It may only be tangentially in the genres, but Archer has been one of the best animated comedies on television for its brief two-season run.
Of course, like any show with this much talent and excellence there are risks. If the studio makes too many episodes too fast, they’ll quickly run out of good material, and the show will become stale or formulaic. If they produce too few or too infrequently, the audience will lose interest.
Fortunately, Archer has been skirting that obscurity line since the end of the first season, with every fan constantly wondering how many precious episodes may be left before the show disappears completely.
Archer is a sci-fi spy story, which follows the adventures of a team of freelance agents, Isis. They work for the highest bidder, and get the job done every time with their advanced gadgets, and near-supernatural skill.
Underneath, however, they are all socially inept, and emotionally depraved. Each has serious foibles, and their report is always witty, and frequently very clever – on the part of the writers, not the characters.
This fall we got a three-part bonus episode as a sort of teaser for the third season, but haven’t heard much since then.
Fortunately, FX released 5 promo spots for the upcoming season this weekend. They take the form of a series of ‘What would Archer Do?’ segments, in which Archer behaves widely inappropriately in various situations. Unfortunately, they use clips and gags from the first two seasons, but if you’re uninitiated, this is a good way to catch the wit of the show, and see that the third season is something you shouldn’t miss.
There are nine in total. You can check the rest of them out on the FXArcher Youtube channel.
Archer, which stars the voices of H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Jessica Walter, Judy Greer, Chris Parnell, Amber Nash, and George Coe, sees its return to television January 19, 2012 on FX.
