106: Baseball

Podlandia: A-O Rewatch with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein revisit a season one episode of Portlandia centered on the Mayor's attempt to establish a professional ba

Key takeaways

• The hosts discuss a sketch involving the 'Portland Thinkers,' a proposed baseball team name that Carrie felt lacked athleticism.
• Carrie Brownstein recalls the moment her comedic chemistry with Kyle MacLachlan truly clicked during this episode's filming.

Main topics

• Portlandia Season 1 Rewatch
• Professional Baseball in Portland

Notable quotes

The math is there. The math is there.

Conclusion

A nostalgic exploration of comedic creation and the lasting influence

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Iwano. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGiulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of New Shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 7 (0:35) Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman, Angela Geratana, Jeremy Speaker 5 (0:38) Colhane, Patrick McDonald, and Speaker 7 (0:40) we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists podcast, the Speaker 5 (0:43) improvised character comedy podcast, where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. Speaker 7 (0:52) And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. Speaker 5 (0:58) He gets right up next to the microphone. Speaker 7 (1:00) I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. Speaker 5 (1:03) You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Speaker 7 (1:08) Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (1:16) I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Speaker 5 (1:28) Ooh, I scammed him. What? I could talk to you for an hour. Speaker 6 (1:31) You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (1:46) Self-care September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone and maybe ask. Why am I like this? I'm Gemma Spegg, host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming, from setting boundaries and navigating friendships, to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions, without us even realizing it, aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (2:27) So like by age 11 or so, at least 70 % have a phone. Speaker 1 (2:32) I'm Dr. Joy, and this is Therapy for Black Girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kid's brain, their group chats, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. Speaker 5 (2:43) Your child is not doing this on purpose. Speaker 1 (2:45) That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who study this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (2:57) Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Poynter, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Speaker 7 (3:15) Even if it's natural, why should Speaker 1 (3:17) we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Poynter on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (3:28) Hey everybody, it's me, W. Kamau Bell. This season on my podcast, Who's With Me, I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Speaker 1 (3:37) Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Speaker 5 (3:49) Listen to Who's With Me with W. Kamau Bell on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (4:29) You're listening to Podlandia. Speaker 2 (4:33) Hi, I'm Carrie. I'm Fred. This is a rewatch. A Speaker 3 (4:38) Portlandia rewatch podcast. Speaker 2 (4:40) Hi, Fred. Hi, Speaker 3 (4:41) Carrie. Today I'm wearing a bit of merch, a Portlandia shirt. And this was just in my closet. I love that. And I thought, why would I choose now to try to play it cool? Like, well, I wouldn't wear that. I'm like, no, this would be... the right place to wear this. Speaker 2 (5:00) Also, it's not like we're trying to not talk about the show. Right. Like, so I think it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3 (5:06) Bird on it. It's great. We're on our first season still and we're at the season Speaker 2 (5:13) finale. Season finale. Speaker 3 (5:14) And Speaker 2 (5:15) this season is the shortest season because this season you were headed back to SNL and we made the pilot and then we had to wait. for IFC to pick up the show. It was a pretty quick pickup, but we had limited time in terms of how many episodes we could get done before you went back to SNL. And so it ended up only being six. Speaker 3 (5:35) Yes. And I don't, first of all, I really enjoyed this episode, but I don't remember. Speaker 3 (5:44) how we decided what the show was going to be like if we hadn't seen it yet. So this has like momentum to it. There's something about it where even our relationship with the mayor feels like it's evolved a little bit. But I can't remember why or how did we know it was working? Speaker 