Portlandia, Season 5, Episode 4: Free Fred and Carrie

The Peeves: Animal rights activism, goths, taxidermy, San Diego, timeshares, shitty YouTube conspiracy videos, picking people up at the airport.

Put a Cap on It: After messing around with two episodes that stuck with one story arc, and a third that slapped together a bunch of subpar sketches that all had to do with, uh, healthcare (which ran, by total coincidence, I'm sure, exactly three weeks and one day before ACA open enrollment ends #thanksobama #cointelpro), Fred and Carrie are back doing what they've done for the last four seasons: writing sketches.

Much like previous seasons, there's one thread that intersects with smaller bits throughout the episode. A group of activists wants to help the whales, but Antarctica (uh...where the only whales are, I guess?) is too cold and far away. So they go to San Diego—"not only is there great protesting, there's the fish tacos, there's the walkable neighborhoods, there's the Gaslamp District," says Carrie—to try and rescue whales from SeaWorld. But San Diego, full of sun and delicious fish tacos, proves too tantalizing a playground for them to actually get around to being activists. When they almost get suckered into buying a timeshare from SeaWorld's Jeff Goldblum, they realize it's time to get down to business. They eventually get to SeaWorld, where Natasha Lyonne (from Orange is the New Black) works, but they didn't bring their whale-stealing gear. So they steal a fish instead.

Meanwhile:

1. Shocking Art Supply offers Banksy-worshipping students deals on pre-smashed TVs and riot cop stencils, as demo'd by Shepard Fairey.
2. A goth couple writes their will. “It's fun thinking about death,” they say. “I would like my body dragged out to a dimly lit field by jackals and left there to rot,” says Carrie about her funeral service. They audition people to shriek at Fred's.
3. Carrie needs to be picked up from the airport. Flashback to three days earlier, when she and Fred are planning said pickup, with a scale model of the airport. Flash forward: they're there, but Fred's getting hassled by a transport cop. So he poses as his own twin brother or something?
4. Bryce Shivers (Fred) and Lisa Eversman (Carrie)—from “Put a Bird On It”—have a new venture. It's called Dead Pets and it sells taxidermied animals. “It's just to let people to know you are definitely counterculture, definitely interesting, a little on the darker side,” says Bryce of their stuffed bat.
5. The mayor (Kyle Machlachlan) doesn't want to leave office without having a scandal. So he hires Fred and Carrie to make a conspiracy video about him on YouTube. It begins with a quote: “Behind the eyes of those in power lies the questions that go unanswered,” attributed to “Unknown.” Then they just decide to make a postcard instead, of the mayor's winking head photoshopped onto a dead French soldier's body, so he seems ageless.

Best Bits: There are a lot of laugh-out-loud (the kind where you're actually laughing, not just typing "lol" because your friend g-chatted something amusing) moments in this episode. But the winner has to be Fairey holding up a doll's head and body for the Shocking Art Supply ad. "That's a radical juxtaposition," he says. "The butt is in the front," replies Carrie. It's memorable, it's simple, and it's a sick burn on half-assed art that takes itself way too seriously.

Duds: While the rest of the episode feels carefully crafted—scenes dig out the irritating and weird and then needle them further to figure out what's so annoying about them—the airport sketch feels lazy. Yes, driving around in circles is annoying, but there are so many absurd directions in which the show could have taken this—driving around for days, a la the Battlestar Galactica bit, and getting arrested for it, a la the party skit—that the “secret mission” vibe ends up feeling like, well, half-assed art.

Deep Cuts: Yes, the airport is PDX, but you wouldn't know it because they don't do any close-ups of the carpet. Sike! Of course you would, because you've done thousands of laps past the escalator that Carrie runs down, waiting for your fucking bag to show up on the carousel, while trying not to run into those assholes who stop randomly just to Instagram their goddamn feet. I'm not sure if Fred and Carrie missed an opportunity by not spoofing the carpet fans or if it was a wise move not to acknowledge them. Either way, I'm glad it's gone. I'd happily destroy more pieces of my childhood if it meant less self-congratulatory bullshit.

Grade: A. By switching back to shorter sketches, Fred and Carrie have breathed some real vitality into the show. With things moving faster, they can fit in more jokes. They've also picked good topics: aging goths and taxidermy's comeback feel like fresh territory. This episode even manages to slip in some biting social commentary, a first for the show. Though Portlandia is ostensibly about social trends, its criticism rarely slips past the level of "ha, this is stupid." But when activist Benji (Fred) almost signs a lease with SeaWorld just because he loves San Diego so much, he says, "I got lured in by the tacos and the jet skis and the margaritas and everything, but it's a trap." It's a fitting metaphor for young progressives living in a hip city. Follow your pleasures too far, and you eventually end up in the servitude of the entities you say you hate: giant tax-dodging corporations, homogenous condos, racial and economic segregation. And really: Swap tacos, jet skis and margaritas out for food carts, bikes and craft beer, and he's talking about Portland.

Somebody check Satan's thermometer. Portlandia just got political.

WWeek 2015