanut butter to those already in the shopping
cart.
At the end of the ad, Brownstein’s voice says: “I’m Carrie Brownstein, and I get to be whoever I want.”
As
Brownstein continues to evolve along whatever creative paths she
decides to follow, she will be cheered by the legions of fans she has
acquired by bringing the world’s attention to Portland through
“Portlandia.”
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