2 (6:03) Yeah, that's a good question because we wrote it all in one chunk and then we would have shot it. And I think we also might not have known that, well, one, whether we were getting a second season and two, whether Kyle MacLachlan was enjoying it enough to come back. Speaker 3 (6:17) Yeah. But Speaker 2 (6:18) he definitely did. And yeah, we'll get to this part of the show, but we start to get into the dynamics of Carrie, Kyle and Fred. And in the final. part of the show, you can really see there was often a Carrie Kyle alliance. Yes. Speaker 3 (6:35) Where Carrie and Kyle are going off on a tangent that just seems to keep going that direction where, and where I'm, I guess, trying to keep it together. Speaker 2 (6:48) Yeah. Or Speaker 3 (6:48) trying to keep things focused. Yeah. And it comes up a few times in the series. It Speaker 2 (6:52) does. And this is the first time I see it in this episode. But of course, this episode, as they all do, starts with a cold open. And we were just discussing before we started rolling that this cold open does not feel very Portlandia. In fact, we never really did anything like this again. Speaker 3 (7:11) No, it was more. It's Speaker 2 (7:13) like a fake commercial. Speaker 3 (7:15) Yeah. But it's still, I mean, it's funny. And I liked how it was edited together, especially when it starts getting really fast. We're not only completing each, it's about completing each other's sentences in ads, a trope that's used in ads. Speaker 2 (7:29) Right. Speaker 3 (7:30) Political ads. Speaker 2 (7:31) Political ads. Or, yes, where someone starts talking and then the sentence is finished by another person. And it was sort of, it's couched in this way of like, you know, unemployment rates are up. But now we figure out a way to employ people by finishing each other's sentences in ads. Speaker 3 (7:49) Right. Yeah. So, but, you know, it's a cold open and I guess since it's our first season, we're sort of figuring out what the show is. Speaker 2 (7:59) Yeah. And, you know, we've talked about it in other episodes. There are just a handful of things, particularly in season one. where we thought, oh, we'll probably not revisit this. And this is one of those when I was watching it, I just thought, oh, we never did this again. This was just not something that became part of the show. Like other things, I'm like, ah, this is where we found this and we're going to keep repeating this, this trope or this kind of sketch. But this was not one of those. So yeah. And oh, but one thing we do do here and... I guess an element of this that we did repeat and return to was that we play different characters in the sketch. Oh, Speaker 3 (8:43) yes. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:44) And I have a feeling that when we were shooting those other sketches, Jonathan Kreisel, our director, would say, hey, let's shoot this little bit for this other sketch we have coming up. Speaker 3 (8:55) And then we could just throw it in. Speaker 2 (8:56) Yeah, because my character from Adult Hide and Seek is in here. I think, is it Spike? Speaker 3 (9:02) Spike's in there. I think with the ear gauges and everything. Speaker 2 (9:05) Yeah. So there's a handful of recurring characters. Anyway, that's a cold open. And then we get to the wraparound, which we've talked about before. It's three parts, sometimes four part through line. Yeah. That kind of becomes the container of the episode. Sometimes provides the thematic content. That's not always the case and not the case here, but occasionally it does. Speaker 3 (9:26) And this one, the mayor has gone to Baltimore. And I think he saw that they have a baseball team. Yes. And he tells the Fred and Carrie characters about we should have a baseball team. Speaker 2 (9:37) Yep. And it is true that Portland does not have a professional baseball team. And there has been a movement. And the movement also existed back when we were shooting season one. Bring Major League Baseball to Portland. Yeah. I live in Portland right now. And I still see bumper stickers. Yeah. It's a mission for some people to bring MLB to Portland. I'm not. Not judging it. I feel like there's other things we could focus on, but maybe Major League Baseball would bring a lot of joy, which is sometimes what people need. Speaker 3 (10:09) And the mayor's idea is that the team should be called the Portland Thinkers. Yes. Which is, I like the name. Speaker 2 (10:17) Really? I don't like the name because it just says to me they are not athletic. Like we're not focusing on athleticism, which to me is like should be the fulcrum. of a professional sports team. Ooh, Speaker 3 (10:30) this might be a place where we disagree. Speaker 2 (10:33) Okay. Speaker 3 (10:35) I... Speaker 3 (10:37) I lament that in professional