Line #106 Series/Portlandia


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/port_4174.PNG]]
2	[[caption-width-right:250:The Dream of the '90s is ALIVE in Portland!]]
3
4	->''"Portland is where young people go to retire."''
5	-->-- '''Jason from L.A.'''
6
7	''Portlandia'' is a sketch comedy show that ran on IFC from 2011 to 2018 starring Creator/FredArmisen and Creator/CarrieBrownstein. It is set in UsefulNotes/{{Portland}}, Oregon and most of its humor comes from mocking the city's {{hipster}} culture, centering around various characters played by Armisen (one-time drummer for PostPunk band [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trenchmouth Trenchmouth]] before becoming a longtime ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' cast member) and Brownstein (writer/singer/guitarist for AlternativeRock band Music/SleaterKinney).
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13	!!Put a Trope on it!:
14	* AffectionateParody: The show is one to Portland, hipsters, and hipster culture in general.
15	* ArcWords: In "Doug Becomes a Feminist", the quote [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Thatcher_Ulrich "Well-behaved women rarely make history"]].
16	* ArchiveBinge: Happens in-universe in "One Moore Episode", when two characters discover ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' and proceed to watch the entire series in a single sitting, without even getting up to go to the bathroom. When they unexpectedly arrive at the end of the series days later, they decide to hunt down showrunner Ronald D. Moore and persuade him to write more episodes.
17	* AsHimself:
18	** While Fred and Carrie generally play strange Portlanders, they also play themselves as people who the mayor of Portland consults about various municipal matters [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} for some reason]].
19	** Aimee Mann plays herself as a down-on-her-luck maid, claiming she has to because the music industry is down.
20	** Everyone plays themselves in the Brunch Special {{mockumentary}}.
21	** Creator/EdwardJamesOlmos and James Callis appear as themselves in "One Moore Episode".
22	** Creator/MattGroening shows up in "Fashion" to sue Spyke over his [[LamePunReaction Bart Ska-mpson]] t-shirts.
23	** Creator/GretaGerwig in "Doug Becomes a Feminist", seeking advice from Toni and Candace on how to play a feminist mermaid.
24	* BigBeautifulMan: The guy Carrie dates while discussing the Portland theme song in episode 2.
25	* BilingualBonus: The Japanese captions in "Aimee".
26	* BourgeoisBohemian: The show's theme is basically Portland's BourgeoisBohemian population.
27	* ButNowIMustGo: The Mayor does this at the end of the series finale.
28	* CallBack:
29	** Expect characters and items from one sketch to randomly show up in another.
30	** The scene with the reviewers at Pitchfork Kids at the end of "Squiggleman" is almost a word-for-word re-enactment of the Pitchfork scene at the end of "Cat Nap".
31	* TheCameo: Quite a few, including:
32	** Creator/SteveBuscemi, of all people, is a hapless customer in the "Women & Women First" bookstore.
33	** Also, James Callis and Creator/EdwardJamesOlmos (not to mention Ronald D. Moore) in the ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' episode.
34	** Creator/TimRobbins plays the arbiter of the brunch line.
35	** [[Series/{{Jackass}} Danger Ehren]] shows up as a biker in one episode.
36	** Musicians cameo with the same regular frequency as actors, though often in very brief, non-speaking roles.
37	* CampStraight: referred to as being "homo-logical"
38	-->"I should be gay, but I'm not"
39	* ChosenConceptionPartner: In season 6, The Mayor reminds Carrie of a deal they'd worked out years before where she'd bear his children if she didn't already have any. Turns out he was prepared for the occasion by keeping a jar of sperm in his office fridge.
40	* CivilizedAnimal: The rats and the mouse in "Zero Rats".
41	* {{Cloudcuckooland}}: Keep Portland Weird indeed. Lampshaded to hell and back in "The Temp", when Fred and Carrie have to show off all of Portland's idiosyncrasies to a temp mayor played by [[Series/{{Roseanne}} Roseanne Barr]].
42	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: The Mayor of Portland (played by Creator/KyleMaclachlan), which isn't surprising given his constituency. Examples include sitting on an exercise ball instead of an office chair, drawing a dog on a Post-It instead of actually taking notes in a meeting, and lending out framed pieces of Native American art. He also clearly carries a grudge against Seattle for overshadowing Portland's BourgeoisBohemian culture.
