“Portlandia” is an odd beast, an uneven mishmash of sketches that start normal and get strange, and other sketches that start strange and get stranger. SNL’s Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney singer Carrie Brownstein are an odd but effective pairing – their comic sensibilities are obviously right in line with each other, though certainly Armisen is a good deal broader. While much of the first season was memorable (I especially liked “Put a bird on it!”), nothing matched the highs of the premiere episode, which featured a continuing storyline where Brownstein and Armisen go to a restaurant for chicken and eventually end up sister wives to Jason Sudekis’ creepy cult leader (don’t ask).
The best sketch, however, is the one that announced the show and explained the reason for setting a comedy show in the Great Northwest.
I didn’t watch nearly as much of this season of “Louie” as I should have, as it’s been generally agreed that this was the year that the show really found itself. During the first season, I’d tended to watch the stand-up bits and fast-forward through the rest of the show. The times I tuned in this year, though, I found the dramatic bits much stronger than they had been before.
This story in particular stands out, since everything that happens in this scene is absolutely true. A few years ago, the internet created a small kerfuffle over the rumor that Dane Cook had stolen jokes from Louis C.K., a rumor that proved understandably damaging to Cook’s reputation. In the stand-up world, from what I’ve seen, joke-stealing is held in the same sort of regard as bestiality, or the murder of a close family member. Look up anything on Carlos Mencia if you don’t believe me.
Partway through this episode, Louie and Cook sit down and dramatize the situation. Both sides state their case, no one concedes anything, and the scene finishes. It is possibly the most honest fictional scene in the history of television, since nothing other than the loose story it rides on (Louie needs Lady Gaga tickets) is invented. You spend most of the time watching the scene thinking, “how did this happen?” “How did Louie get Dane Cook to come and do this scene?” ”Do you think these guys really hate each other this much? How are they in the same room then?”
I’ve watched this scene half a dozen times and gotten no closer to finding the answer to these questions. See for yourself.
“Happy Endings” was not supposed to work. At least, ABC certainly didn’t think so, delaying the show to be a spring replacement. If you don’t think that’s a death sentence, bear in mind that this year that this year’s ABC comedy fill-in is the execrable “Work It”, a show so terrible it led Alan Sepinwall to write "'Work It' could be seen as an insult to the transgender community, sure. But it's also an affront to all women, and men, and thinking adults."
"Work It" received a mediocre opening number, assumably mostly from people looking in to see whether all the bashing is truly warranted. It'll be dead by the end of the year, just like ABC assumed "Happy Endings" would be. A few weeks of halfhearted promotion led up to its premiere, and the show opened to lukewarm reviews and ratings. By the time it aired, some of the cast had already attached themselves to new pilots, assuming the show was DOA.
But then, as is sometimes the case with comedies, after a few leaden episodes, things started to gel together. The show ditched their focus on the two leads and abandoned the “left at the altar” storyline that supposedly was frame the show as the producers quickly discovered that the loose, “Friends”-style riffing between the actors was what made the show most watchable. From this we learned two things:
In an age where every show needs a high-concept idea in order to get onto the air, regardless of whether that idea is even vaguely sustainable (remember “Prison Break?” Those guys could not stop breaking out of prisons), we need to treat new comedies like young point guards – they need to get a feel for the speed of the game before we judge whether or not they’re going to find their legs or not. “Community” spent half a season trying to make Jeff-Britta work before finally abandoning the pilot’s premise entirely. “Parks and Rec” tried to make Leslie Knope into Michael Scott before they recognized that Amy Poehler’s likability is not a factor worthy of being ignored. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget how tepid the pilot for “The Office” was either.
If you must stock your show with comedy stereotypes (the gay guy, the slut, the interracial couple from vastly different backgrounds), abandon trying to mine those things for stock comedy stories. “Happy Endings” mercifully starting creating stories based on the relationships between the characters after only a few episodes, a lesson “Glee” has still yet to learn. Of course, it helps if the people playing those characters are people like Eliza Coupe, Adam Pally, and Damon Wayans, Jr. Who knew I could ever like a Wayans this much?