sports, we don't have the one clown team, that we don't have the one team that's like, we're going to just be the losers of the whole season every year and let's have fun with it. Speaker 2 (10:51) I think what you don't know as someone who doesn't watch professional sports is unfortunately, a lot of teams have taken on that role. Oh, you Speaker 3 (10:57) mean like involuntarily? Speaker 2 (10:59) Inadvertently. Like I'm a huge NBA fan. And there will be teams that are just doing so poorly, like only have won 15 games. Like we're three, you know, two thirds of the way through the season. There are some really bad teams and they do become like the butt of all the jokes. So there are unfortunately kind of the clown teams. I will say also, to be fair, like IQ, like, you know, they say like basketball IQ, there's baseball IQ. Like these are very intelligent people, but I just think for a. thinkers. Like you want a mascot, like a team name that conjures something that just has a little bit more like oomph to it. Yeah. You don't want to just be in your head. Like you need pretty high sports IQ to play any of these games. But anyway, that's just, that's just me saying that. I mean, maybe if we really had a baseball team, we'd be called the thinkers and we would win the world series. Who Speaker 3 (11:53) knows? Speaker 3 (11:55) I just think there could be multiple World Series. That's what I'm saying. I think every game, every professional baseball game should be a World Series. Like, let's just make it like, because it's such a big event, like you'll get more viewers per game if you call them all the World Series. Speaker 2 (12:08) Oh, okay. That's a wild idea. Speaker 3 (12:14) The math is there. The math is there. Yes. And that's Speaker 2 (12:17) why. Yeah, you would be, that's why you're perfect for the Portland Thinkers. Yes. Yeah. To me, Portland Thinkers is like a name of a trivia team, a debate team. Speaker 3 (12:28) Oh, yeah. But Speaker 2 (12:29) maybe I'm just not thinking outside the box enough. Maybe my, you know, my thinking is limited and reductive on what a sports team can be named. You are thinking big. Speaker 3 (12:40) You're not thinking outside of the batter's box. Speaker 2 (12:43) Oh, great. Great transition. Please use that Speaker 3 (12:45) clip. If we do an ad thing. I just thought of that in the moment, and that was pretty good. Speaker 2 (12:51) Wow, great transition. Back into the sketch, which is, yes, the mayor wants a baseball team. And again, this is a common trope, is that the mayor is always roping Fred and Carrie into these jobs that they are highly unqualified for. At this point, this is the third mayor wraparound of season one. We realize as characters we've become kind of his de facto advisors. And now we are being tasked with something that's well above our pay grade, not something we are really qualified to do, which is to recruit a baseball team. Yeah. But we'll get to that. Speaker 3 (13:30) And you get to, you know, you see that the mayor is, you get to see that the mayor is always on his bike. He's always on Speaker 2 (13:38) his bike, which. I think we kind of lose that a little bit in later seasons. That's Speaker 3 (13:42) true. Speaker 2 (13:43) Or is that not true? Like even in the marathon episode, is he on his bike? Speaker 3 (13:47) Oh, that. Speaker 2 (13:49) We'll find out. We'll Speaker 3 (13:50) see. Speaker 2 (13:50) Where are we rewatching this right along with you? So we'll find out. Speaker 3 (13:55) And there's like this. This is like a common thing we'll see that took me by surprise is the sort of the joke in the editing that he's outside and then all of a sudden he's inside. Yes. And he's back outside. Something that wouldn't have occurred to me as a device. Yes. Speaker 2 (14:13) A little cartoony in a way that I like. Again, I feel like I'm struck sometimes just by how we just wanted things to be silly. Yeah. Like we're just okay with silliness. Yes. Which is something that more than ever I appreciate. Like when I, you know, want, I, sometimes I just watch them because I want to laugh. Yes. And I, I don't want it to be dramedy. I don't want to have to think too hard about like, Oh, is this going to be funny? Or it might, might I accidentally cry? Like I just, no, I, this is just silly. And I, I appreciate that. Uh, anyway, so that's part one, the mayor in a, in a coffee shop. lets Fred and Carrie know that he wants a baseball team. He's always, by the way, he has kind of an underdog, like an inferiority complex, the mayor, about Portland. He's always comparing us to other cities, like real cities, like Seattle, Baltimore. That's part of his MO. He's like, Portland, we need to make Portland a real city. Speaker 3 (15:14) I wonder how much mayors go through that. I bet. Speaker 