After spending the weekend recovering from last Thursday's star-studded Portlandia premiere party at theAmerican Museum of Natural History, we finally sat down to watch the firstepisode of the sketch comedy revue's second season (You can watch the episodein repeats on IFC this week, view it OnDemand, download it for $2.99 on iTunesor illegally torrent it, if you're a jerk).

The season premiere offered up seven sketches, nearly all ofwhich hit. The cold open sketch, "We Can Pickle That"  (which has its own website) featured an extra-random(and brief) cameo from Jackass co-star(and apparently a Portland resident) "Danger" Ehren McGhehey. The sketch's subject wasbread-and-butter territory for Carrie and Fred: It's skewers a small facet ofcurrent hipster culture. As the New Yorker profile on Brownstein and Armisen noted, on-set there it was difficult to tell where the show ended and where reality began. "We Can Pickle That" definitely hit home for anyone who has home-brewed, run a bakery out of his kitchen, purchased artisinal bourbon or, yes, got into pickling things. 

The episode's title sketch, "Mixology," guest-starred anextremely silly Andy Samberg as a mixologist who mixes a specialdrink just for Carrie.  Andy explains that thecocktail is, "a ginger-based bourbon drink infused with honey, lemon andcharred ice. Then building off of that base we've got a cherry tomato, limezest -- I actually made the bitters myself at home. We've got egg white, eggshells, egg yellows, rotten banana. The final ingredient? A little bit oflove." It's only a matter of time before that cocktail finds its way onto thedrink menu of either Hotel Delmano or Manhattan Inn as "The Portlandia." Anyone wanna take bets on who actually makes it first?

The only sketch that fell a little flat took place at an LAdiner called "Around the World in 80 Plates." Whenever Fred and Carrie play in asketch that doesn't target hipster culture, the results are often mixed. Portlandia's perspective is sowell-defined that it seems off-key when they take on a banal subject likerestaurants with huge, funny menus, as they did in this bit. Despite the flawedpremise, the sketch features a winning performance from 2010 PAPER BeautifulPerson Kumail Nanjiani.

After Portlandia's successful first season, hearing people say "Put a bird on it!" became the 2010 equivalent of hearing people say, "I'm Rick James, bitch!" like they did in 2003 (that is, it got annoying real quick). Despite this, the episode inclusion of recurring (and beloved)characters from season one, including Kath and Dave (the white-bread,middle-age Portlander couple) and Candice and Toni (the employees of Women& Women First, a feminist bookstore), was fun and worked. The season premiere largely felt likean episode from Portlandia's first season on steroids; the call-backs weresharper, the connecting bits were faster and funnier and Fred and Carriefigured out what worked in the first season and heightened it. (For the record,nothing is funnier than Fred Armisen mumbling punchlines -- something he doesn'tget to do much on SNL because of the live audience.) One episode in, Portlandia has lived up to the massiveexpectations placed on it by the boatloads of glowing magazine profiles and interviewsin the past week. 

Download "Mixology" on iTunes here!