43	* ClusterFBomb: A season 5 episode featuring Lance and Nina in couples therapy goes out of its way to use the words "shit" and "shitty" as many times as possible in one scene.
44	* ComicallyMissingThePoint:
45	** When Creator/AubreyPlaza walks into Women and Women First in booty shorts, Carrie, offended, asks what happened to her pants. "They're frayed."
46	** Again at Women and Women First, Carrie asks an author about how you're supposed to print and distribute a book, then wonders aloud what Hemingway did. The author's answer? "He killed himself."
47	** Also, when they mean "print and distribute a book," they don't mean "get published." They mean physically printing a book from a printer.
48	* TheComicallySerious: The Women and Women First segments derive most of their comedy from Candace and Toni having a truly absurd level of humorless self-importance.
49	* ContinuityPorn: "Brunch Village" features cameos from tons and tons of side characters, previous guest stars, and extras.
50	** "Nina's Birthday" does this as well, with several different Fred/Carrie characters at the same dinner table all at once.
51	* CringeComedy: a lot of the sketches involve Fred and Carrie acting like crazy people and "normal" people looking baffled.
52	* CrosscastRole: Fred as Candace in the Women & Women First sketches. The Lance & Nina sketches are this for ''both'' Carrie & Fred, as they play a cross-cast couple (complete with Carrie's voice being pitch-shifted to make her sound extra manly).
53	** The first three episodes of Season 5 seem to go out of their way to have fun with this trope. In a flashback in the first episode, Toni & Candace are both seen dressing up as men to get revenge on a sexist boss, making this a Crosscast role in real life ''and'' in-universe for Fred. In the second episode, we meet Lance's mother and her very young boyfriend, played by Justin Long, who looks ''exactly'' like Lance, despite Lance being played by Carrie. In the third episode, Candace shows off her [[FanDisservice "breast"]] to a doctor.
54	* {{Crossover}}: Creator/JohnMulaney and Nick Kroll appear in "Peter Follows Music/{{Pink}}" as their characters from ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oh,_Hello_Show The Oh, Hello Show]]'', George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon.
55	* CultDefector: The two characters accidentally join a cult after visiting the farm that provided their organic chicken. After living there happily for several years, they randomly decide to leave. This is played completely for laughs.
56	* CuteKitten: Indie band the Nap change their name to Cat Nap and add their cat, Kevin, to play a scratch post. They suddenly experience runaway success.
57	* DeathSeeker: In the snail sketch from "Open Relationship", Fred discovers that all snails are apparently this, with the talking snails he meets proclaiming themselves to be "the worst animal". They beg him to kill them, and laugh and cheer when he starts stepping on them.
58	* DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery: Kath and Dave play this trope to the hilt in "TADA", after temporarily losing the ability to walk due to leg injuries sustained during the first few ''yards'' of a marathon they failed to properly train for. They give people hell, both for treating them differently due to their disabilities, and for not treating them differently ''enough''. Then they show up at an ADA meeting and basically bully all of the real, permanently disabled people into listening to their petty concerns.
59	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The mayor of Portland is revealed to secretly be in a reggae band. The press conference on this played out like a sex scandal.
60	--> "Mayor Openly Reggae"
61	* EmbarrassingTattoo: Played with: Carrie dates a man with [[Music/PearlJam Eddie Vedder's]] face tattooed on his left arm; however, she's the one who [[FelonyMisdemeanor can't stand it]], to the point of hallucinating ''the tattoo'' as it talks and sings to her. In the end, it's a deal breaker.
62	** ... and she starts dating [[spoiler: Eddie Vedder himself]]. Who, in turn, has a giant Music/AniDiFranco tattoo on his arm.
63	* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The Mayor of Portland. He is only ever referred to as either "The Mayor" or "Mr. Mayor." A book he wrote is credited to "The Mayor of Portland." When Roseanne Barr takes over his position, she is referred to as "Mrs. Mayor". In the season two finale and resulting special, he doesn't even dare to drop a name. (In the final episode it's revealed his name is Sean.)
64	* EverybodyOwnsAFord: All computers shown are [=MacBooks=], and all phones and tablets are iPhones and iPads. All cars are Subaru Outbacks or Legacies, and any other make has its brand obscured.
