SummaryArcher is an animated, half-hour comedy set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), a spy agency where espionage and global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally mess up together.
SummaryArcher is an animated, half-hour comedy set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), a spy agency where espionage and global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally mess up together.
Like any episode of Archer, telling the jokes does them no justice. You need to find out for yourself why this series is such a politically incorrect gem.
This show is great in the sense that you need to re-watch it in order to catch everything. There are literally so many great jokes and stories that you need to watch an episode twice to just get all of them. I love how they actually develop stories, unlike other animated comedies that are simply one-shot episodes. Props to Archer for delivering on all of my wishes for a good and goofy animated comedy!
I think that this show has gotten better, especially with regards to the development of the secondary characters. I mean really the kidnapping episode is just laugh out loud funny. As with the first season I immediately bought the episodes from iTunes so I can watch them again, and I have. It is just a "sterling" show.
By combining the traditional elements of spy dramas (and spy parodies) with office comedy, this look inside the halls of ISIS manages to be both an effective spoof and an effective character sitcom.
In its second season, the spy parody remains my favorite animated series, thanks to its retro visual design--this is a cartoon for the age of Mad Men--and the vicious, dead-aim put-downs that make up most of the dialogue. [14 Mar 2011, p.42]
Archer is sleekly animated, has a cool retro design, and writing that manages to be both smart and bawdy all at once, but most of all, it has a fantastic voice cast.
The other six episodes I've seen have their ups and downs, but that's kind of the nature of the beast with comedies that push the outer edge of the envelope of taste and common decency; their batting average will be lower than their comedy peers, but their slugging percentage will be higher.
The trick to Archer is that you have to listen--and watch--carefully. What can be seen and heard on the surface is outlandish, but the real genius of the show is to be found in its seemingly offhand sight gags and throwaway lines.
I thought it couldn't get any better that the first season and it was ten folds better! The greatest animated comedy on TV for me... Never have I seen a group of characters so Hilarius and well developed... hats off to the creator..
The definition of "deadpan" in any dictionary goes "the quality of saying something amusing while affecting a serious manner". Well, one can take this whole sentence and replace it with "Archer (TV animated series)". This is what this show does consistently well: take any serious matter (say, cancer!) and have its way with it. Even if the genre of spy spoof has been done to death, nowhere are the lines delivered with such aplomb and gusto as in this show. I dare anyone with at least one tiny funny bone in their body to watch it and not at least chuckle all the way through.
Literally the most hilarious show on TV today. 9 out of 10 people will love it, and 1 will hate it, like my girlfriend. She just doesn't see the humor, but to me, the wittiness of it, the jokes over jokes over jokes, the sarcastic tone of just about everyone on the show. Every character stands out, every flaw, every strength, it's literally a full on caricature of a live TV show. I love it.
[Warning: There are quite mild spoilers in here, but only of a thematic nature]
Here is the thing about this show: no matter who you are, unless you are Adam Reed, you need to watch this show multiple times to get every little joke, be it an oblique reference to Frisky Dingo (such as the mentioning of hydraulic fluid, delayed cessation of a car alarm via a remote clicker by a character who is high above said car when something crushes it and sets off the alarm, or just the use of bu-bup!), a surprise cameo, even if short-lived (like casting Clarke Peters, who played Lester in The Wire, for a 4th tier character who has all of like 4 lines in one episode), to simply some of the best, most subtle and most visual humor on television, with none of the dry awkwardness that has come to dominate (annoyingly) so much of comedy on television.
This show manages to go from brilliant historical reference to absurd pop culture reference to smart literary reference, back to a **** joke, and then on to a new type of strange and disturbing/enticing/unorthodox humor that has, in my opinion, already catapulted Adam Reed into the absolute upper echelons of strict comedy writing. As far as laughs/minute goes, this show can go toe to toe with anything. And unlike many comedy shows, frequent re-watching lead not to stale jokes and punchlines which have lost their punch, but rather an ability to first notice all the small, silly, very subtle little jokes (often just a part of an animation in the corner of the screen for a few frames), so that by the end you are actually laughing much more on the upteenth viewing than you ever even would have been able to in an initial view.
People like to look to Larry David as the master of being able to present a theme or catalyst in an episode, and then build a plot around it, without seeming to, growing and growing, bringing back the key catalytic component at crucial times, and often the ultimate scene (if not, most certainly the penultimate). Seinfeld does this, but then it was more intentionally heavy-handed, Curb Your Enthusiasm tries to be more subtle, but in my opinion flags the usual types of typical orbits that these plot devices will take around the main characters. With Archer, anyone will tell you that saying you don't see it coming doesn't even begin to grasp it. I just finished watching the finale of the 2nd season, after which I watched the entire 2nd season again. Let me tell you, down to the finale, there are references to some of the more cringe-worthy jokes in subsequent episodes with a surgeon's precision, being able to bring out the humor while excising any grossness. There is no toilet humor in archer, really (though there is some humor on/involving toilets), which just cements this as my favorite animated show on TV right now. There really isn't anything in the same league even.
I really loved season 1, not liking season 2 nearly as much. It might grow on me but so far it feels forced and poorly written by comparison. Shame, I was really looking forward to this.