It’s easy to gush over Carrie Brownstein. She co-founded Sleater-Kinney, one of the most beloved indie-rock acts of the late-'90s and early aughts, before forming Wild Flag, one of the most beloved indie-rock acts of last year. She’s a sex symbol for men as well as women, and reading interviews with her, there’s no question that she is intelligent, thoughtful, and down to earth. And there have been many interviews recently. They’re keyed to this past Friday’s return of “Portlandia,” the sketch show she created with Fred Armisen, who seems genuinely smart and nice, too, and claims his own cadre of fans, earned from his years on “Saturday Night Live.” Gushing over Brownstein — and her platonic but interestingly close relationship with Armisen, who she met after he invited her to an “SNL” afterparty, and who, according to the New Yorker, she now exchanges text messages with every night before bedtime — only makes sense, whether you’re a journalist or fan.
But. (You were waiting for the “but.”) There’s a problem with “Portlandia,” in which the duo gently caricature Portland, Oregon (where Brownstein lives), and by extension, the youngish, mostly white, creatively inclined, fashion-conscious, politically engaged, overly-broadly defined category of humans known as hipsters. Or, put more exactly, there’s something wrong with the idea — and it is this idea that underpins both the critical approval greeting the show’s second season, and the general drive to cover it — that by lampooning their hipster lives and hipster audience, Brownstein and Armisen have somehow transcended hipsterdom and created something “strange and beautiful,” “an extended joke about what Freud called the narcissism of small differences.” (Well, maybe the latter is true — sure, the show may explore “the need to distinguish oneself by minute shadings and to insist, with outsized militancy, on the importance of those shadings” — but do we really need to invoke Freud here?)
There is nothing strange or beautiful about spoofing feminist bookstore clerks or locavores, although of course it may be funny. And just because you know lots of feminist bookstore clerks and locavores doesn’t make it daring, either. In fact, “Portlandia” parrots the very same jokes you’ll hear those feminist bookstore clerks and locavores making themselves. Which is why the sketches are actually sometimes chuckle-worthy, but hardly ever memorable — watching them is a little like overhearing a table full of friends joshing one another. The show turns a mirror on a mirror.
If you truly seek the “giddy lunacy” that the New Yorker ascribes to “Portlandia,” may we instead suggest reruns of the genuinely absurd “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” The folly and pratfalls indulged by that show’s band of lovable idiots will keep surprising you. Brownstein and Armisen, meanwhile, will merely nourish your arch self-awareness.
“Portlandia” certainly isn’t the only show made to validate — rather than elevate, pervert, or otherwise render more interesting — its audience’s core values and sense of humor. Many sitcoms do. So too does “The League,” a sketch-inspired FX sitcom that centers around a group of 30-something fantasy football-playing pals, and probably draws more “Portlandia” fans than you’d assume. Watching “The League” is like overhearing a table full of dudes busting each other’s balls. (The group is often shown gathered at a bar.) The jokes, like those in “Portlandia,” ultimately just fold back on themselves. But you’ll actually find that they’re funnier — assuming you can handle the sports references.