2 (15:17) It Speaker 3 (15:18) must be one thing to be the mayor of Chicago where you're like, we're good. Yeah. As you know, and then from, you know, or some other, you know, Fort Worth, the mayor of Fort Worth. I wonder what their experience is. Let's Speaker 2 (15:30) have Speaker 3 (15:30) them on the Speaker 2 (15:30) show. Speaker 3 (15:31) Yeah. Speaker 2 (15:31) Yeah. Speaker 3 (15:32) Cause at first I bet you they'd claim, no, I'm proud of my city where I, but I wonder if there's a little bit of. Speaker 2 (15:38) By the way, you still named a pretty big city. Like there's also just like a tiny. Right. Yes. You know, like a beach town. Like there's a, there's a mayor of. Speaker 3 (15:46) Myrtle beach. Yeah. Speaker 2 (15:48) Let's have them on the show. Do you know the name Speaker 3 (15:49) of the mayor of Renal? Of course you don't. Come on. Speaker 2 (15:55) Is that something you would ever want to do? Like, you know how some people remember how like Clint Eastwood was like, he's the mayor of Carmel or like Sonny Bono was a mayor. Speaker 3 (16:02) That's right. Couldn't do it. Speaker 2 (16:04) Okay. Speaker 3 (16:04) Couldn't do it because. Speaker 3 (16:07) I think I really don't understand how government works. What my goal, like my goal as a politician would be like, I just want to be at City Hall and be left alone. Like the less we could talk about anything, the better, the less we do, the better. Just come in if you need something about the bus system or whatever. In fact, I'm signing off yes on everything. But please, let me just be in this office. Speaker 2 (16:33) You do not have my vote. Speaker 2 (16:37) But I also think there's something, there's a lot of people who now like run for mayor coming exactly from the place you're talking about, which is like not like, you know, a politician, like not coming from like, yeah, just someone that's coming outside politics. This is very common now. So like you say that. But then sometimes cities want someone that's just like, no, I'm not a career politician. I just have ideas and I have optimism and I'm thinking, you know, left of center here. Or I guess some people want right of center, but whatever. Thinking from, you know, a different perspective. So who knows? Maybe we'll cut to you being Speaker 3 (17:25) the mayor of Burbank or something. Yes. How about yourself? Would you ever? Speaker 2 (17:31) No, I don't think so. I think in some ways I agree. Like I feel like I always want elected officials to be like civics majors. Like I'm just like, I want you to understand. I want you to have all of it memorized. The constitution, the Bill of Rights, like the entire history of the state. Like you need to know everything about geography and the geopolitical system. I know that's a high bar, but I'm just like, please. If it's your job. If that's not my job, that's not most people's job. I try to be informed, but I really want... When someone is... Sometimes with Trump or something, I'm like, I know that if you held up a map, there are places that we're probably bombing right now that he would not be able to point out on a map. And I just think, to me, I'm just not... Like, I don't know the entire history of Portland or the entire history of Oregon or the inner workings of the government. Like, I know some stuff. But I just, to me, I know that's a high bar. Speaker 3 (18:40) I'm so with you. Right? It's shocking Speaker 2 (18:42) to me. I'm like, you have to know, like, this municipal code. Speaker 3 (18:46) Even as, and I don't mean this as a joke, even as a hobby, meaning. If we're in music, we know music history just because we love it so much. Yes. If you love politics and are gravitating towards being a mayor, just for fun, don't you just know the lineage of all the mayors of this city? Speaker 2 (19:06) Or at least how government works. Yeah. Like I just, it feels like a real basic ask. But that, anyway, so I would never, I just, I'm not qualified. That's just, that's the bottom line. Like, that's just not my wheelhouse. And I would hope that someone, you know, much more qualified than me is running. And I gravitate towards those people as leaders. Speaker 3 (19:34) I'm also, as someone in government, I think I'm fiscally irresponsible. Meaning, if they said to me, this highway is going to cost a billion dollars, I'd say, great, I don't care. Speaker 3 (19:49) The sanitation department needs, you know, $7 million. Whenever you're ready. You're saying the Speaker 2 (19:55) deficit would be very high. Yeah, we'd be in so much debt. Speaker 3 (19:59) But even now as an adult, I still don't understand, yes, that taxes come in and that's what you have to spend. But I'm like, just do it and then let the money happen. Just print more money. Just print more money. It is like