Portlandia, Season One DVD

Published on December 7th, 2011 in: Blu-Ray, Current Faves, DVD, Reviews, TV |

By Danny R. Phillips

portlandia cover

It seems that in some circle, including my own, cracking on hipsters has become somewhat of a sport. With their tragic coolness, bland color scheme in housing and clothes, poor music choices (does anyone REALLY like Bon Iver?), black eyeglasses, and Zach Galifianakis facial hair, the genus Hipsteris toocoolius has become a prime target for sarcasm and satire. And no show does it better than IFC’s Portlandia.

Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live) and Carrie Brownstein (vocalist/guitarist for Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag) take their love of Oregon’s biggest city and its too cool for school inhabitants and deconstruct them to their most absurd levels, including: looking for the long lost slacker dream of the 1990s: the lesbian owners of the bookstore Women and Women First; a super-pretentious couple who insist on visiting the organic farm where the chicken they are about to order at a restaurant was raised; a militant bike messenger who demands to ride his bike in thrift stores, restaurants, and on the city bus; and being commissioned by Portland’s mayor (played by Kyle MacLachan) to write a tune glorifying Portland but “not Seattle.”

Watching Brownstein and Armisen together I can see a real friendship, a kinship for the same kind of funny, and a love of satire and the absurdity that can exist in the spaces that build everyday life. Though as I am watching Portlandia, I cannot decide whether the pair are making fun of the city that they obviously hold so dear in their hearts or if they are just making observations on the world in which they happen to be living?

It doesn’t matter, not to me anyway. Good—even great—writing and comedy arise from real situations. People draw from their surroundings and mold tales from what they see and experience. When I watch Portlandia, I witness situations I’ve been in, people that I call my friends, and the strange conversations I’ve had from time to time. That is what makes the show good: It seems familiar and it’s funny. But, in my world, the city is not Portland. The city that is MY Portlandia is Lawrence, Kansas and trust me “The Dream of The ’90s” is definitely alive and well there.

Season One of Portlandia was released on DVD and Blu-Ray/DVD combo on December 6, 2011 by Broadway Video Enterprises, Video Services Corp, and MVD Entertainment Group. It is available to order from the MVD website.

Bonus Features: Blooper reel, extended scenes, deleted scenes, Fred Armisen speaks to OES graduates, ThunderAnt videos, Season Two preview, Fred, Carrie and Jonathan Krisel commentary over all six episodes.

2 Responses to “Portlandia, Season One DVD”


  1. oswald cornmuffin:
    December 15th, 2011 at 4:02 pm

    the anti-hipster attitude is just as bad, if not worse, than the hipster attitude. people who have it are doing the EXACT SAME THINGS they say that hipsters do, just from the opposite end. if more people realized this, they may not be so willing to dismiss stellar music like bon iver (for no other reason than that “hipsters” listen to them – hipsters drink water too. do you dislike drinking water?) while championing tired, paint-by-numbers acts like foo fighters.

  2. Danny R. Phillips:
    December 15th, 2011 at 4:56 pm

    For the record: I don’t dislike Bon Iver just because hipsters like Bon Iver. I am not the shallow. I dislike the music of Bon Iver because the music is fucking boring.







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