Television Archer

I gotta admit, I'm not really enjoying this new season anything like as much as the old ones.
 
Krieger: "Oh! Hey, remind me to reboot to CPU in Ray's spine so he can walk again."
Cyril: "What? A reboot? That's a it takes?"
Krieger: "Beep Boop"
Cyril: "He's been paralyzed for months! What the hell have you been waiting for?!"
Krieger: "Think how happier he'll be now."

I laughed.
 
Yeah, decent ep at last. Gotta agree with those saying it's been underpar and Pam's been a bit annoying. It seems like the last few eps have been entirely them sitting in a house having meta conversations. That doesn't really constitute moving on. Hopefully the plot will kick on now.
 
I've been catching up with The Venture Brothers lately, and while it's not as funny as Archer (although it's gotten consistently funnier with each season) it certainly struck me that it - and quite a few things like it - have kicked on significantly more in terms of character development than Archer has. I agree with Archie, it's all bit aimless of late. Circumstances have changed sure, but somehow the characters have all gotten a bit worse for their lazy samey fall back gags.

It's still good. Just losing a bit of greatness. I've certainly enjoyed the latest seasons of Venture & Bob's Burgers more than this Archer so far.
 
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Does he? Dismiss it all you like, even irreverent comedies need it. It doesn't mean a deep, introspective pathotic storyline, or some bollocks with a lesson at the end, it just means some progression. Otherwise you're just recycling the same jokes over and over to a dwindling collection of devotees. Which is exactly what this season's felt like.

The show Archer is most compared to, Arrested Development, has just played out a whole season with shifting episodic focus on each character, using the drifting apart of Michael & his son as the center. It's not some kind of fluffy dirty word for rom coms and dramas. Even South Park have tackled it. In fact Archer did it very well in seasons 2 and 3.
 
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Almost every single character has changed significantly, even from last season. Archer's developed a caring side now that Lana's pregnant; Mallory's been more vulnerable since Ron left her; Lana's been less bad ass with a bun in the oven; Cheryl's become Charlene; and Pam's a lot more assertive than she once was.

She show's meant to be a bit aimless in terms of storyline right now. Aside from the last episode being a successful Smokey and the Bandit homage, the point of this season has been that 'ISIS' fail at everything they try and keep losing cocaine in each episode. It makes the viewer fell as dissatisfied and frustrated as the gang.

I've been as guilty of pseudo-intellectualising as you, but not everything has to adhere to hollywood-style film theory.
 
It's not pseudo intellectualising hollywood film theory, it's just character development. It's pretty fecking basic umbrella term for something everything does. At the risk of pseudo intellectualising, I'd say it was pseudo intellectualising to claim that's psuedo intellectualising. So there! Top that.

And yes, there have been lots of changes in what the characters are doing, but it still feels as if they're standing around telling the same jokes in the same way. Most of these "significant" changes don't feel significant at all for me, apart from Cheryl, which is only recent, and Pam has regressed into an even more one note character.

Anyway, perhaps it's just a personal thing, but I'm finding it increasingly less interesting, and less funny. Could just be me.
 
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Yeah sorry, I think I was just taking it out you. Not that your point isn't valid, I just really fecking hate the trend in the Entertainment Forum of people popping in to criticise things to make themselves look clever. Sorry to be so presumptuous.
 
Ha! No need to apologise for anything. I always think I'm too critical and negative on the internet. It seems to be the nature of discussing things in a back and forth way for me. If I'm effusively positive about something, I'll be brief, but if I'm very slightly critical, I can waffle on, which tends to give a really distorted impression of my opinion on it.

I was annoyed by a completely insignificant musical choice in the last episode of True Detective for example, which I felt I had to note purely because it would've very slightly annoyed me if I didn't, even though I know its needlessly harsh on a practically faultless show.
 
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Just saw the latest episode and it was garbage. Really disappointed with this season so far.
 
Aye. The whole season is feeling quite hollow at the minute. I was expecting the whole cocaine storyline to have proceeded more than it has by this point. They are going to Columbia in the next episode so perhaps it will pick up.
 
Ah it's a shame, cos 75% of that episode was following Archer, Cyril and Ray in Colombia. I thought it was rather good with some very funny moments. It's the small things I love so much, and I have to say Archer's almost imperceptible grin right before the end credits really made me laugh.
 
It's disappointing because they made the bold move to change the setting and aim of the show, and were then given approval by the fans to do whatever they wanted, and they've given us a fairly uninspiring, unadventurous season that's seen them sit in a mansion in New York for large swathes of the runtime. They could've done anything and instead they've done...not much.
 
Archie Leach said:
It's disappointing because they made the bold move to change the setting and aim of the show, and were then given approval by the fans to do whatever they wanted, and they've given us a fairly uninspiring, unadventurous season that's seen them sit in a mansion in New York for large swathes of the runtime. They could've done anything and instead they've done...not much.
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I really don't get it. I'd love to know what the writer thinks he was going for because despite all the bluster, this series has easily been the least adventurous of the entire run. The concept seems to have restricted rather than liberated them. To the point I'm now quite bored of the concept.
 
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Mockney said:
I really don't get it. I'd love to know what the writer thinks he was going for because despite all the bluster, this series has easily been the least adventurous of the entire run. The concept seems to have restricted rather than liberated them. To the point I'm now quite bored of the concept.
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It's frustrating because before the season began it felt like such a fresh and exciting move. And it's proved anything but. I really can't imagine how liberating it would be for a television writer to get the go-ahead to make changes like they did, but what they've given us is so confined I can only assume the freedom paralysed them.
 
It's like they are refusing to create new jokes.

It's been renewed for 2 more seasons so here's hoping for a more inspired next season, maybe some new writers would do it some good.
 
Latest episode is very, very funny. People gave out about it being formulaic previously; now it is seemingly aimless. Can't make everyone happy, but I thought it was clever.
 
Necessity is the mother of invention. Having to create new stories each week is good for the quality of the show, but probably draining, hard and annoying for the writers (writing is really hard, and annoying)

Not having to create new stories each week (or at least having one long running story to fall back on) is probably great, but they've mainly used that freedom to write a lot of untrimmed self referencing dialogue.
 
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