‘Archer’ Is So Much Funnier Now That Archer Is Awake

It was cool to travel back to a time when crime noir was the norm. The same could be said about those hours spent exploring the jungle and space. But after traveling a while sometimes the only thing you really want to do is to go home. At long last, that’s what Season 11 of Archer is doing. This latest installment is a return to Archer’s raunchy, ridiculous form and it feels as cozy as crawling into your bed after a long car ride.

It’s not that Archer’s coma induced seasons were bad. Dreamland, Danger Island, and 1999 all starred the same characters and revolved around a constant barrage of crazy missions and crimes gone wrong. Adam Reed and his team deserve an intense amount of credit for taking such wild swings and making them pay off for three seasons in a row. But Archer‘s coma-driven foray through different worlds lost a bit of the FXX comedy’s charm.

Part of that was inevitable. Because the past three seasons were set in completely different worlds, the tried and true dynamics of the central team were tested. In some versions Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) found himself in direct conflict with longtime allies like his mother Malory (Jessica Walter) or his begrudging best friend Pam (Amber Nash). Other seasons removed key abilities and personality traits from characters, which frequently happened to Lana (Aisha Tyler). All of these differences worked in these worlds. After all, the past three seasons were truly nothing more than Archer unconsciously sorting through his own psyche and realizing what was most important in his life. But after seeing Lana kick butt for seven seasons or Malory actually be a spy, watching Archer’s warped version of his friends started to feel a bit unfulfilling. As they say, you don’t realize how much you loved something until it’s gone.

In Archer‘s case that something lost was this show’s unrelenting cruelty. From the first moments of “The Orpheus Gambit”, Archer throws out the past three seasons worth of introspection and sentimentality. When Sterling first returns to the office after being in a coma for three years and three months, his friends don’t acknowledge him. They refuse to even drink or have brunch with him. Cheryl (Judy Greer) merely waves. That intense callousness in the face of very understandable pain was always what made Archer so funny, and in Season 11 it’s back in full form.

Most of the season predictably revolves around how life changed during Archer’s coma. Less predictably, life without Archer was great. Lana is now married to a loving billionaire, voiced by Stephen Tobolowsky. Cyril (Chris Parnell) is now the healthiest he’s ever been and is excelling at work. Cheryl has a new life that doesn’t involve being chocked constantly or arson. In fact the entire team enters the season effortlessly working together. Their secret? Archer wasn’t there.

As much fun as it is to hear jokes about phrasing and sploosh again, that’s what’s really been missing from this animated comedy. Archer isn’t a show about a bunch of talented spies who have formed their own little family. It’s about a group of sociopaths who not-so-secretly hate each other and are only bound together by their jobs and the dark truth that no one else can ever understand them. Essentially devoting a season to the idea that Archer was better off dead is the fullest extension of that cruelty. Now that Archer’s awake the rose-colored vacation glasses have been removed. And confronting reality just got a lot funnier.

Where to stream Archer