Archer’s still got it!

THE latest season of our favourite spy comedy is back with a bang, and it’s great to see them revert to some semblance of normalcy.

It opens with the lead character waking from a coma to a whole new world, and the ups and downs of real life. Here’s a little background: ‘Archer’ is an animated series about the exploits of titular character Sterling Archer.

He is an international spy working for his mother, Malory, alongside his love interest, Lana Kane, and a few other zany and curious characters. At the end of season 4, the gang’s lives are thrown into disarray when their agency, Isis, is declared illegal and they are forced to find alternative income.

They work, poorly, as drug smugglers, arms dealers, music promoters and then private eyes, leading them to Sterling’s shooting at the end of season 7. He is left coma bound for three years, giving us a trio of seasons taking place entirely in his comatose mind.

His imagination takes us to a Danger Island where he is a fighter pilot, to ‘Dreamland’ where he must outsmart a few policemen and a few thugs, and then finally to outer space in season 10, where he is an astronaut. By the end of that season, Archer’s dream character starts thinking he is losing his mind as the real, outside world starts to seep in; it turns out he is waking up.

That is where season 11 picks up. It begins with him trying to readjust to a world that has not only happily moved on during his time away, but also thrived in his absence and had no worries of when he would return. In fact, in the first episode we see that when Lana, the mother of his daughter, gets the call that he is awake, she does not immediately respond with glee.

In fact, she tries her best to avoid him in his first few days back. The others are also a little mean to him, and it is hard to see a usually cheery character so dejected. Worse, he has to walk with a cane and he isn’t as agile as he used to be. What’s nice about this season is that it is the result of the show finding a way to last for a really long time. For four seasons, the story was pretty much always the same each episode. The Isis team would get an espionage mission and somehow messes it up.

Changing the premise of everything and placing them in seemingly randomised scenarios for a while was a welcome shift in the gear and the tone. It took all the possible ‘what if?’ scenarios one could think of and explored them in an extremely hilarious way. By the time we get to season 11, the crew once again feels fresh, but the original reason we love them still shines through.

Each of the main characters has grown and developed into better people while Archer was away. His return has them all backsliding and returning to old habits and patterns. That is great to watch. Yes, it would have been amazing if the team really did get their acts together and improve themselves and thus their work, but that would also have been extremely boring.

So, now we have the team back in their original forms, but either more or less appreciative of Archer’s presence since experiencing life without him. To see for yourself, stream the FX series online.

E-mail annehambuda@gmail.com, or follow @anne_hambuda on social media.

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