If you weren’t aware of Portlandia in 2011, consider it the best new thing you’ll hear about in 2012.

The show features Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein in a series of vignettes of characters you might typically encounter in Portland, Oregon.

You may be wanting to hear more about why I think Portlandia is better than SNL, and if I feel insecure in writing that since Lorne Michaels and Fred Armisen are involved with SNL right now, too. And while I could get into details about how SNL is more for the masses while Portlandia is a finer niche for the clever minds of this world… mostly I’m going to defend it on the fact that it made me snort (not a girly snort like Cameron Diaz or Anna Farris give in movies, a real damn snort) the first time I watched it. And SNL hasn’t made me literally laugh out loud in almost a year.

Consider Portlandia if you are a fan of: Community (NBC), 30 Rock (NBC), Parks and Recreation (NBC), The League (FX), Arrested Development (Fox), Party Down (Starz), Weeds (Showtime), dissecting Homeland (Showtime)  Ass Cat, Upright Citizens Brigade, books by Mindy Kaling, sad hipster architecture, LiveJournal before 2003, everything Tina Fey including the fake Tina Fey twitter account, Paper Magazine, Paste Mag, The Believer, Jezebel, Zooey Deschanel, Overheard In the Office, Aziz Ansari, Danny Pudi, Aubrey Plaza, Amy Poehler, Christina Applegate, Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Hello Giggles website, Stuff White People like website, Single Girl Problems, Rich White Girl Problems, White People Problems website, McSweeney’s, The Etsy inspired site Regretsy, Urban Outfitters winter apparel, just the jewelry at H&M if you lie about where you got it, everything you can’t afford at Anthropologie, the idea of shopping at Goodwill without doing it,  NPR, Podcasts about NPR, pickling, birds, the Garden State era Zach Braff blog 80% more than Zach Braff’s twitter, secretly loving how Katy Perry songs make you feel like Beyonce, Portland, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Johns and the few serious Jim Carrey movies out there.

Or making fun of or hating everything up there, and substituting your own random list of “because this is even more obscure and cool” stuff.

Portlandia airs on IFC. The new season of “Portlandia” airs on IFC on Fridays at 10/9c. Check it out via clips on Hulu. Buy the damn thing on Amazon Instant Video or DVD or Blu Ray.

Trivia: This post started out as a tweet that was going to read simply “Portlandia > SNL”
Trivia # 2: Later @ThisJessicaRae tweeted, “Writing a piece for .@ssscoop about why .@ifcportlandia is the best thing you almost selfishly don’t want to tell anyone else about.” She then went on to write this so that everyone she knows would discover it. She has conflicted feelings on this.

Subscribe to Small Screen Scoop because it’s free and you haven’t made nearly enough people happy today.

Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,