Before Archer Vice came out I saw an interview where the creator said it was getting stale.
Which I didn’t agree with, in fact I was worried that the change-for-change-sake would be the usually TV poison that it was on other shows and I thought Archer was going great.
For one Archer Vice turned out amazing so there’s that but furthermore, on re-watching the series tip to tail I realize that he was right, the show had gotten stale. The highlights stood out and the lowlights rolled by unremembered so it seemed that the show was great before Vice but yeah, a lot of those episodes just go by.
So I was trying to pin down what was great about those beginning episodes that wasn’t in the later ones, or if maybe they hadn’t changed and I, the audience, had simply grown accustomed.
Part of it is the show was great at hinting at deeper, weirder, funnier sides of seemingly boring characters (Boring Pam’s many hidden talents, Cheryl’s insanity and later surprise wealth, etc) but eventually all the hints had been given. So yeah, that was a matter of running out of runway.
But more-so I think the show got less funny when the animation improved and allowed them to do bigger plots.
The joy of the show was, and is, the interaction between the characters and the fearlessly slow delivery. The show gets a laugh out of a 4 second pause then some sincerely saying “…No?”
Eventually all the characters knew everything about each other and went everywhere in a clump and the show tried to make the missions, the actual plot, the point – which it never was before.
Thinking about a later episode where Archer is babysitting A.J (and thinks the double agent spy is a plant by Lana and then no he’s really a double agent spy and then no he really is a plant by Lana). The best part of that episode is the other characters references to poker night. The plot gets in the way of things being funny. The introduced character isn’t funny or interesting and he takes up a lot of screen time. And the thing is the show isn’t a suspense drama, we’re not worried about Archer or A.J, there aren’t going to be any consequences no matter what happens.
Whereas the early Conway episode acknowledges that the espionage stuff has no consequences and that Conway himself isn’t important and doesn’t need a lot of story. It’s just about the existing characters reactions to him.
Same with Scorpio, the blimp, early Trexler and Barry stuff – the underlying whimsy was that really important dangerous shit was happening and these people were just having personal workplace squabbles.
Vice changed that by having the characters squabble through danger until they really did end up in a hole we were excited to see how they got out of. There is a sense of descent and consequence by the end and it’s amazing – peak Archer.
Then it’s mostly blah except the first half of the episode with Lana’s parents and… I dunno, the Last Supper shot in DreamLand?
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