No One Just Sits On The Toilet

This week's Portlandia did sketches that included a band, a clothing shop, that women's bookstore, and jewelry making.

I liked the opening sketch called, "2 girls, 2 shirts."  OMG.  That's totally a store in Japan.  It would be like a very open space with a few items to buy that are cute and all but freaking expensive.  It made me wonder how they were able to stay open.  I liked that the store in this sketch actually closed, but another ridiculous owner took its place.

I generally like the women's bookstore sketches.  Those 2 girls are really opinionated and crazy.  The best part this time was the serious, dramatic music when the intern dares to say that vodka is fun.  How dare she.  As soon as she says "no vodka," the music gets light again and all is well.  Ha.

Bicycle movers??  Oh, God.  That has to be the worst idea ever unless you are a 6 year-old relocating your stuff to another tree house down the street.  I'm actually impressed in that sketch that the movers didn't break more stuff than they did.  And they actually brought it almost to the house.  They got the address wrong, but it was close enough that they could see the right house from the wrong one.  With movers using bicycles, I say that's a triumph.

You gotta love Kristen Wiig making a guest appearance.  I didn't care for the Catnap concept, but I liked that she was an obsessed fan and kept them prisoner.  The best of that sketch was when Gathy (horrible name) tells them that she can't read while sitting on the toilet, but has to do something to keep herself busy (like making these hairy-looking donuts??).  The notion that someone just sits there is incomprehensible to her:

[Gathy] Who just sits there? 

[Gil] Many people sit there.

[Gathy] I don't think so. 

[Gil] I do think so.

Gathy then gives him the death glare and he apologizes.  Love it.

I wonder who else will show up on Portlandia.  They have had some pretty good guest stars so far.

The Dream Is Alive Again, But Isn't So Funny

OK, I totally thought that I was watching the 1st episode of Portlandia again when I started watching the 5th episode of their 2nd season.  They were doing that "Dream is Alive" thing again, but this time it was the 1890s, not the 1990s.  It wasn't as funny as the 1990s one, but I appreciated the running gag.

I'll probably say this more than once, but gotta love that opening theme song!  I had to turn that into a ringtone--it's so catchy.

In this episode they did a scene with stop motion animation for the first time.  It was cuter than it was funny.  The idea of a zero-packaging grocery store, though, sounds disgusting.  And wasteful.  Anything that you didn't sell that day would probably not be good to sell another day.  But I can see how environment-conscious people would want less plastic and paper used to protect their food.  I just got a bag of crackers where the plastic bag opens to give you individual bags of 2 crackers.  If you want to eat more than 2 crackers at a time, you are going to have a lot of wrappers sitting beside you.

My favorite quote of this episode was the pushy father at a preschool library who stands up with his opinion:

Sorry to interrupt, but I'm also not sorry to interrupt.

I usually have like one favorite sketch in the whole episode, while the others are just OK.  I won't laugh out loud, but my brain understands that what is going on is clever and entertaining.  I don't think this time that I had a favorite, but that line I quoted above made me chuckle.  Portlandia is a very interesting show, but it has a lot of hit or miss jokes.  And unfortunately this episode was mostly misses for me.  I do look forward to the next one because you just don't know what Fred and Carrie are going to throw at you in the next one.  Being a fan of sketch comedy from my days of All That and Saturday Night Live as a kid, I'll pray that that Portlandia keeps up the momentum and is around for many more weeks.