04.29
Editor’s Note: Hello and Welcome to After the Cel Shading, where we down the triumphs and trip-ups of recently finished cartoons like glasses of iced tea/cyanide smoothies/whatever. Hopefully you didn’t understand the reference, but this is something I want to do to get myself off the ground as well as help to encapsulate a number of opinions that would either be lost on Twitter or on some random forum. So have fun, or not, but probably you should. Maybe get angry as well dependent on my opinions. If I do a good job on that, I can at least hope to see you again wondering what stupid things I will have to say. It’ll be just like reading an cartoon version of Armond White.
With that out of the way… Archer Vice.
I didn’t need Archer Vice. I’m sure nobody else did either. Season 4 was good enough that had they continued the spy game in Season 5, we would doth not protest. Alas, we didn’t get that. We got a serialized season of intrigue, pregnancy, outlaw country, addiction, coups, cocaine, that initially was hyped with a high-faluting three minute fantasy in Sterling’s head during the premiere. Needless to say, that was the best three minutes of the season.
So the better question then is: does everything else follow through with that fantasy’s promises? Eeeeeh yes and no. Any daring of this caliber to pull the rug out from under the show at some kind of prime (personally the show hit its apogee with the Heart of Archness three-parter), should be bronzed, put on a wooden base, and placed at the top of your fireplace for all to see. It was a hoot to see how the now-broken ISIS agency has to band together and reclaim some form of prestige after their fall from grace, and reveals how incredibly at ease the creative staff is with this show. As such it looks like they can work with these characters in a fashion that does not sacrifice character consistency when the status quo not so much shifts, but half-capsizes like an Italian cruise liner*.
The entire plot of selling cocaine while trying to make a country music star out of Cheryl makes for endearing television here, as like the schadenfreude-addicted plebes we are, relish in wondering how Archer and crew muck everything up. Satisfyingly they do. I’m loath to showcase a number of hilarious circumstances that is easily best watched than described, but suffice to say the cast retains their rather abrasive yet close-knit dynamic. There must be something to a show that, regardless of how incredibly low the characters are and how much they annoy each other to the point of wanting to murder each other, that there’s a lingering sense of pathos in whatever they do. I can’t help but smile when Archer and a cocaine-addicted Pam are teamed up in an adventure with terms like ‘lickbag’, or when Archer tries to dote on a pregnant Lana in his own Archer way, or when Archer, Cyril, and Ray get stuck in a Latin American country, or when (don’t worry this is the last one) Mallory switches between overly-protective concern for him to her usual octogenarian, psychological, dominatrix mode. It is comforting to see no sacrifices to their appeal to despicableness and/or maudlin sentimentality.
On the other hand, there was a fair bit of sacrifice, and not exactly for the better. If you thought it was for the better, then your mileage varies with mine. The shift from episodic free-for-alls to a serial free-for-all does not give a lot of room for creativity. With every previous season of Archer, you are always swamped with anticipation on what hare-brained adventure he is going to go on, and that each will be different from the last. Here it has to be rather unambitious in that regard for the sake of continuing their sordid cocaine dealing schemes. In fact it kindof just… winds down TOO early for its own good.
The stakes never really are raised to a high degree as Archer and company ALWAYS failed to sell off their cocaine. I’m well aware this is to highlight how gloriously incompetent they are even in drug dealing, but they seem to kick that ball down the road much longer than it should’ve gone. The time when they at least ONE success in the fuck-up, we are already at the season finale and it’s only in a non-descript Latin American state. Suddenly it just feels like a more ribald season of Burn Notice, where a top spy’s meddling in international locales is mostly relegated to the Caribbean and/or Latin America. Weren’t we supposed to go to Laos this season? Gyp. Had it been a bit tighter with regards to things going really really bad, then maybe I wouldn’t complain as much but it seems like wasted potential.
What was also wasted potential was the ability of Cheryl and Pam to be their spontaneous selves. In every episode in the last season they’re always doing something incredibly wrong that’s unique to the episode, whether it’s Pam humping an gyro or Cheryl tripping on LSD-laced gummy bears. Here, near about the halfway point of the season, I already get it that Pam is way too into cocaine and Cheryl yells “OUTLAW COUNTRY” a bit too much. Her career doesn’t even get off the ground enough to showcase how worse things can get. At the end of it all it just descends into an amusing but way too late coup of a state, with chaos sort of drinking a mai tai and somewhat halfassing the climax.
I'm disappointed Cyril is there because "Girls Und Pam-zer"
This all made me wish that my initial speculation, that the entire fantasy Archer had was all a lie and that they’d give us something MUCH more demented for the season, was real. Instead Archer Vice stretched itself way too much for its own good and really let the serial nature get the better of it. Still, I laughed, I smiled, and felt a tinge of good feelings when Lana finally had her baby, so it’s not all a loss. If next season’s deboot can bring us the same wanton intensity of the pre-Archer Vice seasons craziness that’s unique to each episode, I’m sure things will be fine.
Still, as much as I enjoyed Archer Vice, I’ll reiterate that I didn’t need it. However, I’m glad that it was done.
* So half-capsize. Is it a hapsize then? Half-a-cap? Demi-capsize? There’s a word for it but I don’t know what it is.