In sitting down to write this review—somehow the seventh Archer season finale that I’ve covered in my time writing about this show—I had some ambition to try to say something sweeping in this space; some grand summation of the series’ overall appeal. It’s a question worth asking, I think: Why is Archer, out of all the adult-aimed animated shows that have been fed into the TV woodchipper over the last 13 years, the survivor? How did the third-try effort from the guys behind cult shows like Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo become a mainstream-adjacent comedy institution? Archer has weathered a whole series of blows—network shifts, corporate mergers, the death of a key star—each dire enough that any one of them could have killed it all on their lonesome. So why does Sterling Archer persist?
If there are answers in “Dough, Ray, And Me,” the 13th-season finale of the series, they’re certainly not immediately apparent. Don’t get me wrong: “Dough” is a perfectly functional episode of Archer, operating in a very familiar “the whole gang goes into the field and does a mission” template that we’ve seen literally dozens of times before. We even get a welcome injection of guest star energy from season six veteran Christian Slater, once again playing (basically) the worst version of himself as ethically dubious CIA operative Slater. (Also on loan from season six: A particularly cynical view on the grubby world of professional espionage; Archer doesn’t go political often, but when it does, it’s usually pointed directly at the, uh, “Confectionary Institute of the Americas.”)
That last bit, besides being an example of Slater’s lazy spycraft, is also about a runner that takes up altogether too much space tonight (and horns its way into the episode title, to boot): The crew’s undercover mission at Slater’s South American front operation/legitimate side-hustle, a local patisserie in martial law-afflicted Manatina—where, you might recall, the crew’s former boss, Fabian Kingsworth, fled recently after framing our heroes for destabilizing the nation’s government. We’ll get to the plot in a second, but let’s linger on the topic of that increasingly stale bakery for a moment: There’s a thing that latter-day Archer does sometimes, where repetition isn’t merely used to supplement a joke, but to serve entirely in its stead; having established that bakery jokes/references are the order of the day, the episode’s script seems to assume that volume will make up for any deficits in the actual joke writing, which is not, in fact, the case.
One place “Dough” does work, though, is in its action scenes, which display one of the genuine strengths the show has cultivated in its elder years: A deliberateness with staging its fights that ensures that actual beats and jokes are being told with the animation, rather than just around it. The best example of this evolution is the fist fight that breaks out when the Agency crew—having blown their initial efforts to nab/assassinate Fabian, and acting in defiance of Slater’s orders—decide to break into the presidential mansion to secure their former boss themselves. Watching Archer deep-six a dude down a bathroom drain, or Pam blow an off-brand Pixy Stix into another guy’s eyes, before brulée-ing him half to death, it’s hard not to marvel at how far the show has come from those stiff cutouts of the first few seasons, when fights were mostly just excuses for more quipping while gunshot sound effects played.
Good punchin’ aside, though, “Dough” ultimately falls back on the same point that Archer almost always lives or dies on, one of those secret weapons that have kept the series functioning lo these many years: Character. Tonight’s episode focuses on two big emotional beats for our semi-heroic heroes, both of which have been threaded, more and less elegantly, throughout the season. The lesser one, by far, is the whole question of whether Ray is now a double/triple/etc. agent, which the episode tries to sell us on far too hard. (As did last week’s ending, which tried to use it as a drama point. Ray! For drama!)
It’s not just that it was obvious, from the jump, that Ray was the CIA’s mole. (Called it!) It’s more that the character has always been so ethically flexible, and always been kept at a slight emotional remove from the rest of the cast, that there’s no real tension in whether he betrays the team or not. (He has before, after all, on multiple occasions, and mostly been treated as a lovable scamp for doing so.) Sorry, show: I love Ray as a character, and I love having Adam Reed’s voice still be a part of the scrum. But you’re not going to be tugging my heartstrings with anything related to Ray Gillette.
More effective, though, is the other big question that “Dough” addresses, one that’s been hanging over this entire season: Who will be in charge now that Malory Archer has sailed off into the sunset at last? After a whole season of drinking, not caring, drinking, taking charge, failing, and drinking, Archer finally reaches one of those emotional epiphanies he’s always backsliding off of, declaring Lana as the (very) obvious choice to take over the Agency officially. (Lana’s own, less pronounced arc of trying to treat her work as just another job, rather than an all-consuming passion, gets a brief bit of lip service, although mostly so that it can be discarded.) Despite my occasional demands for The Pam Show (ft. Sterling Archer), it’s the only logical pick, and, hell, I’m not made of stone: Having Cheryl/Carol declare that Lana is her supervisor for once was actually genuinely sweet.
We end the season, then, with the day saved, and with yet another new status quo rolling out. Free of IIA’s control, with their names cleared, and with a new boss who has “a few ideas” *finger pose* about the future, the Agency is looking at a fresh start. Again. Again, again. In fact, it is, by my count, the fourth or fifth such “fresh start” they’ve had—and that’s if we confine ourselves merely to the seasons that actually happened.
It’s worth noting that, as I type this, Archer hasn’t been renewed yet for a 14th season. If this is an ending, it’s adequate, if underwhelming. (Significantly less elegant than last year’s would have been, mind you.) But it feels just as likely that we’ll soon see FX/FXX demand Floyd County rustle up another 8 episodes for its audience’s perusal in 2023. The ratings are still holding steady, after all—not high, but steady. Even up a little from last year.
