The world’s most egotistical--to say nothing of dunderheaded--spy returns, drinking, shooting, boning, and blundering his way through thirteen adventures.

CRITIQUE

And here we go again. I’m once again reviewing a later season of a television show with which I’m largely unfamiliar. I’ve been aware of Archer since its debut on FX a couple years back, but before this set arrived I’d never actually seen an episode. Again, this has more to do with the limited amount of television I actively follow than any reaction I had to the show’s promos, although there was a chance I thought it looked a little too much like Frisky Dingo, a show I never could get into.

Both are the work of writer/producer/voice actor/director Adam Reed, and there are similarities, both in terms of visuals and content, with Archer sometimes playing like a more refined, more focused (relatively speaking) version of Dingo. I found nothing to like in Dingo, but Archer is a different story. Despite what some people led me to believe, it’s not a hilarious masterpiece, but it is a damned funny riff on five decade’s worth of spy tropes and clichés.

The core premise is simple as can be: the world’s most famous international spy is an idiot. Sterling Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) is in the business for the same reason most people who’ve seen a Bond flick would want to be a spy, that being the opportunity to kill people and sleep with attractive women. When he’s not engaged in such activities, all he wants to do is drink and regale anyone within earshot with tales of his exploits. ISIS, the organization for which he works, is headed up by Malory Archer (Jessica Walters), who just so happens to be Sterling’s mom. She hits the sauce just as much as her son; she also him resents for coming along and cramping her lifestyle and berates him for being so obtuse.

Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer), Malory’s secretary, is a brain-dead bimbo who huffs glue and never seems to do any work. Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell), the group’s tech guru, is also incredibly dumb, but he doesn’t care, as he has a huge penis. Dr. Krieger (Lucky Yates), who isn’t the sort of doctor he pretends to be or the other kind of doctor either, isn’t too bright; aside from creating a virtual girlfriend, he’s nothing to show for himself. HR rep Pam Poovey (Amber Nash) treats her fellow employees with contempt, has the sort of sexual fantasies that would give your average porn star nightmares, and is the frequent butt of jokes. Spy Ray Gillette (voiced by creator Reed) is gay, and that’s pretty much it.

And then there’s Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler), who despite having once been Archer’s lover is the only ISIS employee with a functioning brain. She’s just as effective an agent as Archer, although she pulls off missions via her skills, whereas he usually just lucks out and somehow manages to kill the right people.

Each episode has what passes for a plot, but the show’s infinitely more dependent on gags and jokes than it is story; whatever story there is exists largely as a means by which to instigate a specific string of jokes. The gags, jokes, and one-liners come at an almost nonstop pace, which is good, because they’re mostly of the hit-or-miss variety. Rarely is Archer simply mildly amusing; it’s usually either incredibly funny or not at all funny.

For example, one episode finds Archer’s faithful manservant fearing for his life, thinking an old RAF buddy is looking to collect on a bet made back during World War I. The episode gets a lot of mileage out of the jokes involving the homoerotic undertones of the pilots’ relationships and each man’s attempts to make sure he’s the one to collect the prize, but the B story, which involves Archer’s bastard son, fails. It’s a one-joke subplot, with people constantly giving the little tyke alcohol in order to shut him up. It’s an obvious joke, but it sort of works the first time; the tenth or eleventh time, though, makes it clear it’s just lame padding.

Which leads me to this: Each episode runs roughly twenty minutes, but a few of them don’t have enough material to justify that length. I don’t know whether or not this is a result of Reed’s having spent many years working in shorter formats. His work for Adult Swim (which also included co-creating Sealab 2021, a show I did enjoy quite a bit) involved series designed for a fifteen-minute timeslot, which meant maybe ten or eleven minutes of actual content. Some of the episodes here play like ten-minute ideas that have been stretched, beefed up with sub-par gags. And speaking of sub-par gags, I wish the running joke in which Archer makes what he thinks is a clever pop-culture reference and then gets made when no one else seems to get it and is forced to explain it wasn’t used quite so often. I hate that sort of thing.

But seeing as the show exists for no other reason than to make people laugh, I’m willing to cut it an enormous amount of slack, as it did make me laugh an awful lot. I’ve seen enough straight-faced spy flicks to enjoy what the show does on both general and specific levels. (In order to keep the material open to every possibility, the plots and gags draw from both Cold War days and more current times.)

The first episode of this second season seems built on the idea of what would have happened had Roger Moore not developed scruples when Lynn-Holly Johnson threw herself at him in For Your Eyes Only, with Archer fighting the urge to sleep with a teenager he’s been assigned to protect. It’s flat-out great. (When she informs him the age of consent in Germany is fourteen, he replies with a quip about a certain southeastern state that deserves to become a classic.)

Another standout finds Pam kidnapped by goons who think she’s Cheryl; her coworkers’ indifference to her plight and her emasculating taunts to her kidnappers are incredibly funny. The final two episodes find Archer dropping into Russia in hopes of discovering the identity of his father, after which he returns home with a new love. Within you’ll find a combination of jabs at the crappiness of life in Russia, a riff on every possible twist involving double agents, and an ending that goes dark, wraps up a situation that’s been simmering for quite some time, and then throws in a tasteless punchline. Gotta admire that sort of craftsmanship.           

THE VIDEO

The show is presented in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The transfers have been encoded with AVC at 1080p and the thirteen episodes are spread across two 50GB discs. Given the show’s lo-fi technical origins, I was expecting a presentation that was passable, so imagine my surprise when what I saw was damned near perfect.

The animation itself (done in the digital realm) is a little crude, but it’s full of vibrant colors and is set against backgrounds that at times look like they were stolen from a more polished show. Colors really pop here, and you can really see the subtle details woven into the backgrounds. The only flaw is some mild aliasing in the line work (which looks like old-school line work, thick and inky), which was probably unavoidable. I honestly didn’t think television animation could look this good.

THE AUDIO

The only audio option is a series of DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. Not quite as impressive as the video, the audio presentation falls more in line with what you’d expect from a television series. The mix sounds more like 2.0 surround than it does full-blown surround, with most of the information locked in the three front channels and the occasional bit of noise coming from directly behind you. The action scenes have a modest amount of punch to them, with some good reinforcement from the low end. Dialogue sounds fine throughout.

The English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

All of the extras here (which are surprisingly thin; this is the sort of show that usually gets loaded down with bonus features) are presented in high-def.

Archersaurus: Self-Extinction (3 minutes) is a follow-up to an extra from Season One’s DVD and Blu-ray releases, offering up a mini-episode in which Archer is portrayed by a dinosaur.  

Ask Archer (5 minutes) finds the title character answering viewer mail.

Semper Fi (2 minutes) is a personal message from Archer to a group of soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

L’espion Mal Fait (5 minutes) finds a shell-shocked Archer imagining himself transformed into H. Jon Benjamin.

ISIS Infiltrates Comic-Con (14 minutes) if footage from the show’s panel at last year’s Comic-Con.

FINAL THOUGHTS