Portlandia: Season Three Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Portlandia: Season Three Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't get me started. . .

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 28, 2013

If you live in Oregon, as I do, you know what the acronym SNOB stands for: Society of Native Oregon Born. It’s an exclusive society, and it grants you entrée into a level of social discourse that never quite seems to be available to outsiders. This elite coalition has only become more insular with the relatively recent influx of all sorts of “foreigners”, including lots of dreaded Californians. Despite the fact that I have lived in Portland for most of my adult life, and in fact most of my entire life (I’ll let you math majors try to figure out how old I am), I am not a SNOB and even my decades of residence here don’t grant me an honorary membership. I absolutely love Portland, but I am not immune to its quirks, which are many and which have provided Portlandia ample fodder over the last few years. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen have a cast a jaded but ultimately loving eye at the often bizarre denizens of this “pearl of the northwest”, as some Portlanders perhaps over optimistically call their hometown. There’s a famous bumper sticker that is actually seen in Portlandia which states “Keep Portland Weird”, and Brownstein and Armisen seem intent to contribute to that effort. A lot of Portlandia continues to be effective as the show trundles through its third season, but some of the issues that have been on display in previous seasons continue to crop up here, including an emphasis on repetition in place of actual humor and a sometimes overly precious attitude that some may find as off putting as—well, Portland itself.

Portlandia continues to remind me of a series cobbled together out of the remnants of the last thirty minutes of various Saturday Night Live outings—you know, that part of that Lorne Michaels enterprise where occasional very funny bits are interspersed with more tired offerings where “runners” (i.e., running gags) are utilized, as if simply repeating a supposed punch line over and over automatically makes it funny. This Michaels enterprise tends to be more consistently wry and ironic than SNL, but as the show has continued to mine the often impressive array of characters that Armisen and Brownstein have created, it’s also tended to become a bit lazy at times, using this “déjà vu all over again” approach a few (maybe more than a few) times too many.

There are as always nuggets of hilarity buried throughout this season. The comedy night at the feminist bookstore generates some laughs (virtually none from the “comedians”, of course), and the continuing travails of the Mayor (Kyle McLachlan) offer a few giggles (that's our real life ex-Mayor, Sam Adams, as the harried assistant). In fact in one of Portlandia’s continuing series of “interesting” cameos, Roseanne Barr shows up as a temp who has been assigned the Mayor’s job. This actually never goes quite as insanely berserk as might be hoped for, but has a few good moments. (Part of my long history in Portland includes either managing or actually founding two very successful temporary services in Portland, and I have more than enough material to fill Portlandia for several seasons to come with the exploits of various temps. Fred and Carrie, have your people call my people—oh, wait a minute, I don’t have people.)

Portlandia relies a bit more on through lines in this third season. There are still the requisite one off skits, but there’s perhaps a more thoughtful consideration of plot development as the show moves into its third year. This might be most noticeable in longer arcs as with that concerning the Mayor, but there are minimal steps in the same direction with regard to some of the other recurring characters. There are also “one offs” that are used in a sort of aggregate approach, as in several silly public service announcements for various ridiculous groups that crop up now and again.

The show perhaps continues to be an acquired taste, much like the city it parodies. Too often Brownstein and Armisen seem to be just a little derisive rather than playfully satirical, something that tends to give Portlandia a sometimes slightly bitter edge, at least at times. The show has more often than not been overly twee and precious, winking so hard at its tendency to mock self-important snobs (or SNOBs) that it doesn’t seem to realize it’s become a bit self-important as well. Still, the show delivers solid, if not exactly gut busting, laughs, and Armisen and Brownstein continue to create some of the most delightfully daffy characters in television comedy.

Portlandia: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Portlandia: Season Three is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD/VSC with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The high definition presentation in this season is very much in line with what I've already discussed in both the Portlandia: Season One Blu-ray review and the Portlandia: Season Two Blu-ray review. There's a bit more playfulness in this season with regard to some video effects and outright special effects (believe me, that ray of sunshine in the season's opening episode is a special effect), something that pumps up the pop of this season at least a little bit (this includes some unexpected efforts like stop motion rats and, no, that's not a typo). The show continues to amble along in a sort of quasi-verité style that means things are never staged or framed impeccably, but the image is usually nicely sharp and clear. As with previous seasons, this "on the fly" shooting mentality tends to mean a lot of the show at least appears to have been lit with ambient sources, and so contrast and fine detail can be variable at times.

Portlandia: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Hey, Armisen and Brownstein: Portland (and Portlandia) deserves better than your feeble, lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. Would you even think of doing this if the show were about Seattle? (Sorry, my regional chauvinism is showing.) The show is of course almost totally comprised of small scale dialogue segments, often between only two characters, but it wouldn't have hurt to have had lossless audio here, and it absolutely could have helped with regard (as in previous seasons) to the music. What's here suffices quite well, if unspectacularly so. But both snobs and SNOBs may be disappointed by this lack of audio excellence.

Portlandia: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Portland Tours (1080p; 24:43) features Kumail Najiani visiting various odd locations. Note to Kumail: you're going to be strung up if you keep mispronouncing our state's name. It's not Ore-ah-GONE, it's Ory-gun.


• Deleted Scenes include:

  Changing for Roommate (1080p; 3:35)

  Earth Day (1080p; 2:24)

Portlandia: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My sons, who are bonafide SNOBs (if not snobs) love Portlandia, although for different reasons. My eldest son, who despises "hipsters" and can't wait to get out of this place, loves the fact that the show constantly makes fun of the overly pretentious people that admittedly make up a rather large percentage of the local populace (though perhaps not quite to the exaggerated degree that Portlandia proffers). My younger son, who is kind of a hipster himself, loves the show for those very exaggerations. Those who have never experienced the peculiar charms of my hometown may well be laughing at us rather than with us as they watch Portlandia, and in fact they may assume that what they're seeing comes uncomfortably close to being a documentary rather than an artful comedy, but even those folks may occasionally grow tired of Portlandia's emphasis on repetition in the place of actual punch lines. Despite some niggling qualms (which may in fact be nothing other than a chauvinistic defense mechanism), Portlandia is often amusing if not downright hilarious. This third season offers incrementally better video but the same baffling lossy audio. Recommended.