A
soap opera parody featuring
Fred Armisen,
Bill Hader,
Kristen Wiig, and others as wealthy blondes with
valley girl accents (
Valspeak) exaggerated almost to the point of incoherence. Each "episode" opens with the
Soapnet logo and Bill Hader's voice-over announcement: "Next on
The Californians." The
title sequence shows the pouring of a glass of white wine and some beach front property, with an acoustic guitar
lick and chords that are reminiscent of
America's "
Ventura Highway" on the soundtrack. Armisen's character, Stuart, owns the house in which the action occurs. His wife Karina (Wiig) is unfaithful (she is said to have died in a car crash when Wiig left the show). Hader plays Devon, a romantic rival and antagonist to and long lost brother of Stuart; a recurring line is Stuart's "Devon? What are
you doing here?"
Vanessa Bayer appears as a
Latina maid, Rosa, the only
brunette character.
Kenan Thompson occasionally shows up as a party-goer and friend of Stuart and is also an escaped convict. Every installment includes three scenes, generally involving unexpected guests such as a doctor, a private detective, a
runaway, or a lost family member. Stuart will invite them to sit down on the furniture, which he describes precisely (e.g., "Mexican country-style chairs", "burlap and cane
daybed", or "neutral-toned fruit-wood chairs"). After a shocking revelation typical to soap operas, such as an unexpected pregnancy, the camera zooms in on each character, who displays open-mouthed astonishment. Each scene ends with all of the characters in the room crowded around a single mirror and gazing at their own reflections. Throughout the melodramatic plot developments, much of the dialogue consists of descriptions of routes taken from place to place, normally due to 'carmageddon', or heavy traffic. "Stay off the 405!" is a common phrase. Freeways are referred to with the
definite article, as in "
the 10", a usage
characteristic of
Southern California English. The characters are often seen with white wine or ''
hors d'oeuvres'' such as nachos and avocado. Armisen wrote the sketches for "The Californians" with
James Anderson, and says they originated from casual conversations between Armisen, Hader, and Thompson: "Just for no reason, we would talk about how we were just in L.A. and what roads we were on, and we'd be talking about directions, and, 'Well, yeah, you go on Vermont and you make a left.'" Anderson added the soap opera element. Armisen claimed to make a significant effort to ensure the navigation they describe is accurate, relying on both his memory and
Google Maps; he said, "The fact that you called me out on the
Umami Burger...I was really hoping that it wouldn't happen, but I was happy that it happened!"
Josh Brolin, who starred in the first sketch as Stuart's doctor, told
Seth Meyers that Hader and Armisen originally rehearsed "at the
round table. They never actually asked
Lorne to do it. And because I'm the staunch Californian, they were like, 'This is the perfect time to bring it up.'" In 2012,
LA Weekly reported that a
Stanford University research project on Californian accents "suggests that 'The Californians' might be on to something." The story quoted a Stanford grad student describing something called the "California vowel shift": "If you try to think about what you think a surfer or a skater or a valley girl talks like, and do it, you can feel your mouth feels different. And I think that has to do a lot with the way that the vowels are shifting." At a
SXSW Q&A panel, Armisen said that to do "The Californians" accent: "You have to pronounce every single consonant and vowel." According to Hader, the accents were not originally so pronounced, but Armisen spontaneously changed his almost to the point of incoherence the first time the sketch aired live. ==References==