This brings us back to that question we started tonight’s review with: Why? Why does this show survive when so many others crash and burn? Archer is still funny, sure—even as it gets easier, by the season, to categorize more and more of any given episode’s jokes into an easily labeled bucket. (“Obscure historical reference.” “Failed comeback.” “Archer sees a cute exotic animal.” “Explanation of obscure historical reference.” “Etc.”) Reed stepped back from regular writing duties three years ago at this point, leaving a rotating series of writers to handle the day-to-day. (Mark Ganek, who wrote tonight’s finale, and who’s written most of the show’s “big” episodes since 2020, acquits himself well here, as usual; Ganek’s credited scripts tend to go a little lighter on old favorite gags, and a little stronger on the show’s still sometimes-beating heart.)
But why? Is it just the brutal economics of low-budget animation? Inertia? Those sweet “Made In Georgia” tax incentives? Why is Archer, the show, somehow as blithely unkillable as Archer, the man, dodging kill shot after kill shot for a third of my entire life? (Christ.) The one thing I can figure, honestly, is that it all goes back to the one place where Archer has never slipped. Not once, in 13 years. Impeccable, from Day 1 to Day 4,745. And that, obviously, is the cast.
Aisha Tyler. Chris Parnell. Amber Nash. Judy Greer. Lucky Yates. Adam Reed. And the incredible, incomparable H. Jon Benjamin. As best I can figure, Archer justifies its continued, absurdly extended existence—from an artistic point of view, leastways, I can’t speak to the money stuff—by being a playground for these performers, the finest comedy voice cast on TV. Doubt it? Listen to Benjamin in this episode, as Archer dopily works through all the ways Ray hasn’t double-crossed him. Listen to Yates’ faux-sad delivery as Krieger mourns all the tech he might lose if the Agency has to shoot his favorite cyborg in the head. Hell, listen to Ray himself: In interviews, Reed occasionally downplays his skills as an actor, but his delivery is never anything less than impeccable. Ditto Tyler, who often has the most thankless task on the show, and who always keeps Lana grounded in reality without sacrificing her comic chops. Parnell, Nash, Greer: Back-seated tonight, but relentless joke machines, elevating every line they touch.
If Archer was, now, nothing more than an annual opportunity to get these seven voice actors in a recording booth, and then bounce their performances off of each other, then it would still be worth the price of admission. And it’s more than that, honestly. These characters might mostly be trapped in sitcom purgatory at this point, but they can still show occasional sparks of life. (The Pam stuff’s been great this season, and whoever decided to steer into making Cheryl/Carol the team’s official demolitions expert deserves a raise, if nothing else.) The jokes still flow, even if they’re more buoyed now by performance than they were in the show’s first decade on the air.
If we’re being brutally blunt, it’s genuinely impossible to imagine Archer ever truly re-capturing the energy of its early seasons—when Reed, and his cast, were still discovering these characters, rather than merely polishing them like well-preserved furniture. But it’s a beautiful machine, even now, and even if the engine is largely idle. (Maybe even coasting.) It’s not hard to see why a network might struggle to let that go.
Stray observations
- “Everyone knows that sourdough starter is alive, but the question remains: Is it horny?” The first laugh of the night came both early, and Krieger-y.
- I found Slater fairly hit-or-miss back in the day, but I’ll be damned if having someone at the top of the food chain to yell insults at everybody again isn’t kind of nice. And Christian Slater is decidedly not one of those “sleepwalk through the part” Archer guest stars.
- “Alright, let’s go kill a guy.”
- “Or…you’re hoping this mess will get her deposed, and you can replace her with a right-wing dictator.”
“Touché.”
“I think it’s pronounced ‘Pinochet.’” - Everybody doing their Adam Reed/Ray impressions: Fun! (Greer’s is the best.)
- Sterling’s channeling a bit of his mom while putting down the local waitstaff.
- Fabian tries to flip Archer: “An entire country at your disposal. Your every appetite fulfilled.”
“Ha! My appetites will never be fulfilled, Fabian, because I…am ultimately empty…is, I guess, what I’m arguing.” - I’m not going to transcribe the whole exchange between Ray and Archer, but Archer’s continual dawning certainty that he’s been a moron is classic Benjamin. The man finds so much space to play within Archer’s endless confidence.
- “Yeah, that’s a fun series of words, Lana, but so is Mad-Libs.”
- The wince when Carol/Cheryl tricks the goon into punching a box grater—and then Judy Greer’s cackle.
- Archer shooting Fabian mid-sneer was very welcome. Kayvan Novak was such a good addition to the roster this year, just masterfully smug.
- Krieger: “See, if this were my van, it would be so much better.”
“What, like we’d have knockout gas?”
“No, but when we get torn apart, we’d have a kickass soundtrack.” - Slater, after Archer blows up his store: “Ahhhh… Honestly, not the worst mission I’ve run. In South America. This year?”
- Line of the episode: Lana reassures Ray that she appreciates his sacrifices for the team. Then: “But if you do betray us, I’ll flay you under a lemon-juice waterfall. I’ll make an Aztec blood sacrifice look like a Girl Scout Jamboree. Now gulp, and say ‘Yes, Lana.’” Aisha Tyler!
- Obscure reference alert: Laszlo Toth made headlines in 1972 when he loudly declared, “I am Jesus Christ—risen from the dead” to a crowd of people, and then tried to smash Michaelangelo’s Pietà with a hammer. Never let it be said I don’t learn stuff doing this gig.
- And that’s a wrap on Archer’s 13th season. I’m honestly not sure how much more I have to say about this show in the future—how many different ways can you call Judy Greer a genius?—but I’ve been happy to get at least one more chance to enjoy the chaos with y’all. Cheers!