Armisen and Brownstein’s ‘Podlandia’ Podcast Revisits Portlandia’s Quiet Critique of Place and Performance

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein aren’t treating their Portlandia rewatch as a victory lap. On July 16, the duo launches Podlandia: A-O Rewatch — a weekly walk through all 77 episodes on Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players network. Guests like Kyle MacLachlan, Aimee Mann and co-creator Jonathan Krisel will join behind-the-scenes conversations, but the core pull is the chance to hear Armisen and Brownstein pick apart a series that always felt more like a running dialogue than a sketch show.

“Our hope … is to continue the conversations we began when the show first aired,” Brownstein said, citing community, identity, and “how absurdity is often the best way to make sense of the world.” Armisen echoed the collaborative warmth: “Carrie made me laugh a lot. It sparked so many memories of shooting in beautiful Portland.” That affection tracks with the show’s quiet radicalism — even as it lampooned artisanal fetishes and indie rock self-seriousness, it located the humanity beneath the satire rather than piling on.

The podcast arrives while both are still deep in music. Their Ramones cover band, the Return of Jackie and Judy — with Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker — plays sold-out L.A. shows the same week as the podcast premiere, then hits Mosswood Meltdown, Olympia’s South Sound Block Party, and New York’s CBGB Festival this fall. The dual impulse — talking through old performances while staging new ones — feels less like coincidence than a reminder that for Armisen and Brownstein, performance itself has always been the real subject.