‘PORTLANDIA,’
Hipster send-up ends 8-season run
Do we have to say goodbye?
So many TV series wear out their welcomes. So many shows spin about with nothing new to say. (Yes, I'm looking at you, every NBC show by Dick Wolf.)
Then there's “Portlandia,” the utterly charming comedy wrapping Thursday after eight seasons on IFC.
The show gently poked fun at hipster life in Portland, Ore., and the obsessions that we all fall prey to sometimes, whether it's the new restaurant down the street, going viral on social media or just hunting down a missing garbage can through the city.
Creators, stars, executive producers and writers Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein played most of the roles. (They probably did the catering under assumed names.)
Oddly, the show broke through virally with two skits about TV itself.
A 2012 segment parodied our then-new obsession with bingeing TV with Doug (Armisen) and Claire (Brownstein) becoming addicted to “Battlestar Galactica,” to the point where everything they hold dear is jeopardized.
“So I lost my job,” Claire says, ending a call.
“One more episode?” Doug offers sympathetically. “Yeah!” Claire replies. In another classic, from 2013, two couples try to figure out what TV show they can possibly talk about given all the anxiety about spoilers. “Michael C. Hall in the van?”
But my favorite episode, one that I rewatch every few months, is the fifth season opener from 2015 that explores the origin of Toni (Brownstein) and Candace's (Armisen) friendship.
The feminist book store owners were actually high-powered publishing executives in 1991 New York who were pitted against one another for head of the “chick lit” division.
What followed was an epic war of backstabbing, a dance battle, a seduction, a betrayal and the two banding forces and leaving their sexist boss out at sea. It is also, remarkably, a story even more relevant in this Time's Up era.
In Thursday's finale, “Rose Route,” Carrie and Fred decide to run a marathon — despite their aversion to any physical exertion — and end up sharing a moment that made this viewer melt a bit.
Candace welcomes a house guest and explains her philosophy of life.
“If I didn't carry so much hate in my heart for humanity, I'd be dead,” she says. “It gives me a reason to wake up.”
The mayor (Kyle MacLachlan) will go to any ends to make certain the race course will be designed in the shape of a perfect rose.
There might be just a bit more whimsy here, and perhaps befitting frequent guest star MacLachlan and his more famous gig, it's easy to imagine part of this episode as an outtake of “Twin Peaks” — if it were shot by Pixar for secondgraders.
“There's no going back, you know,” one character says.
For once, “Portlandia” lies. We'll always have our DVDs, episodes to stream and YouTube clips.
And the reboot in a few years. IFC won't be able to deny the cries for “one more episode” forever.