The show, Archer is one of the slickest comedies around and has been since it first arrived in 2009, having aired an impressive 10 seasons, with an 11th on hold. The James Bond spoof is known for its selfish but lovable characters, iconic repeat gags and having a dialogue game second to none.
But the law of truly large numbers, plus how high they set the bar in season 1, caused the show's quality to falter occasionally and then start to slide. Many episodes seemed to be phoned in some even forgot they were supposed to be funny. Here are the 10 least popular episodes of Archer:
10 s2e6 - Tragical History (7.8/10)
In this episode, Cyril's particularly low on self-esteem and gets talked into infecting ISIS with a formidable computer virus by George Spelvin, and enigmatic Englishman - played by Peter Serafinowicz - who claims to be selling security.
After he doesn't get to save the day as Spelvin promised, Cyril is forced to confess to Archer so they can confront him together and stop Spelvin extorting information from them. The fact it's the 'worst' episode is just a testament to the quality of season 2.
9 s5e6 - Archer Vice: Baby Shower (7.8/10)
In this episode, the gang of disgraced operatives puts on a baby shower for Lana. Archer gives Woodhouse some money and tells him to set up the party, then immediately leaves with Pam to locate Kenny Loggins to perform at the party. It turns out to be a more complex task than he first thought.
The joke is that Archer assumes Lana likes Kenny Loggins just because he does, but Loggins felt a bit shoehorned in, and the constant Danger Zone references were better without the cameo.
8 s6e7 - Nellis (7.8/10)
This episode sees the gang wind up in Area 51 under pretenses, leading to all sorts of fun hijinx with aliens and military dudes while Archer uses his name as a verb like never before.
It had a fun boxed-in Skytanic vibe but didn't live up to the writing of the earlier seasons, and after season 5 took things in a different direction, and almost acted as a finale to the show, season 6 felt a little played out, forcing them to go in a new direction yet again.
7 s7e8 - Liquid Lunch (7.8/10)
This episode focuses on Archer and Lana's relationship as Slater sends them on another dubious mission. The friction between Archer and Slater grows as well. Meanwhile Krieger drugs and hypnotizes almost everyone in the office and films the results.
Archer and Lana are both great characters, but they're also bad people, and there are only so many ways their on-again/off-again relationship troubles can manifest themselves, so their relationship isn't very interesting or investable. It's clear that if Archer changed enough for Lana to accept him he wouldn't be Archer anymore, so all her efforts are just noise.
6 s3e11 - Skin Game (7.7/10)
In this episode, Krieger brings Archer's dead (or near enough) fiancee Katja back to life as a cyborg. Archer is thrilled that the love of his life has returned, but struggles to overcome his phobia of cyborgs. Once he does, Barry shows up on the scene, and after a cyborg battle turns into cybersex, Katja runs away with Barry.
Ultimately the stakes were a little too low even for Archer, what with Katja's resurrection and Barry's unconvincing explanation for not killing Archer.
5 s1e4 - Killing Utne (7.6/10)
As with season 2, nearly every episode of season 1 is prime Archer, so this episode's crime is simply not being awesome enough. In this episode, Mallory invites U.N. Ambassador Torvald Utne round for dinner with the hopes of securing a contract.
She hires 2 German mercenaries to make a phony assassination attempt so Mallory can appear to save the day, but unbeknownst to her, Nicolai Jackoff has hired the same 2 mercenaries to actually kill Utne, leading to one of her more lively dinner parties.
4 s4e5 - Viscous Coupling (7.6/10)
In this episode, we get more relationship drama with Katja, but Archer's boring when he's in love because he's always on his best behavior (his best, a relative term), be it with Katja or when Lana starts to go baby crazy.
After leaving Barry stranded in space in the finale of season 3, Archer is approached by Katja, who asks for his help in bringing Barry home. Both Barry and Archer use the opportunity to try and get with Katja and have the other killed.
3 s8e5 - Archer Dreamland: Sleepers Wake (7.2/10)
This episode was an interesting piece of the Dreamland puzzle and bit more relatable than the episode that preceded it. Archer finds a way, as he always does, to mess up a simple transaction, in this case, a ransom exchange, while a rogue 'Dutch' Dillon steps his game up a notch.
Unfortunately, the episode was given too much of the over-arching story to bear to effectively tell its own. They had fun with it but the plot to comedy balance was out of whack.
2 s10e1 - Archer 1999: Bort The Garj (7.1/10)
The second half of Archer's run didn't really live up to the first half. You could even argue the 2nd quarter didn't live up to the first, but even though they never recaptured the genius of the first few seasons, the show got some energy back when it conceded the initial formula was stale and started going in bold new directions.
Unfortunately, the season 10 premiere laid it on way too thick initially. There was barely a laugh in the prologue, making it quite chilling to watch, and the rest of the episode didn't gather much comic steam.
1 s9e3 - Danger Island: Different Modes of Preparing the Fruit (7.1/10)
Season 9 started very slowly. The overall plot made for an interesting puzzle, but 3 episodes in they'd still barely laid any pieces down.
There was some interesting character stuff happening with Fuchs and Princess Lanaluakalani as well as Archer and Pam, but it was getting frustrating how little the story was moving as we approached the halfway point. And while the dialogue was a shade of its former world-beating self, the action was a lot of fun and gave us some good old fashioned Archerization.
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