Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward. On th-ink.co.uk Harry will be writing a series of posts in which he will be sharing his opinions on things he has watched.
Archer, 2009 to present, cert 15-18, creator: Adam Reed, 4/5
I like adult cartoons. There’s something twisted about taking a medium supposedly aimed at kids on Saturday mornings and infecting it with satire and innuendo. One of the best animated comedies you could be watching right now is Archer, the seventh season of which is released next year. You can get seasons one to five on disc and seasons one to six on Netflix. This is spy comedy but it’s no Kim Possible. If you thought Austin Powers was racy you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The hero of this epic odyssey of madness is Special Agent Sterling Archer, voiced by H. Jon Benjamin who also voices Bob in Bob’s Burgers. Sterling is a secret agent who combines the smooth, violent alcoholism of James Bond with the crass humour and lust of a teenage schoolboy. In other words, although sometimes he is capable of completing missions, dispatching enemies and looking suave, his safety and sanity (along with those of others around him) are often threatened by a dangerous cocktail of arrogance, alcoholism and unbridled lustful enthusiasm.
Archer works for the unfortunately named private spy agency ISIS, owned by his mother Malory (Jessica Walter) who’s a bit of an alcoholic, scheming, selfish megalomaniac. He works alongside fellow agent and ex-girlfriend Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) who despite being a more dependable agent than Archer is often the butt of department jokes due to her race and apparently oversized hands.
The other ISIS employees include Cyril Figgis the accountant, a combination of bitterness, cowardice and depraved lust. There’s Pam, head of human resources who grew up on a dairy farm, has big appetites for food and various perversions (often combined) and performs in bare knuckle fights for extra cash. There’s medicated secretary Cheryl/Carol Tunt who changed her name as Archer kept getting it wrong and enjoys choke sex. Let’s not forget flamboyantly gay agent Ray Gillette (voiced by the writer) and ‘doctor’ Krieger who may or may not be a Nazi clone and whose experiments are always questionable. Archer’s long-suffering, heroin addicted butler Woodhouse deserves a mention.
It’s this combination of such depraved individuals and their conflicted abusive/sexual relations with each other that make this show so enjoyable, as well as the ludicrous situations they’re thrust into. They encounter terrorists, gangsters, prostitutes, pirates, cyborgs, animals and actors in a variety of exotic locations and volatile situations that swiftly descend into graphic cartoon violence and/or sex.
Besides the characters and the plots, the second reason this show is a winner is that it’s a bold contender for the joke-a-minute claim. In other words, it’s really funny. I’m only up to season five and every episode is still as hilarious, energetic and fresh as the first season and sees no sign of letting up, which is remarkable considering how much is packed into each episode. The dark humour is a sophisticated yet coarse blend of political satire, crude innuendos and culture references (though these are not as obvious and frequent as in Family Guy). As with Family Guy and other such shows, Archer does occasionally go too far with the humour, especially when it comes to racial and sexual stereotypes. Then there’s the almost complete sexualisation of the female characters and you can’t help but wonder if the animators are maybe enjoying it too much. Nevertheless this is a spoof of the spy genre and action thrillers in general, which sexualise women without any apologies, whereas the main women in Archer are often vocally concerned about their dignity. I don’t think the show intends to be malicious or degrading about anyone (except their own characters) and their sole intention is to give us an action-packed, no-holds-barred and thoroughly enjoyable if guilty ride. You will never want to get off.