Portlandia is a sketch comedy show on IFC starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. It is set in Portland, Oregon and most of its humor comes from mocking its hipster culture. Armisen is a current cast member on Saturday Night Live and Brownstein is a writer and the former singer and guitarist for Alternative Rock band Sleater Kinney (she's currently a member of Wild Flag).
This show provides examples of:
As Herself: Aimee Mann plays herself as a down-on-her-luck maid, claiming she has to because the music industry is down.
Women and Women First. The shopkeepers refuse to remove books from shelves for customers, are against alphabetizing the books on the shelves, and so on.
A man calls the DMV to ask for a replacement title on his car. The operator tells him that he'll have to be transfered; when the operator finds out that the transfer won't be back in for another hour, he tells the caller that it'll only be a moment. The caller eventually gets a letter in the mail that no, they can't replace his title.
Big Beautiful Man: The guy Carrie dates while discussing the Portland theme song in episode 2.
Cloudcuckoolander: The Mayor of Portland, which isn't surprising given his constituency. Examples include sitting on an exercise ball instead of an office chair, drawing a dog on a Post-It instead of actually taking notes in a meeting, and lending out framed pieces of Native American art. He also clearly carries a grudge against Seattle for overshadowing Portland's Bourgeois Bohemian culture.
When Aubrey Plaza walks into Women and Women First in booty shorts, Carrie, offended, asks what happened to her pants. "They're frayed."
Again at Women and Women First, Carrie asks an author about how you're supposed to print and distribute a book, then wonders aloud what Hemingway did. The author's answer? "He killed himself."
Also, when they mean "print and distribute a book," they don't mean "get published." They mean physically printing a book from a printer
Cute Kitten: Indie band the Nap change their name to Cat Nap and add their cat, Kevin, to play a scratch post. They suddenly experience runaway success.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: The mayor of Portland is revealed to secretly be in a reggae band. The press conference on this played out like a sex scandal.
Embarrassing Tattoo: Played with: Carrie dates a man with Eddie Vedder's face tattooed on his left arm; however, she's the one who can't stand it, to the point of hallucinating the tattoo as it talks and sings to her. In the end, it's a deal breaker.
I'm Standing Right Here: "Okay, this guy's got a really weird neck. Don't say anything about it, but compliment it. Ooh, you have a neck like a movie star!"
Larynx Dissonance: Occasionally Fred and/or Carrie's voices are pitched for a role.
Leitmotif: Women and Women First sketches always open with a flute melody.
Lethal Chef: A couple in "Aimee" dumpster dive...for food.
Loony Fan: Gathy (Kristen Wiig), a fan of CatNap, who is terrified of bands she likes getting famous and "leaving" her. They eventually deal with her by incorporating her into the band and changing the name of the band to "Catnapped"
Medium Blending: "Cops Redesign" features a shift to stop motion for a sketch about rats in a supermarket.
Meganekko: "All the hot girls wear glasses yeaahhhhhhh!"
Name's the Same: After becoming obsessed with Battlestar Galactica, Fred and Carrie seek out series creator Ronald D. Moore... by looking through the phone book and looking for his name. They seem nonplussed by the fact that the Moore they find is a lower-middle-class elderly black man who they have to explain Galactica to in order to convince him to write more scripts for the series.
The real Moore shows up later in the skit, playing a local actor hired for a table reading of the script. The character has never heard of Battlestar Galactica.
The Nineties: As the opening song notes, Portland is where the "Dream of the '90s" is still alive" as a reality.
Overly Narrow Superlative: The city recently won the award for "Best Official Website for cities with populations under 700,000 in the Pacific Northwest area". Especially since there are no cities that big in the northwestern U.S.
Straw Feminist: The owners of "Women and Women First". One has problems with pointing because "every time she sees it, she sees a penis."
Take That Me: Carrie Brownstein isn't shy about poking fun at her indie rock roots.
Terrible Interviewees Montage: Inverted in that Fred and Carrie are terrible interviewers, but all the baseball team member candidates seem adequate enough.
A couple totally loses their shit over someone tying their dog up outside a restaurant in "A Song for Portland".
Jack McBrayer gets grilled by a cashier and manager for not bringing a reusable bag to a grocery store.
You Look Familiar: Fred and Carrie and other actors play multiple characters. The former often encounter the same people, implying that they all exist in a shared world full of Freds and Carries.
This is confirmed in the season two finale, where among other things one set body surfs across a line containing another set.
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