Portlandia: Farm

Portlandia: Farm
IFC
January 11, 2011
Sketch Comedy
DVD
B+

Regular cast:

• Leads Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein as Various Characters
• Ellen Bloodworth, here the reality-checking Old Lady
• Dana Millican as Dana the Waitress here, other roles later

Also M'chel Bauxal is one of the Sister Wives here and would have two other roles later.  Edward Stiner would again play a nameless Old Man, Nicholas Kim again a nameless Young Man.  Mikey Kampmann is a Seeker here and would have roles on four other episodes.  The relatively big names are of course Steve Buscemi, who is the Book Store Customer here (although he doesn't technically buy anything) but would play four other parts; and Jason Sudeikis, who's Aliki here but would be Kim later.

For the first several minutes, I was alternately grinning and giggling at all the on-target West Coast jokes, especially the "Dream of the '90s" video.  The episode couldn't sustain that but I do feel like this is perhaps the funniest show I've watched so far in this project.  I did catch on remarkably slowly that it was sketch comedy rather than a sitcom, because there are threads that appear in more than one scene, but it was not, as I initially thought, about the couple in the opening scene moving to Portland and having various misadventures, but rather various characters having misadventures.  I could see the show turning sour or stale, but I can also see why it ran for eight seasons.  I'm curious to see where it heads next.

Jonathan Krisel directed and co-wrote with Armisen, Brownstein, and Allison Silverman.