65	* FelonyMisdemeanor:
66	** A couple totally loses their shit over someone tying their dog up outside a restaurant in "A Song for Portland".
67	** Jack [=McBrayer=] gets grilled by a cashier and manager for not bringing a reusable bag to a grocery store.
68	* FinaleSeason: Season 8, which brought back some favorite guest stars and had some farewell segments for some of the characters.
69	* ForInconveniencePressOne: Any time characters walk into a place of business and the employee who helps them is played by Kumail Nanjiani, expect him to be the walking embodiment of this trope. He will go through every single option available to the customer, in excruciating detail, whether they like it or not.
70	* {{Foreshadowing}} / BrickJoke: Once Fred and Carrie finish their ''Battlestar Galactica'' binge, they decide to push Ronald Moore into writing another episode of the show. When they look him up in the phone book, they are vocally surprised that he (actually just another man with the name Ronald Moore) just happens to live fairly close by. It sounds like they're just LampshadeHanging until the end of the episode where they hold a cold reading for the script of their new BSG episode, and one of the performers is "a local actor" [[spoiler:who is actually played by the REAL Ronald Moore]].
71	* TheFunInFuneral: Carrie visits the grave of a man she just committed manslaughter against and dances around singing to Fred over the phone.
72	* FurryFemaleMane: The female rat, Carrie has a full head of hair, but so does Fred the male rat.
73	* TheGayNineties: "Cops Redesign" opens with a redux of "The Dream of the '90s", except, well...you know. Carrie mistakenly [[TheFlapper dresses in a red slip and does the Charleston]].
74	* GradeSchoolCEO: A tween-aged girl is discovered to be running MTV when Spike and several former MTV hosts invade their New York office to take back the network.
75	* GranolaGirl: Carrie (and Fred, sometimes) plays one every now and again.
76	* GrowingUpSucks: Fred and Carrie both realize they have transitioned out of young adulthood to middle age in "Going Gray". Fred can't even remember for sure how old he is, and is shocked to discover that he's in his 40s.
77	* HappyPlace: Sparkle Pony tunes out when meanies are talking, and goes to a magical forest where she wears pretty clothes and pets... a pony.
78	* HereWeGoAgain: Twice in "One Moore Episode":
79	** Carrie is turned off by a guy with an [[Music/PearlJam Eddie Vedder]] tattoo, and starts dating Eddie Vedder, who has an [[spoiler:Music/AniDiFranco tattoo]].
80	** In a convoluted fashion, a ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica\|2003}}'' marathon (which ruins their lives) leads to a ''Series/DoctorWho'' marathon.
81	* {{Hipster}}
82	* HiveMindTestimonial: {{Parodied}}. The city's reduced its unemployment rate by paying people to say individual syllables in inspirational commercials.
83	* HowWeGotHere: The main plot of "Off the Grid" begins with the mayor of Portland, heavily bearded and living on a farm, before flashing back to several weeks ago to explain why he left the city.
84	* HypocriticalHumor: The couple mentioned above in "FelonyMisdemeanor" tied their ''child'' to a pole down the street.
85	* ICantBelieveItsNotHeroin: Peter's attempt to give up pasta for health reasons in "Winter in Portlandia".
86	* ImStandingRightHere: "Okay, this guy's got a really weird neck. Don't say anything about it, but compliment it. ''Ooh, you have a neck like a movie star!''"
87	* InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals: In season 6's "Shville", we learn that the mayor of Austin, Texas looks and sounds exactly like the mayor of Portland, except he has a drawl, a huge mustache, and wears a cowboy hat.
88	* {{Jerkass}}: Many characters on the show qualify, whether from actual malevolence or sheer self-absorption. A good example is the collective of baristas which create the Barista Manifesto, who are elitist, rude and paranoid even amongst each other.
89	* LarynxDissonance: Occasionally Fred and/or Carrie's voices are pitched for a role.
90	* LaserGuidedKarma: Happens to Fred and Carrie in "Family Emergency", when they catch Creator/LouisCK lying about a family emergency to get out of doing stand-up at a show they had tickets for. They blackmail him into hanging out with them, which he finds quite annoying because they expect him to be in his comedian persona the entire time, with Fred even going so far as to suggest jokes that Louis quickly shoots down as unimaginative and funny. Fred and Carrie then use the same "family emergency" excuse to get out of attending the opening of a friend's vape store. Through a series of events and mishaps, Louis ends up playing a gig at the store opening that Fred and Carrie are not invited to, and during which Louis steals Fred's unfunny jokes and the crowd eats them up.
