Splitsider

Portlandia has won a Peabody Award and been picked up for a third season on IFC, but since we'll have to wait until January 2013 for that, why not take a look back at the internet sketch duo who started it all? Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's mastery of combining subtle and conceptual humor with the most exaggerated urban Pacific Northwest stereotypes possible — including the likes of lethargic activists, crunchy environmentalists, feminist vegans, punk rockers, and the always-elusive liberal elite — began after the two met in the early 2000s and started posting videos under the name ThunderAnt in 2005. Since the premiere of Portlandia [...]

Whew, that Bunk preview was only the beginning. The IFC upfronts yesterday yielded all manner of programming information, from release dates to new shows to previews big and small. Above is a preview of Comedy Bang! Bang!, which premieres with Bunk on June 8. The upfronts also verified that there will be a third season of Portlandia in January 2013, with two half-hour specials to tide us over until then – the first of which, Portlandia: The Brunch Special, will air this summer. We already knew about Maron, and January 2013 will also see the premiere of Out There, an animated show about three boys [...]

"If you are pregnant, celebrate with a soda."

Now that only two more episodes are left in Portlandia's second season, it seems fitting that the Women & Women First ladies got a chance to lead the main storyline. Fred and Carrie have called Toni and Candace (who they’ve been playing since 2007 in ThunderAnt) some of their favorites, and "Feminist Bookstore 10th Anniversary" was a nice way to pay respect to the familiarity the ladies provide on a show that can be alienating if you don't know everything about krautrock, Kickstarter, or Battlestar Galactica. It was also the perfect avenue to bring in Penny Marshall as the black [...]

Ooh, did you read the Portlandia book, Portlandia: A Guide for Visitors? If not, you can probably pick it up at the bookstore, because it's going to be available starting November 20. (Which, incidentally, is my DJ night.) The book will "lead readers through the city's landmarks, restaurants, etc., in the same tone that Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen have developed on the show." In other words, Portlandia is slowly becoming a real place, with a school and stores and a mayor and everything. Spring break destination '13?

Portlandia's musician Jason From LA is back this week, following up his hit "Dream of the 90s" with sophomore effort "Dream of the 1890s." He sings of a magical place where you can still build your own cameras and experience economic depression: Portland. Props to Portlandia for revisiting this idea from their pilot and building on it in the second season with an equally funny result.

Here's a new campaign ad from Portland mayor wannabe Eileen Brady entitled "Put a Job on It." Subtle!

Huzzah! Carrie Brownstein confirmed today that Portlandia will be back on IFC next year for a third season. Will they go back to the 1790's this time around?

"He loves reality shows about logging or fishing, but if he starts just staring at the on-demand screen that's when it's time to turn it off."

Subtlety was the key to Friday’s Portlandia — it took two viewings for Fred and Carrie’s cerebral cynicism to reveal itself and an episode devoid of laugh-out-loud moments to turn into one of the more quietly clever episodes this season. For one, the cold open with Joanna Newsom, Fred, Carrie, and several other friends including Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes as the hippy Tom Bombadil-worshipping minstrels jamming in the fields is more quaintly colorful and poetic than it is amusing, but it's not [...]

At last, Kristen Wiig's Portlandia episode is this week, as previewed in the clip above. It would be easy to see superfan Gathy as the bad guy in this clip, but honestly, if you call your band Cat Nap, aren't you sort of asking for a catnapping? They should have gone with Catnip; that way their fans would just give them a plant that would make their cat roll around on the ground for a while, and rub itself against stuff. That would be a much less entertaining role for Kristen Wiig, though, probably.

"The last thing I want is you out there shooting squirrels and birds for dinner."

We’re almost halfway through Portlandia’s second season, and Friday’s episode “Grover” brought up a host of new ultra-specific subcultures like panhandling gutter punks, dog park etiquette, and the gripe that anyone with a Mac and a turntable can become a DJ. The main plot follows overachieving parents Brendan and Michelle, who are determined to get their young son Grover into a Portland preschool. Their warm-up talks with him with the “Future of Success” and “Future of Failure” boards were amusing (failure means public school, community college, violence, drugs, and eventually – “But we never [...]

The winners of the prestigious Peabody Awards were announced this morning, with a few of our very favorite comedies snagging trophies for their shelves. No, I didn't know they commonly handed out awards to non-news organizations either, but hey, Game of Thrones won one as well, so who the hell knows what their standards are. In any case, here are the winners and what the Peabody folks had to say about each one:

The Colbert Report — Super PAC Segments Launching his own Super PAC as a satirical protest against megabucks politics, Colbert mixed cerebral comedy with inspired sight gags, interviews and preposterously funny monologues.

Portlandia A funhouse [...]

"We are a peaceful organization, but at this time this makes me very warlike. So help me God I will jump from head to head using your skulls as stepping stones into the river that is the street."

For its season two finale, Portlandia broke from its usual minutia-obsessed perspective and instead gave us an all-cast grand finale in the form of a long line for a chance to try marionberry pancakes at Portland's hottest new brunch spot Fisherman's Porch. Fred and Carrie's wait in line parallels the forever-desperate-for-spontaneity Peter and Nance, and they're all backed up by a Where's Waldo of season two supporting characters like Ronald D. [...]

"Are we trying to get customers?" "We don't care."

I've developed a habit of depending on Fred-and-Carrie-as-themselves scenes to anchor my Portlandia viewing this season, and with the exception of a small sketch where they try to be full-time Etsy sellers, Friday's episode was more character-heavy than usual. But I learned that, despite my hesitance toward dealing with the humor of Pitchfork, Kickstarter campaigns, and urbanites too wealthy to need real jobs, I don't need the normalcy of Fred and Carrie's coffee shop chats to feel grounded amongst all these stereotypes of entitlement. There was a certain bravery to what Portlandia decided to skewer this week as it mined [...]

"Hands up? I don't think so, it's hands down…the best."

While last week's episode showed some signs that Portlandia might be faltering, Friday's "Cops Redesign" followed up with a solid, hilarious, and well-paced adventure that had everything that makes this show work, like the mix of both new and returning characters, a trademark sense of specificity, and an ever-probing weirdness that took a risk this time with some adorable hipster rats — which, despite my initial hesitance, ended up paying off and extending the show's arsenal of indie humor weaponry. It also had bad coffeeshop art, cop fashion, arguments over krautrock, and 1890s dandy hobos.