Have you ever been to a party where everybody knows each other really well, but you don't know anybody except the friend who invited you?
Have you ever spent the night at said party sitting in the corner, nursing your plastic cup of Trader Joe's bargain bin wine, while being regaled with stories full of inside jokes about people you don't know, which everyone in the room laughs at so hard milk practically comes out their nose, while you find yourself scanning the snack table for what's left of the brie?
Have you seen IFC's new show Portlandia starring Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein and Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen?
Portlandia should be funny. A series of sketches poking fun at the somewhat dated and overly precious political correctness of the residents of Portland Oregon, the subject is very much like the neighborhood I live in and if that weren't enough, Steve Buscemi makes a guest appearance. So why am I not laughing?
Despite Armisen's tenure on SNL he seems surprisingly unaware of how sketch-based humor works, and in Portlandia he neither pushes the envelope far enough, nor owns or fleshes out the characters he and Brownstein create. So even when the pair portray a couple who leave a restaurant to personally visit the local farm where their sustainably raised chicken is being produced before ordering, they come off as merely annoying people in your neighborhood rather than actually funny.
Brownstein is looking good in her mid-30's, and seems no longer the brilliantly tortured guitar queen of her youth. A shame then that she isn't taking comic aim at the Portland music scene, a topic she'd know well and have a unique humor insight into. Comedy which cuts close is always the best, and in this case would doubtless would have made Portlandia a whole lot funnier.
Till one of the stars allows Portlandia to become more personal though, it is going to continue to be like that party, laced with jokes that only insiders get. Finding the rest of us looking for an early ride home.