91	* LeFilmArtistique: The "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" sketch riffs on said film as one. Made doubly funny by the fact the sketch uses a lot of themes and techniques from the film it's referring to.
92	** And in the third season, there's an extended shout-out to ''Film/JulesAndJim'', pitched in such a way that only film nerds will get it.
93	** In "Doug Becomes a Feminist", the film ''Mermaid Springa'' is a live-action, DarkerAndEdgier feminist-themed riff on ''WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989''.
94	* {{Leitmotif}}: Women and Women First sketches always open with a flute melody.
95	* LethalChef: A couple in "Aimee" dumpster dive...for food.
96	** Actually a case of RealityIsUnrealistic: This mocks an actual dietary/political movement, freeganism.
97	* LetsMeetTheMeat: The main plot of the show's first episode, "Farm", is kicked off when a couple eating at a restaurant wants assurance that the chicken they're about to eat is organic and was raised humanely, resulting in a visit to the chicken farm. Right in the middle of their dinner date. [[ItMakesSenseInContext Which results in them joining a cult for several years.]]
98	* LoonyFan: Gathy (Kristen Wiig), a fan of [=CatNap=], who is terrified of bands she likes getting famous and "leaving" her. They eventually deal with her by [[spoiler:incorporating her into the band and changing the name of the band to "Catnapped"]].
99	* MagicalNativeAmerican: One shows up in Dave's dream representing the coyotes he and Kath had been yelling at to stop killing neighborhood cats
100	* ManicPixieDreamGirl: Alexandra, Fred and Carrie's roommate is an odd example. When you're already living in deepest {{Cloudcuckooland}} (i.e. Portland), a manic pixie dream girl is the kind of person who coincidentally does things from odd art movements and avant-garde music without knowing about the context, or throws away glass bottles because she thinks that homeless Chinese people will steal them if you leave them with the recycling. Also, in a bit of a subversion, Fred and Carrie are surprised to learn they're significantly more culturally literate than she is.
101	** Arguably a case of InvertedTrope. The "homeless people stealing bottles" thing is actually a fairly common complaint in states with a bottle deposit law (such as Oregon).
102	* MediumBlending: "Cops Redesign" and "The Temp" feature shifts to stop motion for sketches about rats in a supermarket.
103	** The rats even get ADayInTheLimelight in "No-Fo-O-Fo-Bridge".
104	* {{Mockumentary}}: The Brunch Special is a slightly longer version of "Brunch Village" with a fake making-of feature tacked onto the end.
105	%%* MouseWorld: The rats.
106	* MundaneMadeAwesome:
107	** Lots of examples, most notably the Portland Adult Hide-and-Seek League, and the man who "truly won", because he's been hiding since 1979.
108	** In "One Moore Episode", where there's tons of pumping music for, among other things, Ronald D. Moore's ([[RunningGag not that one]]) wife coming home.
109	** "Cool Wedding" features Carrie dropping her [=iPhone=] in slow motion with a ReallyDeadMontage.
110	** Later on in "Cool Wedding", Carrie puts off watching ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'' as sped-up sunsets with a DroneOfDread denote the passing days.
111	** "You Can Call Me Al" ends with a climactic karaoke performance of [[NationalAnthem "The Star-Spangled Banner"]].
112	* MuppetCameo: [[Series/SesameStreet Oscar The Grouch]] makes a cameo during season 5.
113	* NewscasterCameo: Pat Boyle. She's an actual Portland-area broadcaster and shows up whenever they want to depict a TV interviewer.
114	* TheNineties: As the opening song notes, Portland is where the "Dream of the '90s" is still alive" as a reality.
115	* NoNameGiven: The Mayor, until the final episode, where [[spoiler:he reveals his first name is Shaun]].
116	* ObstructiveBureaucrat
117	** Women and Women First. The shopkeepers refuse to remove books from shelves for customers, are against alphabetizing the books on the shelves, and so on.
118	*** In their first appearance they ''locked a customer in the store'' while going to the bank to get $3 in change, discussing whether it might be a good idea to keep some in the store...
