jesse
@ January 25, 2010


----------
4
I'm not, by nature, a LOLer. I smirk, I smile, I'll occasionally chuckle, but LOLing is an atypical way for me to express enjoyment of a TV show. (It is to Suzi's great ire that I watch 30 Rock, a show that she hates the way Larry Platt hates sagging pants, without laughing. "If this stupid show is so fucking funny, why aren't you laughing? WHY AREN'T YOU LAUGHING??" she screams.) So it was with great surprise that I found myself LOLing like a motherfucker while watching an Archer marathon last Wednesday night on FX.

Archer is an animated sitcom from the creators of SeaLab 2020 and other things nerds like. Despite its spy trappings, it is ultimately a workplace comedy, punctuated by intense (but brief) acts of violence. In this case, the workplace is ISIS, the International Secret Intelligence Service. The title character, Sterling Archer, is a master spy in the James Bond mold, if the mold had been left in a hot car on a Sunday afternoon. That is to say, he is warped.

The pilot lays these concepts out in a brilliant bit of plotting: Archer, having padding his expense reports with money spent not on work related items but rather gambling and hookers, has to break into the ISIS mainframe to cover up the mess.

The show is, in the best tradition of The Simpsons and South Park, equal parts literate and profane. Consider: ISIS, the organization for which Archer works, was worshiped by the Greeks as the ideal mother. The head of ISIS is actually Archer's mother and is a woman for whom (as the end of this clip shows) Archer clearly has complicated - and yucky - sexual feelings about.



Any show with this type of limited animation style has to have great voice acting, and the cast is top notch. Watching the above clip probably already excited the nerds, as they recognized the voices of Jon H. Benjamin (the coach in "Home Movies"), Aisha Tyler, and Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth in "Arrested Development", another mother that inspired uncomfortable feelings in her children). Filling out the cast are Chris Parnell (30 Rock's Dr. Spaceman), Judy Greer (you'd know her if you saw her) and George Coe as Woodhouse, Archer's put upon manservant.

Archer, quite simply, establishes a new boundary for how far a basic cable show can push the envelope.




----------

Please explain how you find Archer different from Venture Bros.

The difference is that I actually watch Archer.

The difference is that Archer has jokes and has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own metaplot.

Archer renewed, Archer renewed, and a new episode tomorrow night. Wooooo!

Leave a comment