Fred Armisen

Armisen stars in and produces Portlandia, a comedy sketch show also staring Carrie Brownstein, two individuals certifiably out of their cotton-picking minds. They put on wigs and various costumes and inhabit alternate personalities and sexes. They describe Portland Oregon as a sort of hippie heaven where ordinary citizens are political extremists and arrested in the 1890's, not the 1990s.  It is heavily music-oriented. A number of sketches are based on a broad knowledge of music. They're big on dropping names of bands, individuals within bands, feminine activists, pop culture names, artists, movies and television shows.

Armisen has his own comedy special on Netflix, Fred Armisen: Standup For Drummers in which he pulls down a map of the United States and holding a pointer taps Maine and delivers a short dialogue in common area accent, then Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, various boroughs point for point across the entire country (Except Colorado and Nebraska) accent for accent, truly, a breathtaking linguistic sweep. (He also speaks Spanish and ASL) One wonders how it's possible to discern all the minute differences. He blows away the whole audience who recognize the accents.

He has various drum kits set up across the stage, the area in front of the stage, and among the front audience replicating the various drum kit setups common in bands through the decades. He teaches his audience which elements were introduced in each decade and the percussive sounds the setups produced, high hats, specific cymbals, brushes, snares, rack toms, pedals, standard electronic kit that he learned on. His audience is amazed hearing this specific portion lifted from the music they had been listening to for decades. Moving drum kit to drum kit, he imparts a very great deal of education in a tremendously expansive and entertaining way.

And these two things give us a glimpse to the method behind his madness.

In Portlandia, he is simply insane.

I'm hooked on this series. It's on basically as background so most of it is actually missed. I'm on second viewing and entire seasons seem brand new. Both Armisen and Brownstein are insanely talented. It took me a bit of getting used to their style. They skewer the mentality of Portland liberals by inhabiting the personalities to extreme. So much is annoying, while the humor lies in the ridiculous annoyance and its depiction to the point of not working. In a way, their successful characterization of, say, extreme feminists resolutely not making sense, comes from their love for the characters they create. Their feminists models, Toni and Candice, are particularly acute. So are their sex reversals, Nina and Lance.

In one of the later season's episodes Nina and Lance are in couple therapy discovering why Lance is so strongly against marriage. Brownstein plays Lance and Armisen plays Nina, two extremes of feminine and masculine prototypes. Lance's mother was married five times. That is the basis of Lance's unease. His mother has a new boyfriend, a real man, exactly like Lance. Taller, deeper voice, the new character could be Lance's prototype. At length they agree to get married. But neither one knows how to go about proposing in a unique way. They hire a Portland company, the principals played by themselves, who design a spectacular proposal to be recorded. You think you can predict where this proposal is headed based on all that you've seen on television, but I must say, they surprised me so delightfully that I cracked up laughing. But their ending is not their ending, they show the therapist viewing the recorded proposal and concluding, "These people have a real problem with logic."

Here's the thing. In one episode the joke is people who cannot stand to hear entertainment spoilers. The whole joke is conversation being impossible with such people. They want to discuss entertainment but each person in their four-person confab keeps stopping all the others. They stick their fingers in their ears, they make quacking noises to drown out each other's speaking. The whole discussion is a disaster. But in their discussion they talk about all kind of popular entertainment that you've never heard of. One such was The Wire. Armisen's character says, "Are you telling me that a kid kills Omar?"

I opened YouTube and searched, [the wire, kid kills Omar] and watched the scene. That did not convince me to watch The Wire. Then I read the comments to the scene and how blown away viewers are by the reality of this show and their reaction to this scene. I found the show on Amazon Prime. Watched the first episode. The whole thing is horribly depressing. It depicts drug addled projects and cops who work that scene. The show is dreary and hopeless, darkness among the police structure, gloom among the projects, nearly post apocalyptical, nothing but darkness and dread and drugs and poverty with no hope of advancement or escape. Even cops are at each other's throats. You know in advance that the characters you like will be killed. The show is so mean, so low, and so grating, so  nerve-racking and spiritually weighted that a quick trip back to Portlandia is needed for remedy. The contrast between these to successful shows is absolute.

Portlandia is uneven. Obviously some skits are more successful than others. As they go, they develop a real knack for production, for music, and character development. One skit a taxidermist business stuffs pets. A group of activists burns down their business. The wrong weirdos are picked up and prosecuted. During the trial the guilty activist group sings as a band on a rooftop and claims responsibility. They attract a crowd and make a hasty escape. A few members are caught while other make hair-raising escapes. They tenderly bury the stuffed animals they stole, praying over their souls. But I laugh still, at the picture of Brownstein in aqua blue wig and pastel pink lipstick talking to the cop who stopped their car. She is truly a doll. A very weirdly beautiful girl. Brownstein is woman of a thousand faces.

Slideshow of videos, Portlandia recurring characters, all Armisen and Brownstein.