119	** A man calls the DMV to ask for a replacement title on his car. The operator tells him that he'll have to be transferred; when the operator finds out that the transfer won't be back in for another hour, he tells the caller that it'll only be a moment. [[spoiler:The caller eventually gets a ''letter'' in the mail that no, they can't replace his title.]]
120	** Later subverted in the sketch "DMV Fairytales", when an exceedingly crappy day keeps Carrie from making it to a DMV appointment on time. This trope is expected when she shows up at the DMV after closing, but then it turns out an employee stayed open just for her and wants to soothe her nerves and hear all about how her day went.
121	* OffscreenTeleportation: The giant box that previously contained a very small sex toy.
122	* OneDialogueTwoConversations: In "4th Of July", The Mayor thinks Mr. Bacon is selling fireworks, while Mr. Bacon thinks The Mayor wants to buy weapons for a terrorist attack.
123	* OneHourWorkWeek: Enforced by Toni and Candace, who are lazy and unhelpful to customers so that they can do as little work as possible to keep their bookstore open.
124	* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: The film ''Mermaid Springa'' stars Creator/GretaGerwig as Militant, a young mermaid who goes to spend time on dry land and turns into a [[GirlsWithGuns gun-toting]] [[TheStoner stoner]] [[{{UsefulNotes/Feminism}} feminist]].
125	* OvercomplicatedMenuOrder: The series includes a sketch in which a starving couple wander into an overly gourmet burger joint and are exhausted by the barrage of options they're forced to navigate just to order a simple burger. They're then forced to start over because the menu changed while they were ordering.
126	** There's also the "Order Grill" sketch, where the entire restaurant is designed around the experience of placing an order, in as convoluted a manner as possible.
127	* OverlyLongGag: "Sacajawea...Sacajawea...Sacajawea..."
128	** Also any time Peter stutters in the middle of a sentence. "And - and - and - and - " [[{{Beat}} long beat]] " - and - and..."
129	** [[SafeWord Cacao]]
130	* OverlyNarrowSuperlative: The city recently won the award for "Best Official Website for cities with populations under 700,000 in the Pacific Northwest area". Especially since there are no cities that big in the northwestern U.S. (It is implied to specifically exclude Seattle, the only city with a population close to that and which the mayor has a grudge against.)
131	* ParodyCommercial: Since it's sketch comedy, this is often played straight with commercials for local Portland shops, goods, or services.
132	** Ads for the Portland Milk Advisory Board become a OnceAnEpisode RunningGag in Season 3. They tend to show up in the ''middle'' of actual commercial breaks.
133	** And then the trope is inverted by an ad for Geico, frequently aired during the show, that is disguised as a Portlandia sketch taking place at the organic restaurant shown in the pilot episode. (Which makes things tricky if you've DVR'd the show and are inclined to skip ads.)
134	** One of these becomes a plot point in "Pull-Out King", where Jeff Goldblum does a rather uncanny parody of a ''real'' KitschyLocalCommercial, selling pull-out beds and declaring "I ''am'' the king." Lance, who is the self-proclaimed "pull-out king" [[ButICantBePregnant for other reasons]], is offended at someone else appropriating the title.
135	* PlatonicLifePartners: Fred and Carrie, both [[AsHimself as their characters]] and in real life.
136	** [[spoiler:Well, until Season 6, when they decide to have sex. It doesn't take.]]
137	* PointyHairedBoss: Royce from the Portland Milk Bureau, who is obviously less competent than his underling Alicia. [[spoiler:Eventually Alicia takes over his job and he is demoted.]]
138	%%* PoliticalOvercorrectness: A very frequent joke.
139	* {{Polyamory}}: Fred and Carrie briefly simultaneously date their roommate Alexandra. After she breaks up with Carrie, Fred feels uncomfortable dating someone who broke his best friend's heart, and eventually breaks up with Alexandra too.
140	* {{Pyromaniac}}: Candace, Fred's character at the Women and Women First bookstore, seems to be fond of solving problems by dousing them in gasoline.
141	* QuirkyTown: The entire point of the show. (To the extent that there is a point at all.)
142	* RealLifeWritesThePlot: In Other Words, the Portland feminist bookstore where the Women and Women First sketches were filmed, announced that they wouldn't allow the show in their store anymore after season 6, because of what they felt was its mockery of feminism, and a financial dispute over how much the store was getting paid by the producers. As a result, season 7 saw Candace and Toni closing the store (which is set to become a [=GameStop=]) and going into retirement.
