Archer: The Frustrating Final Season. Or is it?

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The 14th and final season of Archer concluded last Wednesday in the US with the airing of the 8th episode.
To say that it isn't satisfactory is putting it mildly.
The 14th season, like the 13th before, was fine, not reaching the levels of seasons 2-4, but quite solid. Archer had returned into the "real" world since the 11th season (which also marked the point Adam Reed stepped down as the showrunner). It was then hurt by the death of Jessica Walters (and it's obvious that, contrary to what was originally announced, she had not been able to record all her scenes planned for the 12th season), but the show was still able to bring us some interesting developments and deliver some inventive comedy.

Season 14 brought a new character at the Agency, British ex-Interpol operative Zara (played by Natalie Dew), who acted as a fine foil to Archer in the first half. Then, she gradually took a backseat, including a fruitful pairing with Krieger, while Lana would also spend much of her time at the headquarters now that she's the boss at the Agency (the episode where she takes part in a mission in the Balearic Island was a standout, though). You had a good Barry episode, a great experiment where the characters were split into three teams, all guided by Lana (with the help of Cheryl/Carol, back into airhead mode this season).
And then the finale was another fine standard episode, involving Fabian (as usual played by Kayvan Novak), and taking place mostly in Switzerland (the place where a few great episodes already happened) but it closed on some unassuming cliffhanger that was apparently never meant to be solved, as if it were some unimaginative season finale. The new headwriter didn't even bother to pen it.
Also MIA during the season: the Archer-Lana relationship (mostly), AJ (entirely missing from the season), Lana's ex Robert, "phrasing", and some sense of development. There were also a few cheap laughs about Cyril Figgis' manhood from Archer and a few other people at the Agency, which were quite baffling given how much early seasons had established that Cyril was supersized.

But it turns out that it was a copout. Even if it's the final season, they have a proper finale in store in two months, Archer: Into The Cold, some three-parter that will air on December 17.
They better not screw it.

Also, no word on Adam Reed's involvement (outside of voicing Ray Gillette). Reed who had written almost everything in the first ten seasons, officially stopped being involved with the 11th, even if I suspect that he would still add the occasional line when he would read the scripts as a producer. For instance in the "finale", there was a pedantic "transitive property"/"contrapositive conditional" rectification that sounded exactly like something in his wheelhouse. That said, the official announcement at NY Comic-Con failed to mention him by name, even if he's part of the main cast.
So, we'll see.

[pierre boo-lez]

As much as I love Archer, the post coma series increasingly feel like flogging a dead horse, especially after Jessica Walters died. They ended that series perfectly with Mallory and Ron together on a celestial beach! That should be enough for anyone, right?

Also, the cast all sounded rough from series 11 onwards. You could literally hear the age in their voices.

[Mister Six]

I gave up somewhere in Dreamland or the one after it. Just didn't give a shit about imaginary adventures (yes, they're all imaginary, you know what I mean) and it was already feeling, if not tired, then at least a little weary by that point. Can't believe it made it to 14 years, good grief.

[Consignia]

I kinda liked the coma series, (well not the space one), but they were well past peak Archer. It's felt constant diminishing returns since the early glory days. It's not been massive drop each season, but it has been constant.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

One key factor that allows the show to end is that the production company, Floyd County, finally has other stuff in production.
Remember that its predecessor was doing Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo, until they lost Adult Swim which wasn't interested in the Squidbillies spin-off and they went bankrupt.

Floyd County did some occasional animation for the FX network, and got a few shows that never got more than a season, and that were often killed before airing for outside reasons. They had a female-centric post-apocalyptic show called Cassius and Clay, starring Kaitlin Olson and Lake Bell, then they were supposed to handle the Deadpool animated show that was cancelled due to dissent between Donald and Stephen Glover and Marvel. And of course, since the merger with Fox, Disney has no shortage of animation studios to handle their stuff.
They still did Dicktown, a fine and lowkey crime show with John Hodgman and David Rees for two seasons.

Now, they're also in charge of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force revival (finally patching things up with Adult Swim) and, in a move that really shocks me because the first season was bad, Hit-Monkey got renewed a full year after it aired.
Which explains why they are OK with ending Archer, as it doesn't mean that the studio will shut down.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The series finale, Into the Cold, is surfacing on a few places right now.

[Thursday]

Genuinely thought this had ended with that tribute to Jessica Walter, in the season 12 finale, and this is the first I'm hearing that there was a season 13 and 14??? I'm annoyed now, I thought that was a nice ending.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Seasons 13 and 14 are quite dispensable, but it wasn't zombie Archer either. The new writers (Adam Reed stopped being credited for writing the show after the end of the whole coma thing in season 10, but I guess he still made some rewrites) got better at keeping things fresh.

The finale was fine. They hadn't done a multipart big action finale in ages, and they managed to give highlights to every main character without burdening them with the weight of nostalgia (even if there were callbacks, including the choice of the main villains).

Best moments

Spoiler alert

- The many transformations of Barry, and the threesome
- Everything about Cheryl
- Dangling the identity of Archer's father one more time in front of our very eyes
- "Now, I'm your daddy!"
- Malory getting name checked
- AJ popping up in the epilogue

[close]