The Best Archer Episodes of All Time
It is strange that Archer, the animated spy story about Archer, has not found the mainstream audience it deserves in all the years since its debut in 2009. Although no show can last twelve seasons with only thirteen episodes or find a stable fan base, Adam Reed’s cartoon creation has not received the mainstream appreciation of shows like Bob’s Burgers, which also stars H. Jon Benjamin.
This is not only a shame but also somewhat unexplainable, considering that underneath the bravado, lazy, reductive assessments, and assumption that Archer is just another Bond parody is a show that is as intricately layered, nuanced, and meticulously crafted as any other today. These twenty Archer episodes prove that Archer reached its highest animated heights at its peak.
The Papal Chase Season 4, Episode 11
If you are not His Holiness, plots to assassinate Pope Francis are always a good laugh. This is exactly what happens in Archer’s fourth season’s eleventh episode. The ISIS gang uses Woodhouse as a pontiff to stop a plot against the head of the Catholic Church. The Papal Chase spends most time with its tongue in its mouth, but that’s part of the fun.
Rome is the center of spy fiction. This could be partly due to Dan Brown’s planting of the seed in the collective psyche that The Vatican was the seat for some strange, Illuminatiesque conspiracy. However, there are always sequences set either in Italy’s capital or within the micro-state, from John Wick and James Bond. It doesn’t appear to have lost much of its fascination for the seat of the largest religious denomination in the world.
It’s difficult to tell if The Papal Chase is a parody of the Pope trope, or if it’s just a way to have fun at the expense of organized religion and ISIS’s reputation for incompetence. There are few episodes as entertaining as Pam in a nun costume and Archer’s innate ability to offend any culture or order, no matter how high-ranking, that he comes across, so it doesn’t matter.
Archer often uses this strange relationship to his advantage, exploiting it for comic effect. The thrilling world of international spying is not easy with the mundane office politics and bureaucracy that must be maintained by a spy agency operating. For instance, the need for appropriate agent diversity is not something you might think about when you watch an episode on Homeland or 24.
Diversity Hire’s best feature is Conway Stern’s introduction. Conway Stern is Malory’s favorite “diversity double whhammy,” who is initially recruited to maintain ISIS’ quotas. This is due to Archer’s recklessness rendering most agency’s racially varied operatives deceased. Conway Stern’s propensity to have his hand ripped every time he appears on Diversity Hire is not the only one that Conway Stern makes.
The ISIS team is not a fan of change. This was evident in the third episode of the first season. Apart from Cheryl (or Cristal, for Conway’s purposes), introducing another figure causes more chaos and dysfunction in a group not short of competing egos or fractious dynamics. Archer is the most affected by Conway’s plans to make him the number one target of ISIS’s desire.
The Man From Jupiter is the episode that introduced Burt Reynolds, but Pipeline Fever allows our hero to fulfill his Burt-inspired fantasies. Archer, channeling his inner Gator McKlusky, and Lana go to the bayou to stop an eco-terrorist group from destroying an oil pipeline. This adventure leads to chaos, bickering, and lots of airboats.
Let’s face it, even though Malory claims that Archer’s entire story is “kinda a love story” between her and her son, the primary dynamic of the show has always been that between Archer, Lana, and their stubborn, mismatched, but ultimately codependent adult children who, despite the stress and strains of espionage and failed marriages and disapproving families, were always meant to be together.
You wouldn’t know it from their behavior in Pipeline Fever. People who are in love tend to be more irritable than others. However, the irritability and squabbling can reach their peak when trapped in an alligator-infested swamp with no clean water. Lana is left with severe hand injuries from a cooler filled with beer and dry ice.
