For the Love of the Wee Baby Seamus

I know in my review of season one I defended Archer saying that the season didn’t really need to be about anything. It was a first season, a pilot season for the show, and it could find its own feet and simply have fun existing. Direction wasn’t really needed at that point. And, in a way, the series did even have some light direction, probing the relationship between Sterling Archer and his mother, Mallory, to see what made the two of them tick. But it was loose. Flexible. It formed organically as the season went along and didn’t necessarily act as a “main plot” for the show. It worked because the series was still finding its proper fit.

Season two, though, does feel maybe a little too aimless, too organic and meandering. While it was fine for the show to not have a major, overarching plotline for its first season, letting us instead find its flow and characters on a meandering path, season two doesn’t get the same grace. While the show doesn’t necessarily have to be about anything bold and daring, it would be nice if the series had some sort of throughline going for its season to make it feel like it has momentum. It needs something to carry us along.

The show does have little arcs, like Archer getting breast cancer and then going on a rampage against criminals stealing cancer meds and pawning off expensive placebos, or Archer getting caught in Russia only to be saved by a blond sexpot double-agent, these are their own little modules in a larger, unconnected narrative without flow or function. Any of these stories could have fueled an entire season, potentially. Instead they become little arcs that actually feel like they do less for the story than they could, providing less momentum than the show needs to get going. They’re raised in a way that feels like the show doesn’t even want to commit to a story, which would be fine, I guess, except the way these little arcs are tossed off actually detracts from the overall experience of the series. It does more harm than good.

Let’s take the cancer arc, for example. In the lead up to it Archer has been, well, Archer. As I pointed out in my first season review, Archer is effectively the distilled version of James BondThe world's most famous secret agent, James Bond has starred not only in dozens of books but also one of the most famous, and certainly the longest running, film franchises of all time.. He’s a drunken, womanizing lout that can’t help but tell everyone his real name and, most especially, that he’s the “world’s most dangerous secret agent.” This, naturally, also makes him the biggest asshole around, and all of his coworkers realize it. He’s not someone anyone actually likes, and as his behavior through the season goes on, he gets punished in various ways (such as being falsely named the father of a hooker’s baby) for his behavior.

In that context, then, Archer getting cancer in part because of all the stupid things he’s done that season (such as exposing himself to open, radioactive rods, or stumbling into a room flooded with radiation, both incidents we’re shown in a montage) would be the culmination of payback for his bad behavior. He could then take the cancer diagnosis and use it as a way to correct his behavior and, maybe, come out the other end a better person. This sort of happens in the first episode of the cancer arc, but it’s also played as a joke, and in the end Archer learns nothing and changes nothing about himself. What could have been a strong arc then fizzles out right when, from a certain perspective, it got interesting.

By a similar measure, we can look at the arc for Katia, the Russian agent that rescues Archer because, secretly, she’s been madly in love with him from afar. For his part, Archer has been shown to be averse to relationships, willing falling into bed with women but running away at the first sign of commitment. Even his one long term relationship with fellow spy Lana ended poorly, in part because Archer’s relationship with his mother is tangled and messy and in part because he’s also, well, an asshole. But, in the span of a single episode Katia turns all that around… right before she’s killed by the cybernetically enhanced version of Barry (we’ll get back to Barry in a sec).

I get what the series is going for. If Archer is James Bond, Katia is a combination of love interests from films like The Spy Who Loved Me, where Bond works side-by-side with a Russian agent, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where Bond falls in love with a woman and finally decides to settle down, only for her to get killed by the end of the film (spoilers for a fifty year old James Bond movie). The series wants to draw comparisons to Bond, and to have fun playing with the mechanics of that world, but it doesn’t really commit to the bit as well as it could.

The Katia arc happens effectively over two episodes, right at the end of the season, and is kick-started by Archer deciding to parachute into Russia to kill the man that might be his father (who is also the head of the KGB). He’s captured, saved by Barry (who at that point is just his rival from another agency, ODIN, and not a cyborg), and then they nearly get caught multiple times before Barry falls off a building, seemingly to his death, while Archer runs off and is saved by Katia. Then, in the next episode, Archer and Katia go back to ISIS, fall in love, decide to get married, and Katia is killed by the now Cyborg Barry and it all feels very fast. Too fast.

The Katia arc really could have happened across an entire season of the show. Ideally Archer could have parachuted into Russia at the start of the season, and there could have been an episode about him trying to evade capture before, in his own stupid way, failing. ODIN could have been called in on the next episode, and for a couple of episodes we could have had stories of Barry filling in for Archer, doing his job better but, in his own way, being an even bigger asshole. That way when Barry finally went into Russia to save Archer, his inevitable fall from grace feels like an evolution of his story. Katia could show up within the first half of the season, first working for the KGB before realizing there’s a spark between her and Archer, and by the midseason she could help him escape, succeeding where Barry failed.

From that point forward Archer and Katia could be working in ISIS, slowly falling in love while Katia helps him become a better man, all while Barry gets turned into a cybernetic asset for the KGB and works for them against ISIS. Then, in the season finale, it all comes together with Barry confronting Archer and Katia at their wedding and then Katia dying in an attempt to save Archer from Barry. It’s an arc that is allowed time to grow and breathe before it all comes to a sad end. That feels earned.

This, I think, is why the season bothered me so much. It’s not that the show lacks humor or fun episodes. Season two is packed with solid jokes and great episodes taken on their own. But as a whole it doesn’t come together in any cohesive way. Season one was about Archer being an asshole and how, in a way, that’s all his mother’s fault. Season two is about Archer being an asshole, just because, and then repeatedly learning no lessons in the long run. The cancer arc could have been a whole story across a season that pushed Archer to be a little better. The Katia arc could have been a whole story that really pushed him to be better. These things could make the character evolve, or do things differently, or at least motivate the story in interesting ways, but in both cases the end result is a seeming reversal back to square one.

It’s annoying because you feel like the show can do more. It already has the patter, the jokes, and the hijinks down. Now I want to see where the show can go when it really tries. Its second season doesn’t really feel like it’s trying as well as it could and that makes it a bit of a disappointment. Not a bad season, but not as great as it could have been either.