6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A television series that is set and filmed in Portland, Oregon, and features Saturday Night Live cast member Fred Armisen as well as Carrie Brownstein, a member of Sleater-Kinney.
Starring: Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, Kyle MacLachlan, Chloë Sevigny, Kumail NanjianiComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
None
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Any of you guys with brothers probably know the routine: you could beat your sibling senseless while you were growing up (hopefully not as adults), but if any “outsider” attempted to take him on, you would spring to his defense, no questions asked. There’s something just slightly similar at hand when I approach Portlandia. As I discussed in my review of Portlandia: Season One, I have lived in Portland for most of my adult life and there is probably no one, either “SNOB” (i.e., Society of Native Oregon Born) or not, who has taken this city more to task for its pretensions and outright weirdness than I have. And yet when I watch Portlandia, I often go almost automatically into “hey, who do you think you are to satirize Portland that way?” territory. My wife once asked a co-worker what she thought the rest of the outside Oregon audience saw in Portlandia? The co-worker replied, “We’re laughing with the show, the rest of the world is laughing at the show” (and by inference at Portland). That may indeed be the case, but the second season of Portland exhibits some of the same tendency as the first season toward being overly precious about its subject matter and often beating punch lines into the ground through sheer repetition, making the actual laugh quotient variable at times. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen are often amusingly droll in various skits, and there are some standout moments in this second season, but Portlandia often plays like a long form Saturday Night Live outing, where one bit may be hilarious and the next simply falls flat.
Portlandia: Season Two is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VSC with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As with the first season of the series, there's a verité style to the filming of the show which adds to its amiability, but which also keeps the series from ever really popping with high definition magnificence. A lot of the show seems to have been filmed in natural (or near natural) lighting conditions, and as such contrast is highly variable and many of the interior scenes are kind of murky, with a couple looking downright muddy and indistinct. Close-ups (and the series if full of them) do have some very nice fine object detail, and if the palette continues the kind of pallid ambience of the first season, it looks relatively accurate and full bodied.
Would lossless audio have materially improved Portlandia? Probably, at least with regard to its use of music, but the series' standard Dolby Digital 2.0 perks along well enough to handle what is this series' defining element: arch dialogue. There's not incredible separation here, with the bulk of the dialogue seeming to be pretty centrally placed, but fidelity is fine and there is certainly no damage to report. It might be nice for the producers to think about upping the ante to a surround mix for the third season, especially when the series ventures outside into the dank climes of the Portland metro region.
Portlandia the Tour: Seattle (1080i; 3:20) is a brief visit to Brownstein's home town. Brownstein makes no bones about dissing Portland to the Seattle audience. Not cool, Carrie. Props to Kyle McLachlan, another Washingtonian, for sticking up for us.
Inside Portlandia (HD; 22:39) is a behind the scenes feature that was aired as a promotional piece.
Brunch Village: The Director's Cut (HD; 45:03) has quite a bit of additional material, including McLachlan serving as a narrator – host of sorts.
Deleted Scene "Feminine Bookstore" (1080i; 2:50) finds the never easy to please Toni and Candace trying to spend a gift certificate at a bizarre store.
Portlandia is probably best seen as an acquired taste, kind of like its subject city itself. The show still tends to annoy as much as it provokes laughter, and Carrie Brownstein's assertion that most of the characters featured in this season are just this side of a psychotic breakdown is also one of the series' most frustrating elements. Over and over (and over) again, we get goofy people doing insanely dunderheaded things, with no relief in sight. As I mentioned in my review of Portlandia: Season One, I personally think the show would be materially better if there were occasional at least relatively "normal" people included (think Marilyn Munster in The Munsters for a decent, if archaic, example). Still, the show continues to mine the rather fertile territory of Portland weirdness, though I'm still waiting for the episode about the over critical Portland based Blu-ray reviewer who thinks he can improve a show that has won a Peabody and become something of a cultural phenomenon. Recommended.
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