This episode, their first of what I hope will be many Halloween episodes, was the first step the show took this season into reviving the stories of the two former leads (Zachary Knighton and Elisha Cuthbert) as ensemble characters, which turned out to be huge success. Freed from the burden of carrying the show, both are starting to recreate their characters into looser, funnier creations with the odd quirks and jagged edges all the best sitcom characters have (Cuthbert has best line from the episode: "Hey guys. Good news! Whatever I have is not from the bird I kissed.").
I couldn't find anything memorable to embed from the episode, so here's the opening of the show this season.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's all opinion, except for number 1.
Also, if anyone chooses to use the comment suggestion to talk about "the golden age of Saturday Night Live" or to explain how it's "not funny anymore like it was when ______ was there," I will climb through the computer screen and throttle you. I don't know how many times that particular argument needs to be trampled before it dies, but we're not there yet and I don't know if we ever will be, unless you really do long for the days when Tina Fey was head writer and we had Mango and The Cheerleaders on every week.
First, a sketch that no one besides me seemed to like, but I was in hysterics all during:
Everyone I saw this with loved it (admittedly, almost all of them were middle schoolers), so I tried to avoid mentioning my disdain. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. I can imagine the conversations I’d have had.
“It’s cute,” someone says. It is, I concede. “I liked the frog,” says another. The frog was funny, I agree. “It’s for the kids,” someone would surely pipe up. You’re right, I’d say, It’s not aimed at me. “Don’t you like Elton John?” someone accuses. No, I like him a lot, I’d say. I always have. Someone who knows me a little better might even hit closer to home. “James MacAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Patrick Stewart, Jason Statham, Stephen Merchant,” they’d say. “Even Ozzy Osbourne’s in this movie. A dream cast for you.” Everything I could ask for, I’d agree. “Then why didn’t you like this movie?” Someone would finally say.
Simple:
This movie is a children’s update of the famous tragedy, with two warring families of decorative garden gnomes living side by side, endlessly sniping at each other across the hydrangeas. Things become heated, plaster wells are spray painted, prize flowers cut, and eventually Tybalt is smashed to pieces against a picket fence (he returns during the closing credits, glued back together, for a dance routine. Because of course he does). The whole thing is awkwardly scored by ill-placed Elton John songs (John's longtime partner is a producer on the project). Things are going according to story, as much as they can, given the circumstances.
Now, if you were to be a movie executive tasked with making a version of Romeo and Juliet for children, what’s the first thing you’d ask? Right, the same thing everyone would ask… “doesn’t everyone die at the end? What are we going to do about that?”
Evidentially the producers had that conversation before making this movie. I’m sure they thought it over for a long time, went back and forth on it, worked at it in every direction, had some real arguments, and finally settled on the solution they end up with:
Gnomeo is thrown into the street, and everyone believes he’s crushed. But instead, it’s just a blue teapot that fell off a passing truck that’s shattered; Gnomeo is still alive. Not long after, Gnomeo finds his way to a nearby park and ends up at a statue of William Shakespeare. They strike up a conversation (really! This happened! In a children’s movie!).
Shakespeare notes that Gnomeo’s story seems awfully similar to a story he once knew, where everyone dies at the end. Gnomeo poo-poos this ending, he even goes so far as to call it “rubbish.” Shakespeare agrees that perhaps another ending might be in order, because, of course, why wouldn’t he?
Having approved his new ending with Shakespeare, Gnomeo heads back to the house, where he’s finally able to reunite with his love and end the feud between the families. I can’t totally remember the details, except that I know it involved lawnmowers.
So yes, if you’re wondering why I didn’t like Gnomeo & Juliet, it’s because Shakespeare arrives to rewrite the ending to make it a happy one. I’m not a literalist, there’s a fair amount I deal with in Shakespeare adaptations. But that one is simply far beyond the pale for me. And if it’s not for you, well then, we probably won’t be friends.
Portlandia - Pilot