143	* RealSongThemeTune: "Feel It All Around" by Washed Out.
144	* RealityIsUnrealistic: People are often surprised to discover that the show is actually ''not'' exaggerating certain political movements and situations very much. Much of the political content espoused by Fred Armisen's "cyclist" character, for example, is actually part of the "cyclist's rights" platform.
145	* RevisitingTheRoots: After seasons 5 and 6 saw the show focus more on character-driven humor (with a few single-storyline episodes), season 7 went back to the sketch-driven, satirical style of the early years.
146	* RhymingWithItself: Fred rhymes "right" with "right" in "A Song for Portland".
147	* RunningGag: Birds on things.
148	* SafeWord: Cacao. Gets abused until Nina[[note]]female!Fred[[/note]] texts it to Lance[[note]]male!Carrie[[/note]] despite the two not even being in the same place at the time.
149	* SanitySlippage: Carrie as she watches ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari''.
150	* SellOut: In "First Feminist City", Women & Women First becomes a tourist attraction due to Portland's reputation as a mecca for feminism. This causes a huge clash between Toni and Candace when Candace leaves the store to help promote a feminist "superstore" being built to capitalize on the trend.
151	* SeriousBusiness: At least half the humor is about somebody taking something too seriously. For example, in "The Temp" one member of a hippie conclave decides to get a gym membership. When the others discover this, they act as if he died.
152	* SeverelySpecializedStore: The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Two Girls, Two Shirts]] shop.
153	** Femimart, the feminist superstore.
154	* SleepingSingle: Fred and Carrie do this.
155	* ShoutOut:
156	** During the "Over" sketch, one of the albums visible in the record store is Music/SleaterKinney's ''Dig Me Out''.
157	** "One Moore Episode" has a plot about Fred and Carrie watching ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' and trying to get more episodes written.
158	** There's a send-up of WesternAnimation/PorkyPig's "That's All, Folks!" in "One Moore Episode".
159	** ''Also'' in "One Moore Episode", Carrie watches ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'' and experiences SanitySlippage as the camera angle tilts and the visual goes black-and-white.
160	** The "Take Back MTV Charity Ball" scene name-drops all of the foundations that support NPR programming, including a Finnish guy whose name sounds like "Viewers Like You"
161	** Carrie and Fred's bedroom is laid out exactly like [[Series/SesameStreet Bert and Ernie's]], right down to the monogrammed headboards.
162	* ShownTheirWork: The show gets all the stereotypes right, down to neighborhoods and individual streets.
163	** The Brunch Village mockumentary, ostensibly devoted to this trope, takes the concept to ludicrous extremes.
164	* SketchComedy
165	* StopCopyingMe: The stripper sketch in "Aimee".
166	* StrawFeminist: The owners of "Women and Women First". One has problems with pointing because "every time she sees it, she sees a penis."
167	* TakeThatMe: Carrie Brownstein isn't shy about poking fun at her indie rock roots. Carrie is also a feminist in real life (belonging to the band, Sleater-Kinney, which was part of the feminist 'riot grrrl' movement) but routinely makes fun of the more militant wing of feminism in the 'Women and Women First' sketches.
168	* TerribleIntervieweesMontage: {{Inverted}} in that Fred and Carrie are terrible interviewers, but all the baseball team member candidates seem adequate enough.
169	* TheyStoleOurAct: Happens to Dave and Kath at the karaoke party in "You Can Call Me Al".
170	* TrashcanBonfire: In "Brunch Village", these are present in the sketchy neighborhood Carrie ends up in after getting sent to the back of the line.
171	* TwoPartEpisode: "Going Gray" and "Shville" in season 6.
172	* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Creator/KirstenDunst's character in "Sharing Finances" seems completely unbothered by her own corpse despite the fact that she's been a ghost for all of about 5 seconds. Possibly justified: as Terry Pratchett points out in his books, the fact that one is separated from the body and glands makes one much more serene about everything.
173	* ViewersAreGeniuses: The show isn't shy about tossing it everything from extended references to classic films to depicting political movements more or less accurately.
174	* YouDirtyRat: Averted with the the stop-motion animated rats.
175
176	----
177	-->''Keep Portland Weird!"''

Context Series / Portlandia